They were the first books from memories’ beginnings;
even the Bible Storybook followed after.
A sentimental claim could have saved them, ensured
their survival from crazy mother fire she flung
to send her gelatinous demons home to Hell
from the closet shared with the stacked, forgotten books.
With them flamed up my pre-school doodles penciled on
endpapers. The text pages, slick as ice, rebuffed
pencil’s reticent lead, while end sheets craved caress.
Too pristine; stiff covers of muted blues and grays,
greens, even reds; inside: over-exposed pictures
of breeds of hogs, cattle, fowl…crop rotation charts
that, I would swear, were never glimpsed before my eyes.
We never talked of books or little else; always
at work even when sick (coming home pale to fall,
“burning-up” to his hard bed). He would never read
his “farm books” bought by Uncle Sam as his reward
for surviving battlefields in France, Belgium;
in tiny towns…only words… he struggled to say.
What was an Alabama boy who barely read
to do, but wed the pretty girl waiting back home,
and care for cotton, corn, durocs, chickens and kids?
Tenant farming fail through. Mother still talks of wind
blowing bitter cold up through floorboard cracks and the
silent rat snake, “This long!” falling from the attic’s
dark scary hole to hit the kitchen floor, plop!
beside her as she churned butter for our cornbread.
(Only Sunday she had prayed for just an onion
to eat with beans and the last of the “side meat.”)
Poor snake, more startled than she, died a riving death
by her cotton chopping hoe, twisting till sunset.
Daddy, too gentle, kind…always the provider,
“too good for his own good”, delivered milk or bread
or pumped gas always smiling the rest of his life;
accepting grueling hours like penitence…for what?
The books?
Still I summon the scent and feel of their dated
knowledge and hope gone stale. I remember, it was
mother’s suggestion, her offering to me, to draw
in Daddy’s books.
When love, even lust, turns perfunctory,
becoming a rote/route to trek at night
…..or squelch in lone moments of secrecy,
·
a precious trait slowly turns dastardly.
We refuse to see our cascading plight
when love, even lust, turns perfunctory.
·
What is this thing; a ruse to avoid briefly
the pain of refusal’s possible bite;
to squelch a lone moment of secrecy?
·
And how can we grasp hope and change, be freed?
Can logic offer words, to gain insight
when love, even lust, turns perfunctory
·
and we lament the loss so bitterly,
when senses dulled, only channeled for heights,
are squelched in lone moments of secrecy.
·
Behind blind eyes, staring, the heart could see
and feel the will falter, unsure, in fright
when love, even lust, turned perfunctory;
was squelched in lone moments of secrecy.
The nest, eloquently laid of brittle twigs, holds
a knitted cup of coffee/color pine needles mingled
with wispy leaves and lies in the branching Y
of Pyracantha, framed by Aprils’ white corymbs
and shielded by the tan brick wall of my home.
Four blue/gray air-brushed eggs glow a tinge
of brown speckling. All has been abandoned.
They lie, lovingly deprived of apprehensions,
of ever wondering why; what forced their mother
to be to flee one instinct for another.
Perhaps, our prying eyes or the cat crouching,
or the bullying gang of jays flaunting
their colors; threatening hate crimes.
Perhaps, it was only a roving eye, a perceived
greener tree…an inexplicable unease.
On damaged knees in wet and sweet dark dirt,
the gardener in his plot mumbles:
his soul is singing songs of friable decay,
of tingling life through fingers’ sifting touch.
.
He presents his face, unashamed and
divinity anoints him priest, seer, Adam’s son
with sacred smudge of sweat and primal dust.
All joy is not in bloom but in seeding.
Just an old man on a fast, healthful walk,
I was ambushed on quiet Magnolia Street;
my assailants, two boys, seven or eight,
flaunted their plastic guns from their dead yard.
One sprayed me from the hip, old-gangster style,
the other, took careful head and chest shots,
leering at me with deliberate calm.
Refusing to ordain their murder play,
the chest/clutching drama/death of feigned pain
on a twisted face, which they demanded;
I threw them my pain and a snubbing of
their killing fields, a dam/you/glare as only
an old man tired of rote/learning/games can.
Incessant perforations of the air
by forced/breathe bullets pursued me far past
my escape around the corner to Oak.
Their muddled voicings of derisive taunts
rent the air for my refusal to die.
The leaves are fallen and the wind laments
their leaving for they mark his passage
painting visibility on the ethereal.
My face and ears feel a cold breath
face/on as our directions collide
on this sunny yet cold, empty street.
A chime to my right sings winds intent,
his hope to fly till the tumult of his birth
dissipates to calm, allowing him to lie
and rest quietly as a wreath on a grave.
Bison moseyed nonchalantly huge
among our tents, hushing with awe,
on their way down to the Yellowstone
to drink in saffron, morning light.
The kids, dumbstruck, pointed in glee
as one mountainous beast halted
and glared; signing with oracle eyes:
“Today I will be your token beast.
Tomorrow you will be mine; locked
in amber, stone and layered time.
I will hoove your useless remains;
eating grasses from cranial urns
recalling nothing of your holocaust.”
Can beast, once a coveted commodity
slaughtered for trophy, flesh or skin,
mimic disdain? I know I saw it there.
Guilt mandates we heap self-accolades
for our forbearance against a token few
free, yet still, goods for our pleasure.
Will we be allotted a token few to roam?
Natural, unstained, just shaped by my hand;
every so gently, my fingers caress
your lustrous, polished surfaces.
Is it your innate beauty I cherish,
or my own creation I so admire?
Listen! I’m talking to you, he said to the mirror.
Help me decipher these fragmented thoughts:
From the very beginning…..we are locked
in isolated minds…..simmering hot
fibrous solutions arcing sparks like a
grinding wheel dumb of its rotating self
throwing holograms of tricky, bland light
for billions of pied elucidations
by flawed, chemical collusions painted
by chances’ whims of perception, fated
to pursue that umbilical link …that
elusive oneness to the flow of life
from which I was lovingly, sadly torn.
And we all know it exist….doesn’t it?
It’s so simple: allow me nirvana,
that whispered agreement, “Yes, yes, I know!”
from some entity divine or simple
as skin touch, hand clap or burning leaves smell.
Place your fingers on your temples: it’s all
just biology. Did you feel it? There,
that repulsive hairy rodent bumping
burrowing stifling muddle-headedness
that dead fullness……is it a corruption
in the spasmodic spark shower itself?
Are capillaries constricted, neurons
lacking sufficient flint to strike words……thoughts?
I do know ideas are snagged in transit,
wedged in dead-end deformities, bouncing
off walls, flinging echoes of frustration.
Those random un-sensed possibilities
struggling to permeate my consciousness;
who knows what brilliance never surfaces?
Is our hard hunger only the seeking
of what’s trapped below; god or peace only
those stifled sparks sending S.O.S. calls?
A logical progression of thought was
just chopped, (I felt the dull blade; my throat aches)
severed just behind the tongue an instant
before a flash of fluency rose up.
Listen I’m talking to you! he said to the mirror.
Belated Words 