Sister Wendy, the venerable bucktoothed nun who was PBS’ poster child for art appreciation a few years ago (this is totally affectionate, by the way — I enjoyed that series), used to speak of a concept she called “newspaper art” — work that was possibly good, even significantly meritorious, but because of its specific topical nature had no shelf life beyond the immediate moment. You know, like most slam poetry.

Didn’t mean she didn’t like it or think it was not worth doing; just that it was work of the moment and no more.

This is a newspaper poem — with the exception of the whole “possibly good” thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey,

are there any left-handed
dead people on my friends’ list?
I have a question about barley
only you can answer.

If anyone out there
knows of an equivalent
for honey in making
Javanese sauce, let me know.

Regrets? I’ve had a few.
Here are five of them, I tag
anyone regretful to tell me their own.
I’ll wait.

And does anybody know
the names and faces of all the guys
who were in the band The Crank Case Children?
I know I was one of them, but the rest…

O, you who are without names,
there are reasons I can’t sleep
and you know the reasons as well as I do.
Is this why you never respond?

Eh, pressing the flesh
is overrated anyway;
any one of you who might touch me
could be anyone else.

I made this entry public
so you can try to prove me wrong
in your comments. I’ll wait.
I’ll be waiting. I’ll be right here.

in the hands of the one who leaves the relationship

my hands are so small, i can’t even form a fist using them both
you expect me, somehow to change my mind
and get past all these monkeys
and come back with a secret in hand about how to get back home

there’s no answer you could use
they give personalized advice
and you gotta just go and throw a punch
and ask them if you wanna know something

the road to interplanetary space
is paved with small violence and ignored pain
the certain level of power that a leaver has
is the recognition that pain is not only unavoidable but beloved for growth–
a blow to the head and we all see stars
a second blow to the head and we bend down,

at which point we are supremely placed
to dig into the flinty soil, and begin the planting

your words can sound
as if you were
on a plane
with sages
who find spirit
in each breath
no matter how small
or silent

your voice can sound
as if a rock
once rolled away
from your throat
and opened a path to
insurrection

your every line of speech could be such
that one hundred years from today
a condemned prisoner
could recite any of them
and gain clemency
from a hanging judge

knowing this
what of your voice
do you care to waste

On television
a holy man again proclaims
God’s love for vengeance.
He worships the clot and the hurricane.
He is a hosanna in a dark suit.

I thought I recognized him
from a picture
I saw once
but he is not as red
as I remember.

He says what he wants and
believes and I watch it.
Fact is shattered on that end
and reglued on this end.
Light never comes through it
the same way after that.

I turn the channel as casually
as I might spit on a sidewalk
to get something out of my mouth
that didn’t belong there:
millions of agreements,
billions of tacit approvals…

Go farther.
Turn off the TV,
turn off the power,
turn off the lights.
Turn off everything.

The coma patient
bursts into song. The heretics
rise from their fires. The wind
stops blowing.

Count backwards from a trillion,
count by tens, hundreds, thousands.
Count fast, count faster,
past the Gospel
all the way back to the One Word.

We leave our homes and look at each other
standing in the street, our backs
straight, blinking in the sudden bright,
wondering:

what that voice was we just heard
that sounded so little like any we’ve known?

when I say “grim”
I mean this day feels like

a last fencepost,
gray and gnawed by wind and sun,
its surface the color of granite
but easily dented by a fingernail,
strands of barbed wire rusted fragile
to its surface, and no fellow posts
anywhere around as it stands in the weather
trying to recall what it used to contain,
and when it falls there will be
a hole that fills in quickly
so that no one will know it was there
until some archaeologist comes by years from now
and uncovers something that explains something else
and the scientist will say

there was a fencepost here that stood a long time
and fell long after its purpose was fulfilled.

1.
when a man
grabbed me from behind
i turned
and cut him
did not stop to see
what happened
ran as fast as i could
back to the party
two friends helped me
scrub off the blood
and someone else
lent me a shirt

i went home that night
my parents never knew

i have watched the news for years

still don’t know
what happened

2.
she was really pretty
if i could have recalled her name
i would have called her

3.
i stole
a book of robert bly’s poetry
and later had him
sign it
this was wrong in so many ways
i still have the book

4.
i should have called her
i should have called her
i never should have called her
who was she
who was i that i thought i could call her

i should have hit him
i should not have hit him
i should never have pulled my knife

i am glad i pulled my knife

years later i saw the one
i should not have pulled the knife on
in a club

he backed away from me
both hands raised

it felt good

you’re the indian, right
he said

something like that
i said

i like indians, he said

i stepped toward him
he fled

it felt good

5.
there is only so much
of yourself
you can handle
before you have to start
dividing and conquering

i will own this
i will not own that
i am this because
i was that

you
don’t really know me
you never will

i know me
but not all at once

he changes
her radio from news
to classic rock.

screw politics, he says,
getting out to toss
the old sneakers up and over the wire.

she smoothes her hair
and straightens herself
in the seat.

his new nikes
smell just like the inside
of her father’s gun cabinet.

she understands something
she did not even know about
before she got in the car.

in this bar
a man trying to sell his leftover windows matters

“they’re shit windows — american standard”
“s’alright, it’s just for the basement fer chrissakes — how big are they?”
“yeah, these are fifty-sixes, standard size”
“shit, i need like fifties — mebbe i can do something
with them though — ”
“gimme a call mebbe we
can work something out — they been sitting there
long enough, they ain’t going anywhere”

he matters as much as the Portuguese roofer trading stories with the Marine

“when i got my flight number — and this was vietnam —
once you had that flight number home they couldn’t do shit to you —
i told that fat fuck to go fuck himself
every time me and guys from the unit get together — we have
reunions somebody tells the story of how i almost got in a fight
with that fat fuck of a major — is like that now for you guys?
do you get a flight number? hope to christ for you
you don’t have to go back”

“yeah, me too”

they matter as much
as the would be blues bar owner
who comes in flashing green
talking about opening finally in three weeks
and goes out with everyone talking about how much
he deserves it, sumbitch always works so hard

it all matters as much as the Memphis-Akron game on all the TVs

and they matter far more than
the dumbass longhair
sucking down Jack Daniels
talking to no one
listening to every word

and everyone here knows that
including the longhair
they know it as well as well as they know
that it’s dark outside
and the rain makes it seem darker
so who wouldn’t rather
be inside

the longhair stares at himself for a long time
in a free square of the back mirror
under the American Flag
the bartender asks if he’ll have another
he nods and pulls the bowl of popcorn closer

says “it’s five o’clock somewhere, and somewhere is here”

and the guy on the next stool says “you got that right”

if
an angel exists
even one angel

let me be
a failure
in his sight

prostrate
upon the dirty floor
of my room

trapped in
the great song
of his wings

let him
lift me
upon exalted arms

lift me shamed
into a new life
beyond

the grey streets
the holes in my nights
the things i see

when i close my eyes
to sleep
and do not sleep

there is a ripple effect
when two ripples cross
it only appears that
nothing happens

what can happen
is that the butterfly
in the amazon
drowns

what can happen
is that the mountain
is shifted by the wind
just enough

to throw off the compass
what can happen is the angel
bursts out of the tomb
and splits the tree

what can happen is
the faces of men
become fluid
and seek their level

uncertain of results
of joy or sorrow
magic or business
i throw the second stone

nothing has changed
except the prices have gone up
it’s now two seventy-five
for a jack on the rocks
a bag of chips is seventy five cents
i could end up drinking here all the time
like everyone i used to drink with
twenty-five years ago
who is still drinking here
like dave parker
like sue boulanger
like rat guertin
suddenly i’m helping dave push rat’s car
out into the center of the parking lot
while it’s locked and running
and rat’s cussing us out
and we’re laughing our saggy asses off
and the car looks like it was made in 1980
and i’m wanting a cigarette bad
and it’s damn cold out here
and six drinks in one hour seems about right
all over again

when i awake
i know that
a hot song of pain
is what she will offer me
when i rise
and i will listen
even though i know every word
and could sing it back to her
backwards

tired of this
i decide not to recognize
my face in the mirror this morning
and it is wonderful: the craters
and the mottled surface
a new and threatening planet

who is that, i ask
who are you, she asks
not singing for a moment
i don’t know i say
but i will learn something of the geology
before i turn away
and soon
the room is quiet

this is the morning
of discovery and
i have no idea
what song would ever be appropriate
i cannot imagine
that one could even begin
to look at a new world
in anything but silence

i’m here.

none of my clothes fit me.
there are moths in all my sweaters.
my mailbox smells like dead letters.
my ring has dropped off my hand like an old apple

but i’m still here.

there are snakes like ribbons tied to my arms.
there are dances i’ll never go to, women i’ll never kiss
and the bottle is my last home

but i’m still here, dammit, still here.

i left a section of my name on the killing floor.
i slipped my picture into the mayor’s mail slot
and demanded a recount. i mentioned my religion
to a secret agent and he photographed me with his tie —

yes, still here.

i keep looking for the room around me to change.
there are countries i am sure i could live in if i could get to them.
i look around and nothing moves — hips, eyes, hairlines.

i am here. and if i am here,

then i ought to accept that, i ought to be
nearly complete. i have my health, a neurosis
ripe for writing, a decent problem
with social dis-ease, lonely nights long enough
to rope together both ends of a long bad year.
this is enough for art. it is enough for manhood,
for personality and character. it is what i expected to receive:
something larger than my personal misery
that demands i stay put without any comfort.

so it is hard to understand why
i slide down in the bed, the chair, the driver’s seat
when someone asks the empty air where i am.
and it is hard even for me to understand
why i have started to hold my tongue when the question is asked.

New Mexico

We drive out to the petroglyphs
and lay an air mattress and a blanket in the pickup bed
where we lie and watch
the descending stars
whenever our eyes are not closed
and we are not turned away from the sky.

I mention that I’m surprised that it’s cold enough
that the blanket matters. Also, I say that
loving you feels different here.
You say in New Mexico, it’s the heat,
not the humidity.

One streak lights us up
when it burns through the thin clouds.
I imagine it striking down
somewhere out toward Tucumcari, raising dust
and a rumble you could hear all the way to Dallas.

If it were day, you tell me,
we could climb up and see the writing on the rocks.
We could stay all night, I tell you.
We could get caught, you tell me.
We could, I say,

but we could plead the influence
of the stars, say that they fell on us
and burned us nude so we had to wrap ourselves
in each other and when the explosion came
we were so stunned we had to wait until dawn
to read the rocks and understand what it all meant —

Shut up, you say. And I do.