The End

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Ekphrasis: The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa

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.

Dream No. 14

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

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.

Honeysuckle Nights

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

Fargo

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

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

"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