Poems Before Breakfast

Moving

2009-06-27T18:08:00.001-05:00

I'm moving Poems Before Breakfast over to Wordpress where my other active blogs are. Be sure to visit me there.

Calf Foot Blues

2009-06-26T07:01:00.000-05:00

Bone marrow
boiling in this
pot black hissing
gas ring hot night,
a slow reduction to
the elemental in
the fan-stirred
simmer of this
gelatin evening.

Its Alright Ma

2009-05-27T15:53:00.000-05:00

No is not an answer
but a rock that splashes
endless rippling questions
and-kerplop-vanishes.
Your No drops on the ground
among the stubbed out butts
where a small, sick bird huddles.
Neither of us wants to look.

The small cracks in your voice
as you say, No, we can’t
spread like crazing failing ice.
I do not reach across and
take your nervous hand,
sit arms folded and solemn.
Drowning alone and cold
is my own foolish choice.

I do not want these words,
fold your No up and stuff it
in my wallet amidst all
the litter of responsibility.
I watch your soft green eyes
caress the sick nestling at our feet
which flies off beyond rescue.
No, its chirps, I’m alright. Really.

Lost In Transit

2009-05-25T15:32:00.003-05:00

If Understanding
and Acceptance
were streets in this
pick-up sticks mess
of a city they wouldn't
even share a ward
much less intersect
and there's no good
way to get from
one to the other
on this bus and
I just can't get off
unless its your stop.

If you do not come

2009-05-10T20:02:00.003-05:00

If I go alone
and you do not come
the cold moon
will watch us both,
separate and apart,
with the distant glare
of a Siamese cat.

If you do not go
And I alone come
I will stand, drinking
in the happy chatter
and not hear a word,
looking over shoulders
at an empty chair.

If only I go and you,
you do not come
and walking home alone
I cry out
It will be lost
in the lewd howling
of the feral cats.

Solitare in Bb

2009-05-08T08:11:00.005-05:00

When she sent me away
I cinched my belt tight,
pulled down my hat and
drove 200 horses down
to the lake shore and
idled there a long while
on the seawall, alone
in silence, with the birds.

The waves were small
but relentless, slapping
at the land’s edge until
I felt its pain, and at last
I laughed because I was
no longer numb, laughed
until the birds fled.
Solitude suited me.

When the gray day
turned moonlit and grim
and the clouds refused
to give up their rain
I watched the parked lovers,
cars rocking gently over
the water like boats and
cried because the sky would not.

The Oppression of Blooming Magnolias

2009-04-16T08:07:00.007-05:00

On Reading Lay Down in Darkness in Middle Age

I am weary of Lear in his linen suit
and his Shantung straw, with his whiskey neat
and his southern drawl, with his lisping women.

Williams, Styron, Faulkner: I have studied, father,
all the chapters in the sacred scripture
of southern damnation, and remain unredeemed.

Let us bury them under the old willows
among the Confederate dead, lay down
their burden by the river and

Rise up, wide-eyed and gasping, born again.
Only then will the oppression
of blooming magnolias be lifted from us all.

Imagined Sins

2009-04-12T12:12:00.005-05:00

Before I go mad from imagined sins
I want to tear you out of my heart and
Process you high through Holy Thursday’s streets,
My brazen painted saint, marching barefoot,
(O happy martyr) over blood red thorns
Of roses children shower before us,
Where flailing men weep in their jealous grief,
Devout women pull shawls over their heads,
Cross themselves, murmur soft prayers over us.

Only by this can I hope to be saved
From an eternal burning down below.

The End

2009-03-18T10:22:00.001-05:00

Not much to post up here of late, so here's a link to a story I wrote for a local pub's St. Patrick's Day short story writing contest.

The End

Lucky Harahan

2009-01-03T20:56:00.016-06:00

Lucky Harrahan
was not. Stood he
in the rain
(forecast:sunny)
in a lamp-less alley
behind the racetrack.

Big wet polka dots
plashed boldly on his
proud plaid jacket.
He squished sullenly.

He wore his Racing Form
umbrella-wise
perched pup-tent
on his head.

He knew, once, how to
fashion a printers cap
from any odd scrap.
An honest trade
was not, however,
in his cards.

He pulled out a fortune
of folded horses,
damp and loveless
matchbooks, bits of
primordial lint.

His car was here.
His keys were not,
rabbit foot fled
for greener pockets.
He swore then,
honestly, never to
gamble again on a single
set of keys.

Oh Happy Day

2009-01-02T20:17:00.012-06:00

On finding the web site
everettemaddox.org
back on line today

All these words
of mine--
count them up like
fumbling blunt coins
& crumpled bar dollars
at the sketchy store,
jonesing for cigarettes--
what are they worth?

If I could write just
one goddamn line
as good as his worst,
I'd quit.

Sad Baritone Saturday

2008-11-10T08:56:00.017-06:00

A sad baritone blowing big round Jello-tremulous Os of the blues.

That’s what started this ramble into a pleasant melancholia a fizzing afternoon beer buzz of sadness not quite cheerless, simply there like a color in the air, a sky so blue and clear you can hear it, a faint hum beneath your feet, a Fall afternoon so perfectly empty you just want to lay down in the arms of some big oak and root, thinking: well, if the world is going to caterwaul in a crashing train wreck, I guess I’m not busy today. Go ahead. I voted early.

And then you remember the Indians, stuffed into the lobby of the museum. So you go and the colors aren’t quite right, all that expanse of white marble flattening the chromatic costumes into something cartoonish, stealing the scene's perspective like some VCR on endless loop, alone in a neutral cream room of neatly labeled artifacts under glass...instead of the slow approach up a street lined with low, sameish houses, long rows of shotguns and maybe a catercorner store.

First just a spyboy peering around the colored chalkboard brightly proclaiming Hot Breakfast and Cold Beer, then a hollering of tambourines in the distance and then you spot them, turning a corner, bright-beaded bird creatures from a dream, singing in a language they have made themselves.

That’s when you decide: No, thank you I want to slap the snooze button on that doom clock your time doesn’t apply to us down here we’re on Central River Time and things, things are just a bit slower and we’re not quite ready for all your rapturous end times of votes and riots. We’re all in pawn up to the brim of our sharp fur felt hats so here’s a dime: call in all your tall Wall Street stories to someone else.

If you’re going to destroy your world try to keep it down to a manageable rumble in the distance, please, perhaps a smudge of smoke on the horizon like a marsh fire and leave us to ourselves, to the scat-o-logical chantings of Fi-Yi-Yi to mad tambourine time, the bright side of the poverty and sadness you turn into columns and hours of politics and we turn into a sad baritone sax blowing big round Jello-tremulous Os, measuring the girth of the blues just about city sized and right for us, thanks.

3-2-09: Last revision, abandoning stanzas for the original stream of prose with a few edits to make it more breathable to read aloud.

Monk

2008-10-24T08:33:00.026-05:00

Notice, the docent said, the absence
where the leaves of bamboo cross,
how the artist did not paint
one over the other but left a gap
between the two background halves.

This technique the Asian painters called a moon shadow.

Thelonious stood in the back
silent, bobbing his head
in an odd rhythm only he heard,
a tempo conducted by the baton
of distant wind-blown bamboo.

His musical chop was a signature all his own.

His hands on the keys zigged and zagged,
men climbing the crooked mountain who
passing the waving bamboo
stopped, silent, paused a beat or two
to relish the quiet around them.

One strikes discordantly at his qin, and they resume.

Pharaoh

2008-10-22T14:38:00.009-05:00

First the bass, small waves
slapping slapping slapping
at the edge of a melody.
Next men's voices enter
chanting chanting chanting
soft as women walking.
Then the melody comes
dancing dancing dancing
in from the right hand,
and coolness comes
tinkling tinkling tinkling
in a shower of bells.

Then he enters, kofia-crowned
name sake of the ancient god kings,
up from the sacred heart of the Nile
and a talking wind down from heaven,
plucks a river reed and blows
AfricaAfricaAfricaAfricaAfrica,
wailing first man shaman
from darkest Jim Crow Arkansas
mounted by the Creator.
Sounds leap and bound from his horn.
Lions roar and elephants shriek.
Savannah heat rolls over you.

He stands like Kilimanjaro,
snow capped, making his own weather.
He lifts his brass ax and blows
black storms, bright with thunder,
clouds of startled birds wheeling
and calling as the rain turns gentle.
The band is a rolling ocean,
calm or wild as the weather blows
but never still, always rolling,
a rocking lullaby for wanderers.
Reed boats carry Pharaoh’s people
to the land of new pyramids.

This one I'm still working on at the margins, but I thought I'd toss it out here for any reader comments. Remember, this is my working journal.

Revision 3. Thanks for the writers at Splashhall Poetry for their suggestions.

Words

2008-10-09T07:26:00.000-05:00

Words of commerce
come easy, go
into my out box
like automatic writing,
mindless
and efficient
as marching ants.
I count the dollars
and go home
without saying goodnight.

My own words are lost,
hide from daylight
like cockroaches.
Pouring a moonlit glass
of water they appear,
antennae quivering,
sketch frantic patterns
then vanish, tracing
shapes like letters
from a foreign tongue.

Through the window
I glimpse thoughts
formed to words,
pale letters glowing.
I step out, fall in
with a crowd, speechless
and funeral solemn
behind a band.
Street signs march past
faint and unspoken.

The dirge falters
in a confusion
of wrong notes
and stops.
This corner has
no sign. We search
the city of memory
for the lost song.
Looking for a cigarette
I find this pencil.

This poems went through several revisions, prompted in part by the very helpful folks over at Splashhall Poetry. This is the best so far (in my opinion; no comments over at Splashhall yet). There is the last revision before this in the comments.

A Question for Poets Who Blog Visitors

2008-10-02T13:25:00.006-05:00

First, a big thank you to Poets Who Blog for their kind attention.

The question: if you read through this blog a while you will notice that recently there are three types of poems: those represented by the prose pieces like "Three Years August", the shorter-lined and more kinetic (as one reader noted) works like "Fireworks Suddenly", "Vita Brevis" or "Blinded by Sunrise", and a slightly more lyrical tone of poems like "Its After The End of the World", "Survey of 20th Century Poetry".

And a second question: when I come back and read my work here, I think my own efforts to force myself into a line of a fix number of stresses or syllables in a line doesn't work that well. I read them in my head differently than they present on the page, and I think that if I broke up that artificial structure a person casually stumbling in here might hear the poem in their own head more as I hear it in mind.

An example:

First, the current version of a bit of Blinded by Sunrise, stuffed into a syllabic line count

It’s like this: I’ve had just enough of a taste
Of your words that I’m haunted like a man
In love who’s suddenly not sure where
His next drink’s coming from, except
It's not from her. She's up and left.

Then consider:

It’s like this:
I’ve had just enough of a taste Of your words
that I’m haunted like a man In love
who’s suddenly not sure
where His next drink’s coming from, except
It's not from her. She's up and left.

If you have any ideas on that, I would love to hear them

And as the note as the side says, kind words are always welcome and real criticism is hard work but thoughtful critiques are always welcome on this journal.

Thanks for stopping by, and thank you to Writerwoman for the PoetsWhoBlog site and her own kind words that brought you here.

Ekphrasis: The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa

2008-09-14T21:59:00.002-05:00

Hokusai's The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa

Through the lens of imminent disaster Fuji--the looming backdrop of ten thousand sepia prints--is an insignificant bystander. The mountainous water towers over the iconic peak and the doomed boat. The sailor's backs are turned to the crest of threatening fingers, their hands clasped in muscular prayer to the task of rowing. They did not choose the sea. It is the world they were granted by their ancestors, rain on their fields and fish in the sea. The sky is a mirror of the sea, sometimes placid and other times fierce with wind, and where else shall they live except between the sky and the sea, those promising and pitiless fields of blue? They know the tales of typhoon and tsunami, whole villages swallowed by the sea, coasts given over to ghosts. Still, they rise up with the sun and go down to their own boats. When confronted with the Great Wave, there is nothing to do but row.

Another prose piece from Toulouse Street--Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans. If you browse there and search the wave you can see how it has evolved over three different postings. As a resident of New Orleans on the Hurricane Coast, I am constantly drawn back to this picture, and this ekphrasis upon it. If I can get it just right, I may submit this to the Mississippi Riview Ekphrasis issue. Look for revisions as I make them in the comments section, which is how I plan to use this journal in the future: both to publish works close to a finshed form, and to capture the late revisions.

Crabapple Lane

2008-08-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

Happiness is for saps.
You see them paired in matching
polos and shorts,
their fat pink squealing children
on glossy green lawns.

Science we find is wrong.
The universe does not rush into
their vacuous block
to fill the gaping void yawning
in formless boredom.

There is this skulking skunk.
He squats inside my chest
sullen, hungry.
I want to yank him out, toss him
butt first in their yard.

Three Years August

2008-08-21T13:01:00.008-05:00

Three years August and the storms are being named like epic ships, a doom upon our shore, and I think of the levees still leaking and of the flood-walls patched with paper mache, our Potemkin defenses are not ready and we are not ready and the Big One is out there, invisible, a mighty wind, waiting for us. Someone empties a pistol into the night and I think of Jessica and Chanel and Helen and Dinerral as I watch the MPs in their Humvees roll by like armored ghosts. I think of the streets running into blocks running into miles of houses houses houses houses houses empty eyed with plywood doors and ragged lawns. And I think I'll have another drink and light another cigarette and then another drink and then--I stop thinking. That is when this comes into my head. It is a compulsion, like bitting ones nails until they smart and bleed, this thought that what we write may not be our Genesis but an Apocalypse, the history of the end. And yet we stay because to live here is to walk through wrack and ruin counting the flowers in the weeds and discover you are not alone, everywhere there are people smiling, people with crumpled souls and rough stomachs, suffering what you are suffering, worse than you are suffering, suffering beyond your imagining and all for the sake of this place, because they see this city as you do, because they are the figures in the frame that make the landscape. A terrible beauty spills out of their eyes like tears and bathes the city in light.

This is as published 8/17 on my main blog, Toulouse Street--Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, along with a video of David Bowie singing "Five Years". The original post debating a solid block of prose versus a stanza-broken layout is now in the comments. A slight edit to remove the song reference and replace "what we blog" with "what we write".

Fireworks Suddenly

2008-07-20T22:17:00.014-05:00

They come out at night, the flashlight people
combing the tide line, lights swinging wildly
like some Shakespeare clown watch with a bottle.
What do they think to find out in the night
that would not wash up in the glare of day?

Fireworks suddenly burst over the sand
with a bang whoosh snap pop hiss of colors,
burning metallic blossoms in the dark,
leaving a column of smoke, hesitant
then rushing past us like a crowd of ghosts.

A whale, my son turns and says as sudden
as the fireworks. What, I ask? A whale,
that's what might wash up. Let's go down and look.
Blink one flock of lights vanish. Down there some
thing large and dark sings a watery blues.

The flashlight people in Destin, Florida fascinate me. I don't recall them from my trips here as a child, or on the beach in Rehoboth, Delaware.
I wrote the above last night then made this note early this morning, considering the last few things I wrote (this and Bukowski's Blackbird): Imagine that which completes the scene, the mood,the thought. That is the magic. The rest is necessary incidental music and gaffers tape.

Dream No. 14

2008-07-14T14:20:00.038-05:00

After John Berryman

Don’t dare, you, turn that corner.
Too late: look, its already been done.
Some damn fool has creased the page.
That 'Rette Maddox, he knew this poem.
Me, I think he marked this one
his self lazing one day at the library.

Everette spoke this once, an eruption--
sprung up suddenly from a drunken nap,
for no reason except perfection.
At least that’s what I’ve read.
I for one weren't there for that
and can’t ask him since he’s dead.

Dat Mr. Bones: he’d be OK
(for 'Rette's sake) if I bent it again--
good and hard--and left it that way,
made it part of Maddox's posterity
down here, since they keep his poems
all locked up at the downtown library.

I moved the long blog comment into comments below, which explains what this poem is about. I guess if it needs an explanation, that's a problem. Since I mostly write for myself in this journal, perhaps it isn't. Read the poem, and read the long comment, and tell me if I've succeeded in what I was about.

Bukowski's Bluebird

2008-07-03T23:00:00.005-05:00

Not only words in his mouth
but what look like feathers,
clamped tight in his teeth
like an anxious gambler's cigarette.
Cat eyed and smiling at the bar,
he caught beauty perched on a stool
and swallowed it in one bite.
Now odd notes issue from his throat.
His words come out as songs.

This is my answer to the poetry challenge posted by Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers to write something in response to Charles Bukowski's Bluebird.

It's After The End Of The World

2008-06-29T14:47:00.019-05:00

Its after the end of the world.
Don't you know that yet?
-- Sun Ra

The city is still littered with stopped clocks.
Water swollen calendars watch over
kitchens frozen forever in August.
The chapters run backwards: first the flood
and then the journey to the land of Nod.

We are weary of this static landscape,
ruins unrelieved by shepherds or fauns.
Our Plimsoll marks are sunk along the wharves,
the cranes standing derelict and rusted
still waiting for the ark that will not come.

Noah’s begotten, our only ark is
what we make with our own hands, taking scraps
washed up around us, fashioning the new,
with our own arms stretch out the new cubits
on the other side of time and the flood.

We reconvene on saw-dusted porches
smelling of wet paint, swirl the old cocktail
tinkling in new glasses, chilled and dripping.
We watch the rock doves building a new nest,
twigs of fragrant sweet olive in their beaks.

Here in the forever after we live
by secret clocks kept close like scapulars.
We mark new calendars from blank pages
with an old pen rescued from a high shelf,
familiar, untouched by the flood waters.

A significant revision from the first posting.

Revision 3
Poetry Poem New Orleans Flood

Who Tends to Odd Fellows Rest?

2008-05-26T00:24:00.004-05:00

Who placed these bright plastic wreathes
garish on the gray ovens
behind this locked gate, beneath
this wholly blue sky, empty
pitilessly hot, the sun
a burning in the heavens?

Poetry Poem New Orleans Memorial Day cemeteries Odd Fellows Rest

Honeysuckle Nights

2008-05-08T10:10:00.001-05:00

The new planted vine
sure looks straggly next to its
boisterous neighbors,

alone on the end
like the runt of the litter
pushed to the hind teat.

Sweat drips on the roots
as I bury them in mulch
on Spring's first hot day.

Soon honeysuckle
will skitter up the fence like
swarming anole

and I will have stars
even when a cloudy night
obscures the full moon,

wallowing in that
heavenly, confederate
scent of hot June nights.

Poetry Poem New Orleans spring honeysuckle summer

The New Moon

2008-04-20T21:21:00.001-05:00

The new moon, owl eyed and glowering
from a slim bit of cloud obscured sky, while

on the boarded avenue the wild host
ride crotch rockets to the ambrosia stand.
In the park's far, feral end wild dogs howl.

A crone-stick wielding witch taps up my street
with her ugly dog, muttering something
under her breath that I'd rather not hear.

Quick twist up a Bridgette's cross from broom straw
and splash the cat's milk bowl out on the steps.

Poetry Poem New Orleans moon

Not Like a Bear

2008-04-17T17:05:00.011-05:00

In Memorium Ashley Morris

Not like a bear; instead like a mountain
where bears hunt, breed cubs and gorge on honey.

Not like a mountain, cold stone and hard snow,
but like Fuji behind cherry blossoms.

Not something looming in the backround but
the foreground figure that makes the landscape.

Not the place itself: just one more mortal
living in the shadow of the ruins,

kissing the wife and kids goodbye one day
then catching the car to Eleusis Street.

Someone suggested I might read this at an Ashley Morris benefit, and I looked at it again and was not entirely satisfied. Here is a newer version, that I will tuck into my pocket tonight along with a printout of And Death Shall Have No Dominion, should I find myself pushed out on the sgage.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Ashley Morris

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

2008-04-01T21:07:00.004-05:00

Who booms out "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"
on a easy drizzling, azalea studded
Tuesday night in Spring? If lightning
doesn't strike directly, I do believe
I'll have to crack open another beer,
drown out the noise with evanescent fizz.

Poetry Poem New Orleans In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Grandmother Marigolds

2008-04-01T20:18:00.000-05:00

Scatter the grandmother marigold seed
we brought down from North Dakota
over my bones, the boxed-up leftovers
of my exclusive earthly engagement.
Bring my grandchild to see them bloom
in this, the only world we'll ever know.

Poetry Poem New Orleans marigolds North Dakota

Consider the Crocus

2008-03-29T16:50:00.007-05:00

Just one blossom atop
a massed bouquet of naked stalks.
a lone woman lounging
in an Easter hat at the edge
of a crowd waiting for someone to notice.

And one petal already half-fallen
like her hand with a starlet cigarette,
alone in this garden on Maundy Thursday;
an early lily, tiny, moonwhite
a luminous acolyte of the equinox.

How does a southern crocus
know, without snow, when to bloom?
There's some secret to these days
stolen like the feasts of heathen saints
to fill the holes in the Roman calendar.

Somehow the flowers simply know:
at supper tonight I'll balance an egg
(do this in memory of He)
before tomorrow's full moon
tumbles it into a plastic basket.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Easter crocus vernal equinox spring flowers

n.b. revision 5

Fargo

2008-01-22T21:01:00.003-06:00

It's that fence line disappearing in two directions,
once into the drifting snow and then
receding inexorably toward an indistinct horizon
where the exits announce No Services;
not the eponymous city but the true empty west,
far from the film's pine-crowded Minnesota lakes:
the one true thing the Cohen brothers found,
the howling ghost that haunts the soul of Fargo.

Another revision 8-19-08. I think this one's done.

Poetry Poem New Orleans winter Fargo

Red Against Blue

2008-01-15T21:04:00.001-06:00

The small azalea, potted
on my porch, draped
in wilted clippings ripped
from neighbors nearly killed
by that frost insists
on budding, perhaps mourning
the red ribbon removed
on Twelfth Night. Bloom
I whisper and chase
these winter blues away.

Poetry Poem New Orleans winter azalea flowers

Space is the Place

2008-01-13T09:33:00.001-06:00

"The first thing to do
is to consider time
officially as ended.
We work on the other side
of time"
-- Sun Ra

I want to march like Sun-Ra
in glittering alien threads
into an incredulous pool-hall
and declare our intention to embark.

New Orleans, as ruined as the pyramids,
rising up majestic in the air
on howling trombone notes of joy
to launch another crescent in the sky.

The sun will strike us colorblind
once we're beyond the atmosphere.
We'll cast the last debris off over Kansas
and shower them a carnival of stars.

Together like stranded astronauts
who've exhausted the last of our air,
we'll lift off the mask at last
and dare to breath together.

We'll claim our place at last
in the ancient parade of zodiac
where Bayou Andromeda
brushes up against the Milky Way

Poetry Poem New Orleans Sun Ra Space Is the Place

The Abbey, 1984

2008-01-06T21:46:00.002-06:00

A Baudelairean Burlesque

Heroin numb and amphetamine angry
I call for mescal and work down to the worm

The jukebox demoniacally croons in the corner
Baudelairean ballads of sadness and death

The clinking of glasses and echoing laughter
in the chase-light calliope fun house of madness

Chase me down Decatur till I reach Esplanade
to the safety of cold and enveloping dark.

Cold as the toilet lip dripping with vomit
in the whirling dark vortex of six a.m. swooning

I crawl to the kitchen as empty as bottles
that sparkle in the glaring of hangover morning.

Lumpy rank milk and inscrutable leftovers
cannot sate the hunger that gnaws at my belly

The barred door is locked that leads back to the Abbey
so I stumble to bed and collapse in a heap

Poetry Poem New Orleans The Abbey Decatur Street

Vita Brevis

2007-11-16T23:11:00.006-06:00

I hear the singing of the undertow
beneath the crumbling waves.

I watch it greedily leach
away the sand beneath
Fellini's beached monster.

The tide has drowned the beach
between us; the girl too distant,
too innocent to reach from here.

I turn my back on the fantastic
and light another cigarette.

Poetry Poem Fellini La Dolce Vita ars longa, vita brevis Marcello Mastroianni New Orleans

Blinded by Sunrise

2007-06-22T19:43:00.004-05:00

For Everette Maddox

So listen,
it’s not like we ever met
or anything, but
I think we’ve both been
blinded by sunrise
refracted in a bar glass.

It’s like this:
I’ve had just enough of a taste
of your words that I’m haunted
like a man in love
who’s suddenly not sure where
his next drink’s coming from, except--
it’s not from her.
She’s up and left.

The books stores are dry
as Texas on a Sunday
and I can’t even get lucky
with a librarian
dropping your name.

It’s as if every last
book of yours
was drowned in
a Mississippi of bar scotch
and lost.

You being dead and all
I’m sorry
to bother but
if you scare up a copy
of the Songbook
in some street sale box
I might happen to pass by,
I promise I’ll have them
bury me with a bottle
so I can repay the favor.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Katrina Everette Maddox

Revised again 6-29-08 prior to a submission (wish me luck). And revised again 1-3-09, completely breaking the old fixed stress count lines that were getting me nothing, and freeing myself up to change a few things here and there.

The Tsunami of St. Claude Avenue (Version 2)

2007-01-04T03:00:00.000-06:00

It swallowed them whole, then spit them back out
like a snake's breakfast, all unwanted bits
left to bloat and bleach and wash up at last
on the brown avenues in back of town.
Some hung from trees as their grandfathers did,
strange fruit that sprung up from a poisoned soil.

Separate but equal triumphed at last.
Indiscriminate and leveling death
made them one with the matrons of Lakeview
and left the men of St. Charles Avenue
unmasked at last: lords of misrule
over the ruins of a lost kingdom.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Hurricane Katrina

The Tsunami of St. Claude Avenue

2007-01-04T01:59:00.000-06:00

The sudden water took them as they were.
The tsunami of St. Claude Avenue
left them in twisted postures of Pompeii,
gathered beneath the rafters of a shack,
infants clutched to breast, curled up in corners,
breathless at last with no where left to run.

It swallowed them whole, then spit them back out
like a snake's breakfast, all unwanted bits
left to bloat and bleach and wash up at last
on the brown avenues in back of town.
Some hung from trees as their grandfathers did,
strange fruit that sprung up from a poisoned soil.

Separate but equal triumphed at last.
Indiscriminate and leveling death
made them one with the matrons of Lakeview
and left the men of St. Charles Avenue
unmasked at last: lords of misrule
over the ruins of a lost kingdom.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Hurricane Katrina

Bellaire Drive, August 29 2006

2006-12-23T10:11:00.000-06:00

The listing shrimper's skiff cast up at the curb,
athwart the long brown lawn where once
shrimp shells and heads met their end
among brown bottles and spice-stained newspaper:
a reminder in ruin of all that was lost when the lake
drowned the worlds of shrimpers and boilers alike.

From now each steaming shrimp I take from the plate
will carry a bitter taste, be seasoned by this vision
of a life as old and close to the earth as an oak
washed away, the bones of boats and homes
to be carted off at last to some upland dump
where seagulls skirl and whirl far from the water.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Hurricane Katrina

Can't you show me nothing but surrender?

2006-12-13T21:41:00.001-06:00

The ancient morality play, perfected beyond rehearsal, draws the largest crowd around the mummers wagon on a rumpled avenue: puppets and shadow characters built by our grandparents. Paintless and saging facades backstop the stage, ill lit by a gravity-challenged lamp that casts shadows of the rats that worry the wires. Down the block comes dollar-colored motley hoisting its tin crown in the black parade, and the king lays down his carnival crucification comic and calls the loser's camp with congratulations. The news dissolves the audience into waring camps, each tossing empty bottles of Abita or Olde English at one other until a shot rings out and everyone scatters. Blue lights and horses parade down the street announcing Its Over and we retreat into the bars. In the comfortable ashen darkness the Lord Mayor and the Archbishop conspire separately to tear down the cathedral to better resurrect Ranch Lawn Acres. The lucky bicker over the location of the towers they would build in their own image to ring the high ground but the bloody-handed carpenters are all babbling about the taco trucks, and the engineers are all practicing their Spanish in Austin. Beyond distraught, I blow my roll on a bottle of forgot I can't quite finish. I call for a U-boat rescue but settle for a passing White Fleet while dreaming of a long ago Rocket V-8 with a glove box spilling splibs into my lap. Potholes rock me gently to sleep.

Lilacs at the last smell like death.

2006-11-11T17:25:00.001-06:00

Lilacs at the last smell like death.
A slight savor of decay
haunts the brown blossoms.
The taint of fruity rottenness
foretells the coming of summer.

The apple blossoms blow away.
Summer will burnish the fruit
'till thunderstorms knock it down.
Tipsy wasps totter
in August's fallen apples.

Bury me in that warm country.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Katrina

San Francicso Senryu

2006-06-10T13:49:00.000-05:00

San Francisco Senryu

I.

In the Tea Garden.
No single stone or grass stem
placed here in anger.

II.
Majestic temple.
My words lost in the redwoods
mystic murmuring.

III.
Ocean is chaos.
Waves form and give birth to a
perfect sand dollar.

Note: I'd forgotten about these, written at the same time as San Francisco. They were called to mind while wandering the Japanese Festival at the New Orleans Museum of Art today.

Poetry Poem New Orleans San Francicso senryu haiku New Orleans

San Francisco

2006-04-12T20:09:00.000-05:00

The scent of bread,
crabs rolling over boiling in great vats:
the roaring hordes of tourists;
great heaps of wanton flowers
in a riotous profusion of green;
the quiet couples snuggling at the stop
amidst the clattering of the cars, careless of gender;
the strutting street walkers
and stumbling street sleepers;
sweet stench of garbage rotting
in the streets in the morning sun--
the roaring Dionysian glory of The City.

This once was my geography of soul
in another place and time,
a dozen languorous summers in New Orleans.
Decatur Street our own North Beach:
mystical, poetical and drunken,
we lived as we read and gladly
would have died of it.

Worn out, we scattered
like shattered mercury
away from a ruin of dreams.

Now I live in a hard and icy land,
treasure a warm fire
like a Neolithic hunter.
A comfortable bourgeois,
my old dreams tucked away
in collapsing bookcases,
scraps of paper, old photos.

The City stirs old worlds within me.
The almost forgotten gods murmur in their sleep,
wash perfect sea dollars onto the shore,
place mystic stones among the bonsai,
stir familiar forms in rolling fog:
lures for the unwary wanderer.

I lash myself to the mast, and listen.

Poetry Poem New Orleans San Francicso

Prospero's Stars

2006-04-12T20:04:00.000-05:00

I.
Peering into the violet
twilight at high latitude,
amid humming sodium lamps
that wash the city sky clear of stars.
I struggle at seeing, at evening's edge,
faint flashes at the limit of vision.

Beneath this empty starless sky
the cat intently hunts at unseen prey,
disturbs my reverie with antic leaping.
My daughter's pet, they share
the child's facility to see
the dragon in the dragonfly.

II.
'Twilight is the door between worlds.'
Who spoke those words?
I knew this once.
Now all my lore's forgotten,
the incantations hidden in a pile of bills,
among the undone lists of mundane tasks,
the litter of responsibility.

I would rename this dumb cat Caliban,
Declare it's insect prey my Ariel;
would open wide Prospero's book & know,
call up the hidden spirits of this place,
call up the stars and place them where I will.

III.
Our reverie is ended.
Still there are no stars.

The almost silence of suburbia
here at the edge of evening,
dim rumble of trucks in the distance,
is all of island solitude that I shall know--
tranquility on summer's lawn.
Here I'll find wisdom or shall have none;
here learn to fashion magic
out of my own words.

Still there are no stars.
I rise & gather fallen twigs beneath the trees,
carry water to the potted plants;
take one last look around the lowering arc-lit sky,
& go inside.

The cat takes my warm place and glances up,
eyes alive with stars.

Poetry Poem Prospero

Yule

2006-04-11T20:11:00.001-05:00

Among the green trees
brooding over the fresh snow.
Survivors of their season
sparkling with ice,
garlanded with drift,
yhey are the lords
of Yule-tide immortality.

Beneath their needles
another seasons' stirrings
sleep away warm and waiting.
Grind needles
in the palm and taste
the green and bitter broth
of living immortality.

This is their season.
The flowers all fled,
and the birds gone south.
No saw nor an axe
as yet has cut them
to serve our yearning
for seeming immortality.

In holy groves men gathered
when the sun had shriveled
and the moon grown too high,
to offer up their sons so that
the green again might spread
in cyclic immortality.

That time is past
and yet, each solemn season-
beneath a felled tree-
we offer up the babe
to torture and to death
upon a skeleton of wood
in hopes of immortality.

Their tree is barren,
as they are. They know
the cold love of astronomers
for distant lights,
celestial mechanics
and the endless deep:
peering into immortality.

Saints preserve us
from their salvation:
condemned to choir
ever afterwards
with the community of saints
and un-ambitious angels
in servile immortality.

I long to find
a portal to Valhalla,
an endless afternoon
of river and willows,
pines and cool spruce
upon the mountains:
a languid sort of immortality.

I'll build a world of words
and place the portal there.
Until the leaves turn
to dust and bindings crumble.
Perhaps in death my words
would be my immortality.

And at the fire each Yule
they would recount the tales
and sing my songs again--
songs of a living tree
sparkling with ice,
garlanded with drift-
and taste of immortality.

Poetry Poem New Orleans Yule

Fidgety little bits

2006-04-10T16:26:00.001-05:00

Fidgety little bits
at Mass in scratchy
vernal colored garb
disturb the ritual solemnity
with gay abandon.

The monsignor intones
a wandering homily.
I'm not following
a word of it.
I lost the thread
some time ago-
years in fact.

And yet I signed
my own kids up
for the whole program--
catechism and all the sacraments,
just another car trip
like soccer and ballet--
before we knew their names.

This Easter they sit
and do not fight (for once).
One row before me
a toddler waddles
from auntie to grandma,
the length of the pew.
His amble's interrupted
by his dad, with snacks.

The mass drones on and on.
"Be as a little child"
a distant voice insists.
The boy rolls cereal
along the missal ledge
intently as an ant.

There is more wisdom
in a Cheerio--
the perfect circle, the profound void
of the hole at the center,
the innocence of doctrine
that lines them up for leisured eating --
than in a dozen homilies.

I missed the gospel
and the homily,
forgot to stand until
a spousal elbow
interrupted my reverie.

I'd come to church
as angry as a wasp
at some dim bishop's
political cant.

I left as innocent
as a lion-cuddled lamb,
grasping the hands
of my two children

Poetry Poem easter

Easter 2003

2003-03-15T21:41:00.001-06:00

A vaguely disappointing victory.
We'd roared across the desert in tracked chariots
where other armies foundered in the sands.
The enemy had fled or, buried in their bunkers,
saluted us with upthrust fists from under the rubble.

The town reduced to smoldering debris.
The presidential palace, fittingly,
the most majestic pile of all.
The chief enemy--was he here?
Or merely servants buried
in pharaonic obeisance,
caught off guard at mundane tasks
when sudden bombs and rockets
rained from the sky?

The ever present dust
is leavened with cement,
and clings to cracked lips.
Is this the taste of victory,
bitter and metallic? Oily fumes
and wisps of smoke torment the eyes;
a world all monochromes, done
in the palette of soot and grit.

II.
Our armor rolled where Alexander marched,
along the road from Bosporus to Indus
where it crosses Tigris and Euphrates:
ancient site of victory,
mirages of grandeur, and defeat

The dusty earth is salted with the bones of lost armies,
blown by the barren wind among the howling rocks
The desert breeds delusion and defeats all comers.
Alexander, Lawrence & Rommel-
conquerors, colossi, titans all-
they left the desert broken souls,

We came without the burden of grand visions.
Maine Yankees, brown Texans and Nordic Minnesotan's,
we took the measure of this land,
counted up the cost, and said, "we'll take it."
No dreams of conquest clouded our purpose
and so we escaped the fate of would-be Alexanders.

III.
Children and rats skitter through the streets.
Silently they seek for food, parents, their lost voices.
The vermin seem eager, the childrens' stare is vacant.
We share out scraps of chocolate on Easter morning,
waiting for a padre to celebrate the holy day.

The God of their fathers, like the ancient Israelites',
spoke in fire and called for swords and sacrifice,
kin to Abraham, to David, and to Jesus.
Oddly, the God of Peace protected us
and we smote them in their sleep.

Perhaps the holy joes who bless the burial pits
we hew in this hard earth are wrong.
Perhaps all of our fathers' gods have fled this land,
worn out beyond redemption or rebirth, unhallowed and forgotten.
I pass on Easter service, walk out past the ruins,
and stare into the barren land beyond.

###

My poem for Poets Against The War.

Poetry Poem