I’ve never read any Kerouac. There’s a short section of this poem dubbed into a song I’ve known since forever:
…America and Steel civilization rushing by with San
Francisco Chronicles and green Call-Bulletins not even enough
time to be disdainful, they’ve got to catch 130, 132, 134, 136 all
the way up to 146 till the time of evening supper in homes of the
railroad earth when high in the sky the magic stars ride above
the following hotshot freight trains–it’s all in California, it’s all a
sea…
Wait a little for it, but listen until you get there. It really isn’t all that bad:
I rode down to the tracks Thinking they might sing to me But they just stared back Broken, trainless, and black as night Climbed out on to my roof So I’d be a poet in the night Beat the walls off my room I saw the big room that is this life
This is my condition: Naked and hysterical Reaching to grab a hand that I just slapped back at This is my condition: Desperate, alone, without an excuse I try to explain Christ, what’s the use?
Read and I felt so small Some words keep speaking when you close the book Drank and just about smiled Then I remembered us in that bed Put my ear to the door I just heard hot rods and gunshots and sirens People kill me these days There’s keys in their eyes but they locked from the inside
This is my condition: Naked and hysterical Reaching to grab a hand that I just slapped back at This is my condition: Desperate, alone, without an excuse I try to explain Christ, what’s the use?
I’ve always had a hard time writing to a specific theme. I could come home from a hockey game and write a better poem about baseball than hockey. All of this to say that I don’t think I have a specific Mother’s Day poem in the archives. I do have this, written in 2012, when the kids were still 1 and 3 years old. I was only just starting to get good at this dadding business, and their mother’s work travels left them very much longing, and I with my hands very full. I was still working full time then as well, so it was a whirlwind. We celebrated her returns:
The Countermeasure
Mama’s coming home today!
In anticipation, the pancakes fly
From the children’s plates
To the dog, through the sky.
Mama’s coming home today!
The sun makes noise to celebrate!
In obeisance, the butler rises
To quiet the household’s gears
With oils, and compromises.
The sun makes noise to celebrate!
Mama’s coming home today!
In preparation, a runner’s sent
To deliver the angels’ praise
For surviving, and keeping up the rent.
Mama’s coming home today!
………
She hasn’t traveled for months now, and that is what we celebrate. Here’s to a world waking itself up to travel, and a love that never leaves home.
“Having lost her bearings, completely demoralized, Rebeca began eating earth again.”
– Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude
I am not demoralized, nor am I eating earth. Yet. I am only digging it and moving it, feeling sometimes armed not so much with a shovel as with one of poor Prufrock’s coffee spoons. But all the while feeling fine, if occasionally wondering what the dirt tasted like.
I was up earlier than normal, but had a hard time getting started. Something in my head made me write this line down:
The only place I put my trust
is in things already returned to dust.
I’m not sure what to talk about today. I’m a little tired of my usual shtick, analyzing press releases and pretending to know better. To know anything.
I’m still digging, of course. And because there’s an analogue to every action, it could be said that I am literally flattening the curve:
May 5May 6
As i move downhill (left in the picture) there is less and less to dig. I should be finished this afternoon. I’ll order my 5 yards of gravel for the base today, then finalize my measurements and order the sand, pavers, and wall blocks. I’m borrowing a plate compacter from a friend, and won’t have it until Monday, so no rush. Wire for the lights is already coming, but this particular household’s Committee of Ornamental Lighting Solutions has not yet met over the choice of the lights themselves. I suppose you could say that the project is being accomplished with a phased approach, with input from a diverse group of (two, sometimes conflicting) voices, and based upon an ever-shifting influx of data. In buckets.
Ok, I decided that the best thing I could do for myself this morning was to turn away for a moment and put together a one donut poem. It’s my first poem in weeks months, and the right kind of excavation for my compacted soul.:
Honest
The easy part is the digging –
the placid silence of the spade slipping
sometimes surgically into earth –
the dirt itself gives a sexual sigh
as it welcomes the stone-honed steel
of the shovel between its sacred grains.
The easy part is the digging –
the straight-grained shaft of the handle
sometimes rung by a rock that sends
a shivering quiver into bone after bone
and out the crown of a skull that empties
toward divinity with every chuck and throw.
The easy part is the digging –
the brute sinking of shovel into soil
and the blessed singing of sinew –
the timeless rhythm that never lies
as it separates element from sentiment
and turns movement into monument.
The only place I put my trust
is in things already gone to dust.
I don’t usually give myself over to tricks like extended alliteration, but masterwork was not the goal here. The one donut poems are purges, cathartics. Semicolons of the morning, clearing the way for a fresh, independent clause.
………
The boy just came down – his light bounce on the stairs giving away his good mood before he was halfway here. I knew something was coming. It was. It did:
“Dad. I had the best dream ever last night. Quarantine was over, the day before summer vacation, and we could visit other people’s houses. We visited an animal shelter and we got an Abyssinian, and it was so happy, and it had no problem jumping up into our laps. It held onto your computer cord and said ‘gimme the treats.’ And there was a lot more.”
Now he’s reading:
We’ve been looking at a Cat Encyclopedia in our very casual run-up to pet ownership, hence the specificity of the Abyssinian. It’s the first one in the book.
………
Your Homeless in Coronafornia” update for today:
As vibrant as ever
I thought maybe that was sarcasm, but his mood was light in the rest of the conversation. He’s generally a pretty positive person. It can be uplifting.
Let us say that only Everest for the mountains
and the Sequoia for the trees
and the blue whale for the animals
(and if we must split land and sea
then it’s the elephant for me)
can be what we call giant.
I have seen the giant pacific octopus
and wished that it were bigger.
The last thing I ever want to do is the thing that everyone else is doing. For the purpose of this entry, that thing is playing the victim. Claiming specialness. I am not special. I am not a victim. But I am willing to observe, politely and mildly, that there is a bit of an extant sentiment in society that is, shall we say, ever-so-slightly in opposition to men. There’s lots of things we’re not supposed to be, depending on who you ask. But it’s all the same thing in the end, really. The thing we’re not supposed to be, is us.
So what. My entire childhood and adolescence were based on doing exactly what I wasn’t supposed to do. Big deal. Still, here I am: one of these men – at least in terms of biology and mentality – that we don’t seem to want much of. I write occasional poems in support of others like me because after three years in college, I learned more than anything that the most important thing to do is to celebrate and support with the greatest fervor those things that are the most like ourselves. The liberal arts world in college is a world based on the elevation of things of your own kind, and denigration of things outside of your own cultural circle. And also tolerance. Do what you will with that little contradiction.
I am aware of what kind of man I am. I only very occasionally build things, but I have an embarrassingly impressive array of tools. That kind of cliché. I fold laundry more than I hammer steel, I wash dishes more than I turn wrenches. My hands are not hard or large. I am tall but not imposing, and I am (he meekly admits) terrified of confrontations. My God, I think back over all of the fights I have craftily avoided in my life and I am not proud. But it’s still in there, that core thing, that masculinity that is called toxic nowadays. I know our need of it, and bristle at the mockery directed its way.
I am not here to argue against that. It strikes me as hypocritical in some ways. The masculinity I own and revere does not raise its voice to protest. It works and produces and creates and lets that action speak for it. It follows the cardinal rule of the writer in that it does not tell – it shows. I am here not to complain but to be a fan. To write up my support for the hard things that we are, and for the shittily unrefinable parts of our nature that I would not run from a fight to preserve.
Having said that:
GO AHEAD
Be dirty and don’t hide
your large hands that could
split timber.
They flip thin pages, too,
rattle pans and
feed their fighting heirs.
GO AHEAD
Be mean and lift the heavy thing
and don’t mind making a little
show of it.
Your beambroad back
can bear it and
won’t tremble in the least
GO AHEAD
Be hard, clumsy and cruel
and let the sneer of the timid
mock itself.
You hardly can part
from that look that
feeds you its forsaken strength
GO AHEAD
Be bare-knuckled and nude
because we need most what
no one wants.
The world knows and
keeps a place
for the things we expel.
Independence Day
Grandpa, Grandma, can we talk to you
about our mom and dad?
I don’t know quite what’s going on
but things are getting bad.
Dad’s been crying at the news
and his voice is higher pitched.
His jeans get tighter all the time
and there’s a limpness in his wrist.
Meanwhile, mom’s been swearing more
and wearing suits to her new job.
She hasn’t fixed her hair in months
and on weekends she’s a slob.
Dad’s afraid of everything –
plastic straws and – what’s a Russian bot?
Last week was Independence Day,
and he said he “just forgot.”
Mom hasn’t cooked a single meal
since she went marching in D.C.
And now our yard has all these signs
that say “welcome refugees.”
Dad almost asked if it was right
but she wouldn’t let him speak
so he’s been getting craft beer growler fills
every day for two straight weeks.
We don’t know what to do right now
We’re prolly just too young.
But maybe you’ve got some idea
of what’s been going on.
Granddaughter you’re a clever girl
and grandson you’re no fool.
So we’ll tell you something here and now
that you’ll never learn in school.
You’re noticing about your folks
that something’s kinda wrong.
It’s not just them – it’s everywhere.
We’ve been watching all along.
If it’s hard these days with mom and dad,
to know just which is which
You may not have the words for it,
But your dad’s your mommy’s–
You’re right, grandpa, school’s no help
our teachers are all so strange.
They say two-plus-two and Judy Blume
both equal climate change.
They took us out of class one day
to line up on main street
with signs that said the world would end
from the President’s next tweet.
I just want to build some things,
and when sister tries to sew
they swear that STEM’s the thing for her
and I’m privi- toxi- I don’t know!
Do you think that you could talk to them?
To our parents and the school?
Tell them that they’re scaring us
and that they all seem real confused.
We surely could go talk to them
but they hate that we’re so old.
We remind them of the ways they’ve failed
and the truths they’re scared to know.
There’s a wisdom in our wrinkled skin
that they’re trying hard to kill.
And if kids like you are catching on
they’ll start trying harder still.
For now it’s good you’re noticing
and that your guts say it’s not right.
Just keep each other close at hand –
pick your spots, and fight your fights.
