Sugar
Mule #6
R. P. Dickey
A HUG FOR THE BOSS OF AMERICAN POETRY
Like Crane, Berryman, Sexton and Plath,
She could've committed suicide
But didn't, out of existential faith.
Her hanging on, divinely mad,
Marks down as suicide's loss
What might've been its pride.
We have Roethke, Wilbur, and Frost,
But Dickinson's the boss.
______________________________________
contents
THIS OLD MAN AT SHUFFLEBOARD
I am not this old man at shuffleboard
Across from the library, in the park,
Who looks at Henry, fish-hooked over, (Whack)
And thinks, Not me, I don't look that way
Yet. That's where a man lives, in his back,
Mine's straight as a flagpole. My elbows (Whack)
Both giving me more trouble than my knees.
Don't wear suspenders, don't carry a pocket-watch
Like Elmo, am in fairly good health since (Whack)
I got those polyps cut out. Don't like to look
Too closely at people passing by the court,
Too many remind me of people I used to know.
What happened (Whack) to the way. . .money used to be?
I always used to wonder whatever happened to. . .
So many of them. . .Mary's no dignity's fun, at that.
The band shell, empty stadium, man could break bones,
Two, three men sleeping right on the grass. (Whack)
The library over there--wonder--(Whack, whack)
You can tell those two haven't played
This before, getting tired telling them
The disc has to brought back past (Whack)
That line to start--all those books
Would weight down Atlas if he tried to hold them.
(Whack) Knocked that one into the three.
The sun couldn't get to freckle his shoulders. . .
I've lost on purpose just to get along,
But not all that often. Ground's sandy, not much mud.
(Whack, whack) I am me, not that old, and can beat
Henry, who's pretty good, any day the sun's out,
And need only half the sleep I used to.
Color on that TV don't look like real color anyhow.
They're young, and don't know how to play.
I'm not going to let on. They'll learn.
I used to get letters all the time. My wrists
Are better that they were when I was a kid.
Colors on these lines need repainting. (Whack)
Henry, tight-lipped, has said exactly five words
In the last hour, and I'm matching him word for word.
They'll learn. Man trying to show his boy how.
I am not this old man at shuffleboard.
There's things I won't even tell myself, (Whack)
Across from the library, on this concrete,
At least not young, alone, and in a strange town,
Sound as one of those old Walking Liberty half-dollars.
______________________________________
contents
THE CAVES
In August dog days you might mosey
Along the west end of town, in front
Of Blanton's cross the night (stoop
And pick a terrapin up, set it off the side),
See Tod Johnson coming to town driving
A team of horses, cross the creek, over
The tracks with hot gravel filled in
Between the ties soaked with creosote,
Pocket your harmonica or jew's harp
As you trudge up the hill to the caves
Where John Berry and Frank Perry lived,
John North, Frank South. S. O. Bewley
Called them the Lead River troglodytes.
In summer two tow sacks sewed together
Dropped from the top of the opening,
In winter a slab of sheet iron; inside:
A crude chiaroscuro. They were
Old Indian Caves, side by side, though
Frank's faced South, John's East. John
Was older, always smoked a stogie, and
No one knew enough about him. Frank wore
Bib overalls, smoked a Washington, Mo.,
Corncob pipe and sometimes worked as
A carpenter around town, tight-lipped,
Spartan with nails, swinging a mean,
Efficient hammer.
In the elbow-room
Of their choosing there was usually
A little bootleg rotgut in the corner,
Pots of slumgullion and skillets
For whatever they could come by--
Potatoes, eggs, fat-back, fish,
Wild mushrooms and sassafras tea.
Frank had a cot, John, an old iron bed
On the black dirt and charcoal floor.
Sometimes the caves were visited
By the Old Blue Hen, the local whore,
And her daughter (whom they tried to
Call the Pullet, but it never much stuck).
They'd come up and see Frank, cook a meal,
Talk and what else only the walls of the caves
And the fantasies of boys know.
We'd get
On top of the caves--they were at the top
Of a bluff--and try to hear what was going
On, scooting for a better position, Joe
Blanton stuttering as he whispered, "C-c-an
Y-y-you hear w-w-what they're saying?,"
And me studying a toadstool near my nose,
Not making out a word but sensing
There was some foul doings abroad,
Knowing Frank would break out of there
Any second brandishing a hatchet
Despite the magic in our sneaking.
Later, after both cave-dwellers had died,
We'd go in there where it was lonesome
And dull, actually, smaller than we'd
Imagined or remembered, and once
I found, on a ledge beside an old
Greasy box half-full of nails, bolts,
And copper wire, two Indian-head pennies.
Any number of times before they died,
Maybe coming back down the creek,
Back from gigging bullfrogs, a few sun perch,
And one cottonmouth that wouldn't go away,
We'd look up and see a flicker of light
From one of the caves and feel good.
______________________________________
contents
THE OLD FIELD
Fields all around
On each side of our house,
Behind the house across the street;
And we lived at the Southwest edge
Of Lead River, which surrounded itself
Forever out into infinity with fields.
The field at the left sloped,
Full of clover and meadowlarks;
The one behind, of thickets, thrushes,
Cardinals, finches, even quail.
The one to the right we built
Shanties in, sneaked smokes
And masturbations in. But the Old Field
Lay across the street, and it
Was the best.
Too young to get out
Of town, we'd take off
To the Old Field, no older
Than the others. It did all kinds
Of things--sloped and had holes,
Canyons, mountains, forests and unexplored
Terrain of immense dimensions,
And was three or four lots big.
We played ball there, roasted weiners
And marshmallows overdone, made secret pacts,
Bonds and oaths, rode stick horse
After crooked-shooting enemies on horses
Not as neat as ours, tried out new toy guns.
Dogs would trot to the Old Field
To fight, forage around, sometimes pack up.
(My dog can run faster than your dog.)
It lay open for round-Indian
Or just hiding from somebody mean
Or young enough to be a tag-along.
Its grass in fall and winter
Grew straw-colored or blond and when
It snowed you might see Joe and Richard Blanton
Riding sleds out there or snowballing
Corny Fitzsimmons; or, summers, in
Knee-staining grass knocking fly balls
To one another, taking turns, or seeing
Who could throw the farthest, arguing
About the unfair measurements.
We cooked up some mulligan stew
Out there one night, at least,
Roasted potatoes, didn't get 'em
Done enough.
Before dark,
When leaves were off the tall sycamores
That line the creek which was Lead River,
You could sometimes see the caves
Up on the bluffs, and beyond. We'd act
As if we were in enormous hot-shot caves
Out in the middle of the Old Field.
No one knew where we really were.
______________________________________
contents
GYPSIES
They always came
With the better carnivals;
The women with raven hair,
Dark liquid eyes, olive skin,
Sexy in long dirty satin dresses,
Sterling bracelets adorning their arms,
Turquoise on their forefingers,
Cats-eyes sparkling their little fingers;
The men darker, dirtier maybe,
Tattooed, in tight trousers,
One with a finger off, all
Of them with switch-blades on the hip,
Driving Continentals
Or Cadillacs full of a lot
Of enchanting children,
A shepherd, collie, or
Some exotic dog--
They came telling fortunes
And quarreling with one another,
Loyal as a pride of lions,
The leaders in their necks
Pronounced, distinct as their
Lingo was indecipherable
To entranced kids who yearned
To be wild enough
To take off where
They always seemed to be
At that golden moment.
______________________________________
contents
THE MAPLES
You know the place--
Out on the blacktop toward Bismarck
Just past a small bridge.
The owner's thin, in shirtsleeves
A lot; his wife's fat and getting gray,
Laughs a lot, talks more than he does,
Puts up with a lot, keeps her hair cut short,
Has eight kids, one of them, a boy,
Extremely bright.
Live country music
Every Saturday night, sometimes Fridays,
Somebody semi-imitating Hank Williams'
Long Gone Lonesome Blues, full up
To the gills with self-pity for
Ten bucks a night. (Hazel damn well
Better not catch those two over
In the corner with whiskey under
The table, you can believe that.)
Red Mahurin got shot and killed
Out there one night--Little Ben Tucker
Shot him right in the temple--but
He had it coming to him; the place
Usually is as quiet as Woodlawn Cemetery.
Oh there's a scrape once in a while.
In the fall, shooting matches
Every Sunday afternoon, turkeys
And hams. If Oley Peterson's out
There, or Ray Hargan, look out,
They can shoot.
Log cabin architecture,
A few maples and sycamores around,
Huge gravel driveway.
You know the spot.
Right past the old Weible place.
______________________________________
contents
NICKNAMES
Well, Tee Tom and Tell on him.
From West Hill to East Hill,
Pine Ridge past the Drug Store
To Rivermines and back up to No. 12,
Nicknames did utility--from Cobby,
Cotton, Mouse-ears, Corny, Mushmelon,
Piggy, Mutt, Hound Dog and Tush Hog;
From Squeak, Rip, Nubbins, and Bunchy,
To Fish Hook, Toad, Ass, and Pud;
There was Woman, Birdbrain, Packrat, Bit,
Nagathan, Nanathan, Two-taters and Tosh;
Quailhead, and Humpy, Gumdrop, and Sop,
Butt Cut, Bat Shit, Mud Turtle, and Rump;
And ol'Heart Trouble, Bitter Pill, Preacher,
Rack of Bones, Few Clothes, Wet Blanket,
Police Pup, and ol'Bluts n' Guts,
Willie Lump-Lump, and the Old Blue Hen;
Here comes Deadeye, Alley, Phone Book,
Red Horse, Pigeon, Uptown, and Klonk;
There's Slowboy, Speed Demon, Lowball,
Trace Chain, Cookie Pusher, Popskull and Weep;
Look out for Crooked Daddy, Ropehair
("Whatta ya say, Rope!"), and Wirehair;
Let me tell you about Hangout, Roughnut,
Home Boy, and Down-in-the-Dust;
I'm talkling about Nick Williams
Who saw Tom and went home and told on him.
______________________________________
contents
WILLIE CALVERT
I knew an ol'boy't lived over there.
That ornery sonofagun loved dogs.
Willie, Calvert, same as mine.
I don't know, he didn't come
Around too much. He was some kin.
He wouldn't let nobody
Run over him, except that bunch
Of curs, mongrels, whatever you
Want to call 'em. Funny guy.
Loved to trap. He'd bring
A big gunny sack of 'rats
And coons and beavers, big ones,
And sometimes a mink or two
Into Flat River, all the fat
Cut off of 'em, you know,
And if he couldn't get his price
He'd go out and catch a bus
Over to Farmington and get it,
Come back with his ticket and show
The guy there in Flat River
How much he'd got in Farmington.
Well, he had this little truck patch
Where he raised turnips, onions, corn,
And somebody'd been taking stuff.
If he'd gone down there to watch,
What was he doing on the tracks?
It still don't make good sense to me.
Must've gone to sleep. Couldn't've
Been snuck up on. But you know something?
Before they could get to his body
They had to rock them dogs. Damn sure did.
______________________________________
contents
AT THE GRAVE OF D. H. LAWRENCE
Lawrence Ranch, c. 20 miles
north of Taos, New Mexico
"The essential quality of poetry is that it makes
a new effort of attention and discovers a new
world in the known world."
--D.H.L.
Of words contained in your forms, who has not seen
Them shot down into simplistic "positions"
On this or that journalistic concern,
Or used to psychoanalyze choices
Of your daily and nightly life?
You learned
The name of almost every flower
On your discoverable earth, and you
Liked to do the dishes, including pots
And pans, which you would sometimes smoke across
The room at Frieda when she was trying
To be as holy ghost as you and you felt
She was not authentic in the wingding
Of the moment, fighting like golden eagles,
Who seldom fly together as you two did.
______________________________________
contents
ELEGY
She died and I ran raving into the streets
Of my feelings, where we had often lived
In the winters, summering at her place,
While living in the spring and fall of the grace
Of acquaintances who had stuck, had proved
Friends despite time's divisive accomplishments.
The reserve I initially essayed
Burst in less than one despairing minute
When I first heard that she had turned away
In a final failure to have her love sway
Supreme over this stupid surviving planet
Full of people blasé and unafraid.
O lover, you frighten me by playing dead.
You aren't dead. You couldn't be. If you were--
For God's or some damned bastard cause's sake--
My nerves would lose their motive, my hands quake
Remembering the smooth repose of yours,
My voice break mouthing words your voice once said,
Friends would wait, then suggest proper restraints,
And I would go raving into anarchistic streets.
______________________________________
contents
SWEET CIDER
I touch and pick
A big gallon jug
Of bottled autumn
Up to my lips
(Delectable heft),
Tip its crystal
To take a swig.
A swig's what I want,
Decide to check
Its bouquet, so stop,
Then bring it back
To my open mouth,
Sip,
Rinse, drink.
Swig.
Body.
It's got mucho body.
The bronzy flush
Of its flavor
Over my tongue buds
On my soft palate
Down my throat
Rings as certain
As the chirr
Of a single locust,
Behaves clearly
Like the harvesting
Brilliance of October's
Children, skies, wind,
Ready apple orchards
And all kinds of crops.
Here, take a swig yourself.
______________________________________
contents
SIR FRANCIS BACON
"I call forth Mr. Bacon against Mr. Bacon."
--Essex
Pathetic in the dock,
Devereux was his own defense.
He'd befriended you, sir.
But not, you calculated,
As much as would the Queen
if you rose from your place
And called him Cain, asked
Why he wasn't confessing
His Pisistratean act,
So impotent, so miniature,
Against the august Elizabeth.
'Whoreson Coke is right, certain
Unpleasant things have to be done.'
Of course he'd done it,
But what about the balance?
But you chose to dramatize
For truly glorious Liz the first,
Who was that, and was
A most jealous, vindictive,
Capricious, pedigreed bitch
Shriveling toward the rank
Discourtesy of her unamorous grave.
The absolute rhetoric
Of Essex's ironic reply
Insinuated itself between
You and sleep not as often
As it should, and the few times
It did were fairly divided:
Either after you had kissed
Your wife's cheek or the penis
Of some young page around court
You had arranged to sleep with
In an inn across the Thames
Some relatively lovely night.
His condemnatory line
Delivered, Essex was dead.
And you walked out with friends,
Rode home and wrote some essays
About a new technique
Whose ambivalence, by way
Of its false but faithful friends,
Would mushroom organically
Out upon the changing world
Of honest and chameleonic men
Like a long range, slow motion,
Insidious hydrogen bomb.
______________________________________
contents
ROUGH CUT
The image he'd be
Is round, the whole bit
Enclosed, its bounding
Outline ragged yet precise
As irreducible earth.
Courts unfashion, spits,
Cuts up coarse alleys
To get someplace
Sometimes, and is
At least twenty-nine.
The mails tell him
He's dilatory as hell
About paying bills.
He argues himself
Into loud quarrels.
Delights in the way
A blue-jay leaps
And spends too much
Time considering how
Deftly it leaves a branch.
He'll drink whiskey sours
Reading Aeschylus, then
Go out to verbal combat,
Drive a guy up desperate
For articulate comeback.
Fill in a questionnaire
With obscenities and mail
It in to the wrong office,
Jaywalk against lights
& off the sidewalk on grass.
A bit of what he lives on
Is reverberation
From people's responses
To his perversities,
Obstinate oddball choices.
In an age of smooth Rough
Wears a beard, maybe a cap,
Lets his uncombed hair flap
Down well onto his forehead.
Does other things he won't tell.
His life's more compelling
Than movies or tele-
Vision just in its
Infinite methods
Of skinning the cat it is.
(He's made it with
Levitated above dust
Several women or one
To make her most complete
And him, in pleasant sweat.)
Insists he's far ahead
Of the times, resisting
Repugnant computers
More insidious than
Nefarious you Fu Manchu.
For those who affect
Interest in his work
In polite conversation
He carries, watches them read,
His poem, "A Horse's Derrière."
Listening is truly
Tantamount to answering.
He cuts rough-sided graves
In his thoracic cavity
And plants gladiolas in them.
And in his grave he found
A gas line: the source
Has been discovered:
It's an alley up to
The beginning of the ball.
Pictograms still obtain,
Pal: O's the oldest
Of letters and has remained
On bright sides of sundials
Ringing with changes, unchanged.
A few acquaintances want
Him to change--and he will,
As soon as people in hell
Screaming for Dairy Queens
Get one medium-sized cone apiece.
______________________________________
contents
RUNNING LUCKY
for Tom McAfee
I lack that leisurely felicity
Of actual style which, lovely, flows
In a sensuous continuum of radiance
From the generous temple of beauty
I would worship in all my waking days.
There's no doubt I'm not to presume
I'm one of those naturals who know
An everyday grace of circumstance
In rhythms life gives them, even in trivia.
This quotidian texture I choose to stay in
Is vicious with indifference.
Some zoo-kept exotic snake
Maintains my fierce and lucid hate
And through obvious fangs
Fumes articulate complaint
At what is hard to hold, stains,
Or is sticky. I run with shabby baggage,
A toy for some god that won't grow up.
And yet I feel I'm lucky.
II
My feet are flat but they're there.
And my nose is not roseate with acne.
C.P. or cirrhosis hasn't nailed me yet
To that well-built hardwood cross
On which the stricken and hopeless hang.
I have no continual squint of the eyes
Or tics malicious around my mouth,
No rubber tubes through which I defecate
Or neck in constant neuralgic pain.
I'm humpless and guilty in relative health.
I do have all the classic allergies
But my stool's not midnight blue or worse
And my uncertain hand's not jerky. Yet.
All I cough up when I cough is air.
I'm running lucky.
______________________________________
contents
YEAH
You said you liked
The word mad
Better than insane
I said yeah
You felt what I
Was thinking often
Your fingers touched
My tongue's lick
I kissed your hem
You my cuffs
And we were holy
With each other
We took good trips
To places to which
No false journeys lead
But still I doubted you
The pocket knife
You sneaked in
For me you got
Back in the heart
But all you did
Was wipe it off
On the cool slope
Of your left breast
Slip it clink in
Your purse put your
Jacket back on so
Blood wouldn't show
Yeah that deepening
Furrow of physical
Questioning just
Between your brows
Is the sole thing
Which always stroked
My head and led me
Back to my cell
You stopped I would
Imagine with rage
To chat with officials
On your way out
You loyal causer
Of guilt I'll admit
To existing only
As you see me
A record is kept
Of your kind visits
After many notations
The record books explode
And I shout yeah
Yeah such a way
They say it's like
A hydrophobic dog
But I still love you.
______________________________________
contents
There are ways but the Way is Reason.
Nature is Reason in action.
Nature and Reason and the Way are one
And the same thing, but you are different.
You choose, and you may choose the Way
Or another way, or maybe the Way
Sometimes, either in passionate desire
Or detachment. There's no secret in all this.
Everything in Nature does what it has to do.
But you. You choose. You do what you don't have to do
As long as you choose to stay alive.
Nature was not created; it always was.
You are different, but you can choose the Way.
______________________________________
contents
You can step into the same river
As often as you choose, but not
The same water, if it's river water;
And up and down are not the same.
For up and down have no meaning except
As opposite directions from some point
That's understood. False wisdom is subjective,
Will get you there, because it holds
That there and here are one and the same,
And, hello, you're already here.
If wise, you know that up and down
Are not the same, but words pointing
To directions relative to a given point.
If wise, you teach by your words
And by your actions, and also by whether
They match and how often in which ways.
If wise, you do not apologize for living
For yourself in all your ways,
Even as many of those ways also are for
Certain others, perhaps many others,
To some of whom you may choose to explain
But never apologize for never, but never,
Sacrificing any part of your life, as you choose
To help others and share your life with them.
______________________________________
contents
If you can get past your imaginary inability
To imagine the Universe as always
Having been in existence, if you can stop
Believing that there has to have been a time
When the Universe first started, you're on your way.
I know at least four names
For the Way: the Universe, Nature,
Reason, and Objectivity. Wait, a fifth:
That-With-Which-You-Ought-to-Get-
But-As-a-Free-Creature-You-Don't-Have-To.
The Way is respectful of your chooser nature,
So doesn't insist on your cooperation.
The Way is great,
But not any greater than
You can be if you get with it.
I said, it's great, but actually
It just is; it's greater
Than the word "great" could ever connote.
Its potential and limitations are one and the same:
How far it can go and remain itself.
You are a special part of Nature:
You are a choosing tool user who can choose stupidly,
Hooray for free choice; or, rationally, hooray louder.
If you couldn't choose stupidly, you couldn't choose at all.
______________________________________
contents
If there is an Afterlife,
What will it be like? One easy to wish for?
One of super happiness for me and thee,
One of super suffering for our enemies?
One where I'll come back as a brilliant woman
Philosopher centuries from now way to the West?
Was that ugly toad I just stepped on
And squashed the reincarnated Duke of Huan?
Will it be an abstract Heaven of No Place,
No emotions, no problems--no human life?
The only Afterlife that stands to Reason
(Which, of course, implies justice,
Which implies that you get what you deserve)
Is one exactly the same in every detail
As the one you are choosing now, this life.
Any other would be selective, wishful, irrational.
As I have observed, the ratio in this life
Of those who are passionately vocal and active
For peace, to those who are the same way
For liberty, is about five-thousand to one.
Attend: peace means a state of non-war;
Whereas liberty implies no coercion, no slavery, no war.
May you from time to time consider re-ranking your values
______________________________________
contents
The Way is like a road with signs
Teaching you which way to travel;
But you can go any which way you choose,
Not going by the signs inattentively or willfully,
Or put dung or mud on some of them to confuse others.
Being human, you can choose so many ways
That it can fill you with ridiculous giddiness
If you ever consider deeply how free you really are.
Many of those seemingly infinite ways
Are along the Way, and many are not.
It's a predicament called the human condition.
Or is it a condition called the human predicament?
Whatever you call it, you can get out of it
By choosing not to go on living, if you're that weak.
But please don't do it. Stay curious. Stick around.
Give them a good day whether they deserve it or not.
______________________________________
contents
FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ
Go and read a book
On the stark interior
Behind the foggy blue
To get a scary look.
Animals and animosities.
Intense after imagined
Lithographic introspection
He stares straight at me
In the pained picture I have
Like a self-damned knight
Out the incontestable hell
Of his own armor
Who's met a green one
At every dark corner
In the circles of his heart.
Go and read a man
Mother daughter father son
Pick the words up feel
Them moving all you can.
Humans and luminosities.
One of the guilty ones
Yet nearly, nearly pure
His conscientious year
Had graduated into now
The summer knowledge of words
As things in celebrations
His sword chiseled out from
Fifty-two turns toward release,
And one about a bear's
Become a masterpiece.
Go and read with care
What Gawain slowly carved
Against time and the threats
Of his heavy, heavy bear
Ubiquitous and starved.
______________________________________
contents
MOON POEM
Listen: talk to me. Draw for me, if you will,
Everything you can think of personally
On the moon, documentary or symbolic. I know
Next to nothing, only a few things,
About that yellow cruiser up there.
Look, how that loyal sweetheart seems to hang out--
Evidence that you can't always go
On what your eyes report to your mind.
No, it's not just hanging there but cruising
Along with this our earth, over the Ranchos Church.
Love and the earth are properly synonymous in
Eternal terms, and even in the short term
Often enough for somebody like myself.
Now wouldn't that mean love modulates
About fifty-six thousand miles an hour, and that
Love, like the earth, characteristically moves so
Exquisitely fast that it seems to loaf?
Okay, okay, I've spun far out off the point.
Now tell me what you know about the "harvest" moon
And a "strawberry" moon--things like that, if you will.
______________________________________
contents
ONE MAN IN PUEBLO
A swirling convocation
Of madcap barn swallows
Near the Midway Bookshop
In front of my moving car,
Is not what I live for,
But it's enough, and seems so.
I live to pick up clods of dirt,
Wade in ponds with hefty Angus
Around, or Herefords--maybe
A harmless water snake
Poking his head up a bit,
Making two heads for me to see;
To leave the fire, shiver
In Colorado wind, go back in,
Climb into a cumbersome coat,
Drive out to Baculite Mesa
At four a.m. to spot antelope
As the sun eases up, all cool.
Then to ease back into town, case
Two set of stacks clogging
Bronchiole, retina, soul; provincial
Apathy the avenues of youth.
They clear up a bit in this dry air;
Cemeteries alone are all pure.
I live to see, as Conrad
Used the term; to make connections
For life; to get one seventieth
Of the world that has me in its arms
Down on paper; to look closely,
Argue all the time, never quarrel.
I live to mix with radiance,
To stand near spider-cactus
On a plateau hard to climb up to,
A book on my hip that challenges me,
And catch the Sangre de Cristos
Sixty miles and more away,
Or Zebulon Pike's mountain
To the North, near the Springs,
Dry air crystalline all around,
Snow, pinnacle, puffball clouds,
And the whole bit reflected
In worlds of earth at my feet.
______________________________________
contents
ON THE DEATH OF AUGUST MATTHEWS AT FORTY-SIX
He murdered his liver, so I heard.
Drank too hard; I seldom drink much, so
The day he died, why did I get drunk?
I felt it fittingly absurd.
Where was the opposition with which Gus
Should have befriended himself way back when
His twenties began ending up just
Like his teens in all the essentials?
Gus didn't get it then, nor later.
The meaning of life to him was in
His work, and he worked like a sled dog
To prove there was no meaning to be found--
Which, as any existential fool
Knows, is merely openers. Meaning
Is not to be found in life, but made.
Existence precedes essence, etcetera.
He knew the word "nihilism," but
Mispronounced it. My reasoned hunch
That he did so slyly on purpose
Kept me from correcting him on it.
Once while I drank a light beer he downed
Four double single malt scotches neat.
I said, "You killing yourself?" He laughed.
"Guys like me live to be ninety-two."
(That story may sound a bit too pat,
But I swear it happened, at a bar
On MacDougald in the Village
Across the street from his studio.)
When he ran up against anything
Exemplifying the principle
Of reason, which includes everything
In the universe but human whim,
He'd take off into the wilderness
Of non-oppositional subjectivity
Where two and two equals five or more
And objectivity's out of the picture.
The actual, objective wilderness
Was something he didn't consider
Closely enough to notice that it
Was the opposing friend he needed.
My life, what little he knew of it,
Was a bit bewildering to Gus.
He never once acted curious
About my work, as I did of his.
To pun on his first name one could say
He expressed with gusto his discontent
With the conditions of human life
As he felt them to be and was wrong about.
When he died, the friends he felt he had
Gave their buddy a helluva sendoff:
He was "incredibly supportive,"
They said, of "anything creative."
Picasso's question, "What isn't art?,"
Gus had taken to be rhetorical
Instead of answering with some of
The thises and thats which are not art.
Gus just didn't get it, and hung out
Too much with those who share abstract words
Such as "incredible" and "creative"
But are stingy with accuracy.
The anti-nihilist Nietzsche said
"I am one thing, my writings are another."
Gus Matthews and his friends said that he
And his work were one. Now Gus is dead.
______________________________________
contents
READING
I grab up a book and get with it:
Thumb it open like a freestone peach,
Smell its open cleft, finger its spine,
Heft it for body, solidity, klunk it into my palm,
Flip its leaves, then nose into it hungry as a pup,
Never dogearing its corners as I did when a kid,
Pausing, rereading passages, marking
In the margins agreements, emphases, arguments,
Omissions, lapses, exclamatory epiphanies,
Making my own index in some books
On the extra blank pages in the back,
Throwing one across the contradictory room,
Reading another one aloud, savoring the juice.
Black ink! It's blood, somebody's. I suck it up
Like a vampire under a naked 200-watt bulb,
The pantry jammed with more if I need them.
Unvictimized by the totalitarianism of TV and movies
(Oh I indulge, but less and less these days),
Where the rate of consumption and the exactitude
Of the images are dictated to little-ol'-collective-me,
I'm collaborating with the author on something called Privacy.
Novels! Bibles! Poems! Reference books! Biographies! Trash!
I read too much, sometimes even when driving, trying
To lease out enough art from self-oppositional authors
To help me quit reading so much. Pray for me.
______________________________________
contents
SANTO DOMINGO CORN DANCE
for Frank Waters and Larry Littlebird
Each beat of the drum's a round drop of rain,
The stamping of the dancers' feet is rain,
Their heartbeats and breathing resound as rain,
The fringes on the men's moccasins are rain,
Their feathers are iridescent sheets of rain,
The toes of the barefooted females are rain,
The women's hair runs thick with black streams of rain,
The billions of motes of dust underfoot are rain,
The chunks of turquoise a lighter shade of rain
Than each needle in hundreds of evergreen sprigs,
The links and clasps and rings of silver are rain,
The ghostly Koshares' antic movements are rain,
Even the billions of beams from the sun become rain,
And then the actual rain, onto the earth,
For the corn, O always the actual rain,
There it comes, then it comes, and it comes.
______________________________________
contents
HOMAGE TO JOHN NEIHARDT
Running Wolf said
To his friend John,
"Ain't it hell,
You hug your buddy
In a foxhole, come back home,
Can't eat with him
In hotel or restaurant,
So you buy some cheese
And crackers and eat it
In the lumberyard. Hell."
John said to a Chinese
In the Neihardt room
At the University library,
"Maybe some day we can stop
Fighting and get to know
Each other's great men,"
And that Chinese took
Both his hands in his own and wept.
II
His poodle, Jacquot,
And Lassie, a short-haired collie,
Bark innocuously in welcome
As you drive in to Skyrim farm.
His late wife Mona's bust of him
Dominates the living room--they say
He's talked to her in seances since
She died, had held hands after other lovers
Leave off such visible signs.
This beautiful man, nearly a midget,
Has more spring in his step than a pup.
"Come in, come in," then suddenly
He answers the phone, hangs up
Soon, saying, "Fellow wasn't talking up."
He leans forward from the edge
Of his chair to inquire where
Your companion is from, what she likes;
His unaffected interest disconcerts
You with genuine joy,
His simple asking face magnificently craggy.
He'll elbow you in the ribs
With enthusiasm if you're close enough.
He autographs Cycle of the West.
You walk outside, around the house:
He talks to the grass and it answers,
Small talk, about the brilliant day.
You get to the barn: American Saddle Horses
Come up gently with soft noses
("They'll nip once in a while!")
For kisses and conversation from him.
Royal Bourbon, the great stud,
Stands arrogant and excellent of flesh,
As the drone of motorcycles comes in
From the track half a mile away.
He says the horses tickle him "deep"
As we walk back into the house.
III
"1912. That's when it all began. Harriet
Monroe--we feuded, you know--and me both.
I started my Cycle then. 1912.
I was thirty-one--quite a while back!"
Suddenly you ask him if he ever met Frost.
"I kissed him!" he says, and tells
The anecdote: a long-winded bore introduced
Him to introduce Frost and give him a medal
Which he did--French fashion, to let laughter
Release the oppression of a wordy fool.
Then tells another. And some more.
Jacquot, almost as lively as her master
Begs caresses, while Lassie, old and mellow
And quiet, does essentially the same.
We look at and finger Ogalala headdresses,
Bead and knives, then he gets out
An oversized photograph of Ben Black Elk
And tells of the day he and Ben climbed
So long and so high just to look
At a herd of wild horses but
The instant they got to the top
Where they could look the herd took off
In a cloud of dust, and he laughed.
We excuse ourselves, and go.
And we drive back into town as
You quote as nearly as you can
How he got the name Flaming Rainbow,
What Black Elk said to his son,
Ben: "This world is like
A garden. Over this garden
Go his words like rain,
And where they fall they leave it
A little greener. And after
His words have passed, the memory of them
Will stand long in the west
Like a flaming rainbow."
______________________________________
contents
WHICH SEEMS TO LIE BEFORE US
I got up early
One morning
Walked outside
And somebody shot me
With a 30.06,
.357 Magnum
Or something,
Pretty serious graze.
At the hospital
They asked me
A lot of questions
And filled out this
Chart and then
Looked at my head.
By that time it
Had healed, I told them
Just before I passed out.
In my room the nurses
Came and went
Oblivious
Of my accident,
So I checked myself out
After one day
To get butcher-knifed
In the left buttock
By a maniac late
Of State Hospital No. 1 who thought
I was another guy,
Only eight stitches.
Later, during a flood
I was seized by six
gangsters, doped,
And had my kneecaps
Busted into powdery
Pieces, never to walk
Again, but I can still
Talk, and I'm telling
You I just read a book
Which says I'm responsible
For everything I've
Ever done, including
Having been born, just
Because I haven't chosen
To commit suicide, which
Profound as it is leaves
Out two cardinal facts:
One, I committed suicide
Several years ago, and
Two, I promise I can prove
It if you'll come and visit me
No later than last January.
______________________________________
contents
A LETTER TO E.D.
Dear Em, I owe you one.
You keep on
Quietly talking
Whispering to me
In distinct leaps
Out of innocence
Into omnificent
Candlelight
Illuminating
Caves existing
Across our so-
Phisticated distances; I
Keep all your letters.
From all
The severity
Of your choices
Around the house
Of the treasurer
In Amherst
Your voice comes
Into my room
All our rooms
Like quiet light-
Ning, with
The voluptuous accuracy
Of all your attitudes.
And your lone
Select poverty
Of travel laps
Over the miles
Geographically,
Teaches me liberty,
And makes in time
Our chosen shadows
More precisely
Delimited areas
Of the landscape
In which we figure
And try to stay strong.
______________________________________
contents
NARCISSUS: A HORROR POEM
There was time when I desired myself
To be two bodies so both could be loved
By the other in a rapture of flesh,
Flesh formed from the oneness of my wholeness
Into the duality, the devil
Of twoness I always felt within me.
I yearned for the impossible parting,
Tried all charms, all magic, to halve myself.
A studied indifference to Echo
And I knew Nemesis would condemn me
To mistaking my image for a nymph.
All this as I planned it--my subtlety
Arose from the intensity, the sweet
Passionate need I had to be alone
And contemplate the beauty of my sex.
The image in the mirroring water
I knew was not the nymph I feigned to see.
The thorough purity of surfaces!
And now I am doomed--happy irony--
By creation to look upon myself
In all my sullen nakedness and pride.
What god could ever conceive the desires,
The waves of sensual feeling in me
That are their own objects of completion?
My old hunger for having two bodies
Now seems to have been a velleity.
I taste the true oestrum of love itself:
All this immense concentration of lust
Satisfied by not being satisfied.
I am the melody of a self-played lyre.
This is the time I gaze upon my thighs
And tremble to kiss their conjunctive flesh,
And gloat that I never shall, no one shall.
Knowledge of this feeling possesses me.
My own soul is a self-consuming fire.
I am the perfect consummation of desire.
______________________________________
contents
VATES ET SOCIETAS
for John Knoepfle and David Ignatow
The poet's in a storm
Or is it a kind of calm
At sea but you can hear
Him hollering you can
Even hear his self-assuring
Whispers of faith if
You listen closely to the wind
At his best he'll not preach
As he walks on the waves
But sneaking just underneath
His unpedagogic pose he
Exhorts you to rescue your
Attention from insidious lures
Against what you should be up to
He is the acknowledged
Loser of an eminent place
In the front row of those
Closest the fire and he
Has been patriarch, clown,
Adolescent, madman, king,
And been called everything
Tom Peacock called him
A semibarbarian loose
In a civilized society
And swellhead Shelley
Put on his clothes
Knocked Peacock down
With his "Defence"
And protested too much
Methinks on legislators
Without the dignity
Of bylines to their statues
What kind of throne does
Percy Shelley now
Crouch behind? Perhaps only
The chair of poetry
And today such furniture
Sits close to the academy
Where it gets fingered
A good bit and often
Too overrefined or sat on
Too heavily by criticism
The truly religious
Invocation of the Muse
For a potion
Of exaltation and horror
Stirred up by her
Presence: the function
As spake by Robert Graves
A warning to keep
In harmony with other
Living things has now
Become a lamentation
That we have not kept
That harmony, have
Disregarded the warning
Employment agencies
Have no listings
For magicians
As Karl Shapiro found
The poet to be in essence
Talking with Lawrence
In the mythical robes of God
II
Devotedly antisocial
The poet loves society
For allowing him to be
But is always against it
At any given or taken time
So it can survive
Its lapses from toughness
He sees things
And tries to say things
But cannot conjure up
A beef pot pie, hot dog
Or ham on pumpernickel
So drives a taxi
In Toledo or teaches school
He keeps saying things
Are important and wants
To raise his hell and yours
Into passion and laughter
To slow you down
So you can see the beauty
Of who you are walking on
He'll perfect exquisitely
A craft maybe to set
A book with characters
Leaping higher than Braille
To convince the sophisticate
Of his highly necessary
Primitive simplicity
He wants to vote for a candidate
Or to abolish the office itself.
And likes the notion
Of loyal opposition
As an ideal but knows
Immortally
The perils of its cargo
How, friends, it can shift
Its precious weight to one
Or the other sides
Of the oxymoron, the one
Who rides the waves with it
The shift too often
In favor of the loyal
The opposition all
Too often jettisoned
And logs of rationalizations
Record what watered-down thing
Remains for the owners
To read at their pleasure
In efficient offices away
From the uncivilized sea
______________________________________
contents
AH SO
We stand before the secret of the world,
there where Being passes into Appearance
and Unity into Variety.
--Emerson
My visionary neighbor
In the country
Of the mindbody
Continnuum,
Tells me that
All is One,
No distinctions.
And I feel content
With that
On one level;
But I notice
That when he sits
He chooses the floor
Over the ceiling.
______________________________________
contents
NAOMI VALENTINE JACKSON DICKEY
My mother lives in a world
Of magic: repeated familiar words
Are the efficacious incantations
That keep unbearable reality
Away from her doorstep--
Although she notices the beast
Gets into the doings
Of her neighbors often enough.
She's the widow up the street.
She knows what's going on,
She says; it's just that she
Won't have anything to do
With that kind of thing.
Her neighbors live in the world
Of magic she lives in, so they
More or less feel the same way
About reality, including that bit
To which even they themselves are host.
Since I've grown down and live
Under most make-believe (or do I?),
My mother's remaining affectations
Have less and less to do
With me, a real rough-to-get-along-with
Stranger she can hardly bear,
Whose world she does away with
With words her friends
Find handy and understand.
______________________________________
contents
THE HEAVEN OF ANIMALS
--for that other Dickey, James
My white New York house cat Ahmenhotep
Graces the linoleum in the kitchen
And the wooden floor in my study, sneaks
Up on me all the time unintentionally,
His tread so gentle he can't help it.
"My" cat? Rather, that cat, the individual
I almost named Geoffrey, then figured
That wouldn't be so smart, after Chaucer.
Ahmenhotep's not his name to him;
He answers to the rumble of can opener,
Clink of spoon against saucer, and such names.
He's not even called my cat around here,
But my son Rain Dancer's, and is not his.
Ahmen's nobody's but Ahmen's own body's,
A scamp ever since his mammy, Rain's mom,
Nursed him with an eyedropper full of milk.
His feline bones know full well now outstrips
Anything imaginable. Ah, his
Eternity's the same kind as mine and yours,
But his is his, we're in it, and it leaps
Over bounds into laps all over the world,
Because he doesn't know he's going to die,
Each move he makes takes on a fifth dimension
As he graces linoleum, wood, chenille,
Taking on eternity, making it,
Because he feels he's not going to die.
Hey, he's landed on Rain Dancer's bed, curled
Up like an ermine at his buddy's feet
And lapsed into a nap that will never end
In eternity even as he wakes
With sleepyseeds in his eyes, yawns, eats, plays.
Or take the sand some one-hump camel treads
East of Gaza, dustdevils buffeting
The rhythm of his stoic gait--that messy sand
Is better than Blake's infinities or anything
Even Rain could conjure up if he held one grain
In the palm of his hand and fantasized forever.
______________________________________
contents
EDDIE PASSION
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?
--Roethke,
"In A Dark Time"
I knew a man, Passion was his name,
His medical discharge papers read:
Private Edward Michael Bonetti,
But papers always get something wrong.
He had his private side all right,
But Passion was his middle name,
His first, and, improvisationally, his last,
Although most people called him Eddie,
And a few called him Bonzo.
(The clown
Is that member of the community
Who knows both sides of every story
But nobody will listen to him unless
He's acting funny.)
As a boy Eddie Passion
Played among the rocks of Savin Hill.
Thirty years later in a poem he asked,
"Am I alone among the rocks
Fevered with a madness
On the highest point of the city?"
And later in another poem:
". . .thirty
Years of coming back home
And you can still remember and
You have not yet won the world."
The Savin Hill Kid had his way with words,
Making love with them voluptuously
Like an old Neapolitian bootmaker
Full of usually self-contained rage
At all the bad boots he sees around town.
Eddie liked Willie Pep a lot more
Than he did Teddy Ballgame, and fought
For over forty years after his discharge
Anxiety and dread until he was punchy
From not showing it about half the time
And sublimating some of it into his stories
And poems wild and patient simultaneously
Coming right at you with gutsy nobility.
Was his passion madness? Who am I to say?
(Eddie, I hardly knew ye.) Do three things,
Stranger, to find out about Eddie Passion:
Fake a heart attack and fall out flat on the floor,
As he loved to do; read his poems and stories;
And ask his friends about him, ask Lee Driscoll,
Norman Mailer, Dave Grandel, Jimmy Rizz, Pauline Smith,
And listen a long time to all they say.
They knew him better than I ever did.
______________________________________
contents
DRUNK ON A GREYHOUND
Yeah why not. I'll take a sip.
You're people, I'm people--
So let's get drunk like people!
That's about all we need to know.
Brother, if you know anything
You know more that I know.
They don't pay you for the things I know.
What the hell are you writing?
You're not gonna tell on me, are you!
No, this is something else.
I can just barely write my own name.
Don't know what it is half the time.
What kind of work are you up to?
I work for some unquestionable bastards
I don't even like--but don't tell them that.
Beam puts up some potable nectar.
You're making me what I am!
Don't do it! Go ahead, drink up.
This bus's cold: heater must've conked out.
Everything's happening
Just like I knew it would.
Thanks. Where you headed?
They probably should've
Left me back there.
You mean you meant to get off back there?
I'll tell you one thing--for sure:
All this'll be changed tomorrow.
How'd you know I needed a drink?
I could cause that driver
To turn around and look back here.
You getting off at Albuquerque?
But I don't want him
To turn this whole damn bus over.
Are you psychic or something?
Hell, no! I just want to get out
Of this sonofabitch alive, that's all.
______________________________________
contents
DELNO MIREN DICKEY (1909-1982), R.I.P.
I have just found my way home
From my father's lonely funeral,
And doubt if I ever knew who he was.
Who was that in that chilly casket?
I wandered in and out of other rooms--
Could bodies, like babies, get switched?
Past nephews I walked steadily outside
For Wild Turkey in a friend's Chevrolet,
Then back inside for another look.
There lay a cold body shrunken
From months of nurses and nightmares
To unfamiliar dimensions, a lamb.
It was Willy Loman lying there.
Delno Dickey had disappeared
Into the ways I remember him. . .
Ate too fast for seventy-three years,
Potatoes and meat, wolfed it all down,
Even Beluga caviar I brought him once.
Everything except ice cream. . .
I find myself more like him every decade,
And hope I never forget how
Slowly, even daintily, he ate ice cream.
______________________________________
contents
DEAD PEOPLE
All most of them do is talk about
How much they wish they were alive.
They never say it exactly that way.
Just complain about discrimination:
How living people get to do
All the many things they don't.
No matter what they may start
Talking about, they always get around
To that. Sometimes I try to understand,
But most of them are common liars;
They leave out significant details.
And they can't take a joke, gravity
Having put them down as low as it can.
______________________________________
contents
CONFESSION
My name is R. P. Dickey.
I struck a man and in my guilt
Twisted a tourniquet on my right bicep,
Hacked skin, tendon, and gristle
At the wrist of my felon hand,
Which I took in my left as a gift
During hospital visiting hours
To the room where my victim lay
Among his contusions and fractured jaw
Peering out from puffy livid eyes.
Speechless, I apologized, whereupon
He calmly secured the bloody hand
Back onto the stump with a forgiveness
Which sent me down the elevator
And out into the parking lot
Forgetting where my car was parked,
Forgetting whether I had a car,
Forgetting what my name had been.
______________________________________
contents
THE DAY AFTER ELVIS DIED
I don't recall where I chose to be
The day Elvis Presley brought the farm;
But the next day he called me and said,
"This is Elvis from the other side."
He sounded like himself except
He talked so slowly it was almost unreal.
"I have all the time in the world, so
Don't miss what I'm about to say if
You can. Know what I'm sayin', Dude?
"I'm a dude, you're a dude, we're both
Just escaped from the city, bunking here
At the rancho where we each know it's at,
"But neither one of us knows how
To get with it all the way clear through;
But now I know--at least this déjà vû--
"That the life you're choosing now's the Way
Your eternity's gonna be in all
Details except for the upper case 'W.'
"I was sort of a Baptist cowboy,
But not a real one, and I dressed funny.
And I'm the same dude in eternity.
"It's absolutely great. Just the same,
In every little stroke. I love it.
It's pure damn sure the life I've chosen."
I asked him if he were telling me
That after we die in this life
We get this life all over again.
"Exactly," he said, slower than late July
In Tupelo. "And that's a good deal, Dude.
It may sound bad at first, before you think."
The phone clicked dead. I couldn't figure it
Out for a while, everything he said,
Everything you do, you do eternally.
So whatever you do, do it well.
______________________________________
contents
DAY OF THE TWO EAGLES
for Lee, after whom
I named one of them
The drive from Taos to Santa Fe's Sam's Club
Is National Geographic in your face
Until you and the Rio Grande swing out
Of the canyon just before Velarde.
After that you don't really need anyone
Along to read "Hawk Roosting" by Ted Hughes
Or any other poem from whatever road book
You've brought for that lull toward Espanola,
Because on this particular trip, just
About half a mile past Pilar in that tree
Dead except for a lone fisher with a head
White as the cotton cap of Taos Mountain
In February--the earth so magnificently
Raw anyhow, you didn't need an eagle--
But zoom there it stood on a limb perfected
By reason for its talons, out for trout.
You figured it was the same one you'd seen
Exactly on that limb three winters before
When fat flakes had fallen slowly as you passed,
But this time you braked and whispered, "Oh look,"
As if its ears were as sensitive as
It's unimaginable eyes, which hold
In simultaneous focus each point
In its field of vision. You can hold one
Only, and groped the gear shift into neutral,
Your inferior eyes holding the raptor
For two more seconds before it winged off
South as your companion said, "Look," and you
Eased back onto the road and followed it
As it followed the river two hundred
Natural yards before it alighted
In a tree where another eagle waited.
You stopped again and watched without words
The two of them body-talking together
For five minutes, then drove away with them
In your shoulders and toes and adequate eyes.
______________________________________
contents
TO THE READER
......
......I am talking
To the person who's curious
......In general, who wonders
About his own attitudes and mine
......Ideally
To the person who chooses
......Liberty like a lover
Refusing to grow too fast
......Whose sense of humor
Goes on past ha to irony
......Which mitigates
The ah of profligate solemnity
......Who'd just as soon
Forgive a friend as look at him
......Won't take nothing,
So will take something, from others
......Who places the body
Of his accumulated choosing
......On the scales
Whose precision arrows one's fortune
......I am talking
To the person who takes time
......Who is listening closely
And beginning to talk back.
______________________________________
contents
BUCKING HAY
I can figure out old Ernesto Romero
Any way I say, but there he goes in the flesh
In his alfalfa field not bitter at all
As he and a couple of younger primos
Buck that hay.
Days before on his reaper
He cut the stuff freshly and made the air
Sweet all around and out onto the stretch
Of road that winds dustily along his field.
I've bucked a little hay, worked one whole day
At apple picking, and cut a few shrubs
On Ed Curlee's hardscrabble terrain
Back in Missouri when I was a kid
For a few hours before I quit, too much
Like work, I thought then.
Now I buck words
And they buck back and I pick at them,
Cutting out the ones the work doesn't need.
Those alfalfa plants wanted to go on
In their natural going, but Ernie cut them down.
One row following another, and got help
In containing the nutritious stuff in bales,
Like poems, heavy but light enough of heft
To lift with a two-hand grab and thigh assist
Up into the truck to haul them to be stacked,
Bleached, and eaten by creatures I like to eat.
I don't know Mister Romero personally,
And he may be bitter, for all I know--
Hey, some pilgrims who work hard and get to feel
The heft of the fruit of their work in their hands
Are, strangely enough, bitter; but I like
To imagine him happy, part of the rhythm
Of what creatures need to give and to thrive,
Bundling up some things in order to pass them on.
©1999 Robert Preston Dickey
|