The Bus Driver’s Counsel

“You’re all over the map—
our city is a free pass if you find
her and mind the gaps,
but the Greeks were right,
count no man still alive
lucky. Anything can happen to a man,
anything, a man is a door in a mountain
of money and brass tacks—
your high fliers dive
eventually, one by one
the world’s charmers croon to death
on empty beds
and wealth becomes a zone
where collars thrive,
but say you make it out the other side
iron-stomached, majestically alone . . .
I want to help a guy
but nah man, it’s $1.75 to ride
feeding on the city, covering your eyes.”

Long Dream

To start it was a morphine chute in April

Weather, but later chapters wore an evil

Look and murdered sleep till morning broke

The egg of Nightmare with its rancid yolk.

This is what the break-up was, in figures:

The older creep who lives downstairs,

Silver hammers at your window,

A blotch on the bedroom mirror’s stare,

Grief that barely missed your throat

And even now is lying low

Like sinkholes in a river

Whose banks are lined by locals

Waving nets and whining, “Indian-giver.”

 

But their footage doesn’t matter,

So lose the friends who bear

Back-handed love like thinning hair—

Better plots thicken,

Your life is a lucid medicine

Whose doctors twist their sums

To smoke, are cured and fall asleep,

Giving you the legs to leap

Down a great drum

Whose belly ribbed with bullion

Makes alphabets from vagrant atoms

And trains their mouths to shake the air.

Wake, you’re up. And there you are, and there.

Local Boy

The mind is a rough neighborhood, don’t go there
alone. Tell me about it. A poison skillet
the cops watch from busted Crown Vics:
corner boys scatter like pigeons when they roll by,
the radio squawking bad Latin
about someone bleeding in a walkup,
or no one there at all,
gyros, muzzle burns, Bics,
more knocking on doors and calming down
white girls mugged after yoga,
museum duty for the blessed—
crude summer does that
to a city, baiting the blocks, goading them
till we’re all in cuffs.

Anyway, the mind. Like a junkie in the bushes
I took too much, too much, my blood
pouring trouble, all tiger drips. Grades got me out
to the next part of town, which was nicer, kind of a plaid
that smells like parks or paperbacks,
and the houses are boxwood-bright.
I saw the governor there, he was begging
his gardeners for stones to loan a mistress,
but no one spoke Spanish. Later I heard a Prius
hit something and sobs in a bonsai garden,
but their kids have all read Rilke
and their kids are into getting hold of Vicodin.

So a mind found a place in a different belt,
co-ops, pale ales, and coke,
the Guatemalan food was tight, the wine dive
next door too. Public school was the thing
but they offered AP Art and band
so if you had kids they could expand there.
I’d walk to work—used shirts—then girls most nights
in boots on bikes, mellow as half-sleeves.
Two a.m. got dicey: last call drew the sharks.
Sat on the beach, smoked weed, and read Gucci,
heard Philip Larkin and stole Mozart’s loosies
under skies like blue corduroy.
My shirts took off with the local boys,
who took them to shows, so I went online
till Brooklyn and Stockholm helped me sell the store.

Eventually mind bought a house,
not much down. This hood had gardens
near its farmers’ market but still needed
that district station after dark, but still
the blocks were getting good. Young doctors.
We fixed the sun room, saw Cairo on foot,
grew basil. Because I had a study
my imaginary son would read, I would read,
but his mother slowly dipped out.
Once I dipped out to the corner store
and came back and she told me more
than I wanted to hear, trust me.

My mind later found itself an erstwhile lemon grove
where no one was at noon. The Valley nodded
its plunder while I kept summarizing
what she’d told, quiet like a lawn,
and even later, the mind, not getting on with the neighbors,
gets loud some nights about itself
and the sales and palm trees at Target,
its latest beef with the world.
Who owns the main road?  One of you knows.
My cell vibrates—
“Hold on. You’re going in and out. Someone’s firing.”

Living by the Pacific

They don’t break: waves
are the gash oars make
in a stream,

like someone unzipping the sea,
then sand goes into soda
and the salts regroup,

but sometimes after a dozen it’s dull,
you check your cell,
driving home takes you elsewhere . . .

California’s so big you can’t see it.
Elsewhere, branch water rubs limestone
into pikes and funnels,

I hang off the continent’s cuff
thinking of a cavern’s painted bubble
I toured as a kid.  Waves burst, I buckle

for streams I didn’t think I wanted,
grieve at my lack of those doctors,
far from my home, full of water.

Stop-Loss

Day gets skinny in December
when I bring out the snow lights
and hang my wreaths,
huffing fog like a dray horse.
I do what I don’t like, bedecking
a warehouse of beds,
the house cold as a clock,

because winter’s white archive makes me talk
by way of Yahoo and Sprint:
my boys, husband, and brother are abroad,
all my men, one in the desert with the Guard,
two Marines stomping Kandahar,
and a trim sailor glassing lanes
off the Horn.

Before work, while the car outside starts
to warm with oil, I watch my inbox,
because they’ll send me pictures
saying they saw nothing,
and they’ll admit how bored they are, which is true.
Brian Williams has no other news.
Hurry up and wait—

Mom did it when Dan was in I Corps,
me too.  One day the airport, all of you
deplaning in your boots.  This year
Christmas by Yellow Tail,
Oprah, the bathroom lights,
my men outside chalking off freedom’s body
and securing my lonely rights.

(forthcoming from The Texas Review)

Famous

As occupational hazards go
this one isn’t bad,
still it’s galling that
only doing poems
doesn’t make you a poet,
that living is riddled with tasks
you didn’t request.

Early writers string the bow expecting scenes
with women by singular means,
lunch with critics and publishers,
ad-hoc clubs in their honor, the fan letters,
free bottles, and laurel
piling up in the study corners,
a life of nights and days
beyond the reach of dishes
where you’ve got a hero’s spine
and the stars are kin, or psychiatrists.

It’s true you get some of this,
mainly (rejection) letters (or bills)
by day and dishes at night,
plus many times
(most of the days and nights)
when you can’t string a line,
not even a borrowed one—

once you get past twenty
your nights and days
remain free in the worst way
if you thought poems alone would be plenty.

You need prose bones
because this task, the one you chose,
matters when it doesn’t happen alone:
poets do unpoetic shit all day,
they buy Crest and shoelaces,
pick insurance, see their dentists,
watch football, consult the bus lines,
get spooked by the undefined
and go to bed and wake up again like other people,

and nothing routine or required
is ancillary.  Deny this
and you risk tiring early,
a half-poet.  Philistines
refuse to balance their books,
and those who don’t look
closely into art believe it can erase
life’s vital dullness, abolish pain,
the rear brain, and wage labor,
taking it for the main course
instead of what it is: a flavor.

As occupational hazards go

this one isn’t bad,

still it’s galling that

only doing poems

doesn’t make you a poet,

that living is riddled with tasks

you didn’t request.

Early writers string the bow expecting scenes

with women by singular means,

lunch with critics and publishers,

ad-hoc clubs in their honor, the fan letters,

free bottles, and laurel

piling up in the study corners,

a life of nights and days

beyond the reach of dishes

where you’ve got a hero’s spine

and the stars are kin, or psychiatrists.

It’s true you get some of this,

mainly (rejection) letters (or bills)

by day and dishes at night,

plus many times

(most of the days and nights)

when you can’t string a line,

not even a borrowed one—

once you get past twenty

your nights and days

remain free in the worst way

if you thought poems alone would be plenty.

You need prose bones

because this task, the one you chose,

matters when it doesn’t happen alone:

poets do unpoetic shit all day,

they buy Crest and shoelaces,

pick insurance, see their dentists,

watch football, consult the bus lines,

get spooked by the undefined

and go to bed and wake up again like other people,

and nothing routine or required

is ancillary.  Those who deny

this will write lies and flag early

as half-poets.  Philistines

refuse to balance their books,

and those who don’t look

closely into art believe it can erase

life’s vital dullness, abolish pain,

the rear brain, and wage labor,

taking it for the main course

instead of what it is: a flavor.