To Beat Ennui

If all else fails, I list some things I love:

my life, my wife, and Highway 61

Revisited; Baudelaire’s faux infamy

when iron-maidened into sonnet form;

the bravest Shostakovich symphony:

11? 8?; the battered heart of Donne;

to watch in safety any kind of storm;

to feel my brain-buoyed spirit rise above

my childhood’s God; John Coltrane playing live;

The Waste Land; Heaney’s Station Island; Lear;

Macbeth; Walt Whitman, Paz, Neruda, Frost—

most often when I plumb their darkness, dear

as the sublimity I thought I’d lost,

as seas that beckon me to drown or dive.

Nights Your Wife Is Gone (II)

The Comp I essays done, you’re playing Blonde

on Blonde, all country-blue and hip, and Ain’t

it just like the night to play tricks. . . . You’ve yawned

all day, but now, an existential saint,

you have a glass of stout in front of you,

the music’s loud, and you’re abuzz with now.

So good sometimes to be alive. Why do

you teach? To live forever, blaze a Tao

of Shakespeare, semicolons, service to

community? You’re mostly serious.

You love Neruda, Bruckner, Coltrane, Bly,

and students, colleagues, friends. You’ve learned to woo

your muse and think less with your dick. You cuss

enough. You’re blessed. Your wife can tell you why.

Pondering Bob                       

After watching Martin Scorsese’s

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

No envy, fear, or meanness, Dylan says

a Clancy taught him in the Village, pre-

Freewheelin’, possibly, the Guinness dark

as Oxford Town, as Billie Holiday’s

“Strange Fruit,” Odetta, Mavis Staples, King

the saint in Washington: “Let freedom ring.”

No meanness, envy, fear: perhaps, like Bob,

I’ll strip myself of Zimmerman, break free

of who I think those others think I am, embark

on quests artistic and absurd, appear

in any guise, go anywhere, as long

as I am someone else. Is it so wrong

to be my breath that speaks, avoid the mob,

evolve? To feel no envy, meanness, fear?

Caregiver

I’m thinking I’m not thinking of myself

when I assume the caring role, expose

my mama-tit for blood and friends to nose,

then nibble, suck. The books there on the shelf    

                           

explain it. Oedipus, Othello: they

took on too much and killed their wives before

their own self-fascination quickened, bore

the infant pride that sucked their lives away.

Now Leonard Cohen’s on the stereo

and growls, “I need to see you naked.” I

have never said these words to you, can’t bear

to voice my need. But down your wine, let’s go

to bed. I’ll slide my finger up your thigh.

I’ll kiss your breasts. I’ll show how much I care.

Fifty

Sinatra’s reeling on the stereo:

September of My Years. A mallard’s perched

upon your neighbor’s rooftop, unbesmirched

by river muck, green head absurd, aglow

in golden light. And you’re hung over—no,

still drunk. Odd duck, too young for fifty, so

in love with life, you’ve played the guru, searched

for God in all; abuzz and stoned, you’ve lurched

from laughing saintliness to half-assed sex

and back—enough to learn at last that most

of life lies in between. But don’t get too

damned wise. Your eyes are going. Daily, flecks

of you return to dust. Some hearing’s lost.

Right now, your wife is naked, calling you.

Part of Me Thinks Jazz

I want to write a Coltrane poem so bad-

ly, but I know that part of me thinks jazz

is freer than my waking mind: a dazz-

ling herd of wildebeests, a scorpion mad

with sun that stings itself to sweet release,

a waterfall so hot and fast it smokes

the river nymphs to shore where tribal spokes-

men dance a trance that bleeds their bloodlust peace-

fully. It could be Mingus, Miles, or Monk;

or Bird or Diz or Duke: the freedom with-

in structure, logic’s skeleton support-

ing slabs of rough-cut psyche; senses drunk

but soul as sober as a judge of myth-

ic confluence; a tempest hugged in port.

Monk

More angular and less angelic than

the stained-glass trope we use to see the world

in colors that we haven’t got: “Criss-Cross,”

“Green Chimneys,” “In Walked Bud,” “Epistrophy,”

“Misterioso,” “Straight, No Chaser”: truth

told slant, the preexisting shapes all smashed,

made new, still glinting black and white and blue.

I drink straight vodka: there’s no gin, vermouth,

or olives here. My journal pages curled

from last night’s spill, vacation mail-stack stashed

beneath my dog-walk jacket, pizza pan

unwashed, jazz on: I feel so free. A few

nights more I’ll play the modern monk and toss

out caution, worship conjured mystery.

                                      

Little Death

You’re swirling near a center, void of past

or future—yet there’s always now: the chair

awaits with its embrace, the lamp is bare

with longing for your rub, the book so fast

to pose you riddles sits as placid as

a Sphinx, the wine is dark, and Coltrane’s on

the stereo. Relax. Now daylight’s gone,

you feel the power that your magic has.

Just breathe. A priestess sits upon a throne

beneath the flying buttresses inside

your skull. Her robe of incense wafts the drone

of reeds, the pulse of drums. A virgin bride!

                                             

Her hymen-honey frightens you, you groan,

spill seed—this verse. You’ve only partly died.

San Francisco Symphony

From Alcatraz, we watched Blue Angel jets

that spiraled, rolled, and dove in sea-blue sky

above the bay. We bought a book by Bly

at City Lights. We sent e-mail regrets

to colleagues, saying we’d be out of touch.

We rode the bus down Haight and back to paw

used jazz and folk and punk CDs. We saw

some Painted Ladies, ate and drank too much.

We scaled Nob Hill to catch Van Morrison’s

Masonic Temple show: all scat and blues

and Celtic soul. We dodged the Wharf, the views

from Lombard Street, from Telegraph. The fun’s

the moment—now—as well as memory.

We heard the San Francisco Symphony.

The Hunter

It’s coffee and a Bruckner symphony

this Sunday morning. Percy looking out

the window, Scarlet in a sleepy pout

below the stereo, the timpani

a hound’s white noise. And me? I want to tear

the hide off life, to separate the strands

that weave our narratives, my veiny hands

all wet and smoking . . . smell of burning hair,

                                     

saliva salty, I the hunter, hind,

and bird of prey, and God the horn, the dog

the scherzo, lightning, thunder, mountain fog,

sublime while reconstructed in my mind.

              

The slabs of sound are sliding into place,

a shrine I enter, searching for a face.

Airplane Pilgrim

The chair-back’s blue in front of me, and white

the polyethylene and steel that arc

like flying buttresses to keep the dark

inside this pressurized cathedral. Light

                                                           

shines bright outside, but I am transept-dim,

as Bach or Bly so richly are. A swell

of bass and cello floods my iPod; smell

of paperback surrounds my wine-glass brim.

The steward’s dreadlocks gleam as black as beads

I’ve bought in Rome. My notebook’s cover art                             

is Byzantine: a bird, eyes ruddy, sticks

its beak in open chalice-bloom. My needs

are few within this flying crucifix:

just God . . . through Paz, through Frost, through Arvo Pärt. . . .

Eternal Surf

Marco Island, Florida

The outdoor pool’s a heated 81—

about the normal mood and age round here—

and on the beach, bikini top undone,

a spray-tanned coed’s drunk on sun and beer.

I walk the sand with eyes cast down for shells,

but see just scales and fronds and blobs; a mat-

furred quadruped; a flesh-pink hunk that swells

then shrinks in sun. I loathe my belly-fat.

The blue waves ripple white, a Quaker’s beard;

at night, the surf’s a birthing mother’s moan,

and all that buried life’s still there, still feared,

despite the scotch, the iPod’s soothing drone.

At times, the ocean smells of death, so old,

so choked. But never dead—no, not that cold.

Danse Macabre

Hephaestus clangs his anvil deep inside

your ear. He’s ugly, lame, but oh the things

he makes: the heated metal, hammered, sings

rebirth but pyre-flame first. With wings spread wide,

a crow that thinks you’re Odin plucks your eye.

So now you’re wise: that’s bad for art but good

for life. A dancing skeleton with hood

and sickle grabs your hand: a baby’s cry

is what you hear, and then you see a king,

a bum, a nurse, a whore, a priest entwined

with skeletons and dancing too. Your mind

joins Brueghel, Bosch, and all your books to sing

you “Happy Death”—a tune profound yet trite.

Fuck paradox! You dance with all your might.

Fire Music

1

Anvil clang, my booted foot

in the stirrup:

                      a horse I ride backwards,

drunk, young again.

Not the lub-dup

                         lub-dup

of my mother’s patient heart

but my own fire,

                          dark lignite inside

licking blue and spitting orange.

The veins in my neck,

the suspension bridge

                                    of my head,

cello torso humming human,

slant rhymes from the sky,

            Van Morrison at Nob Hill,

                        Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony,

San Francisco, city

                                my mother wanted

to visit but never saw.

My father the bellows-maker,

my self the dragon,

                               my song smothered

unless it has something

                                      to burn.

2

This skin gas-flame blue

under the sliver moon,                                  

                                    curved surgical needle

keeping all the sky’s guts

from bulging

                    down on us.

A coyote cries in the woods across the street.

Ooh, this salsa’s hot!

      Gentle reader, where’s this poem going?                                  

Habanero: Promethean pepper.

Mom and Dad rubbing sticks,

                                               striking sparks.

1959 San Antonio honeymoon.

Tex-Mex, jazz

                        along the River Walk.

My engendering.

And who by fire?

                            Leonard Cohen asks.

Who by water?

I’m walking the dog,

no earbuds

                   but this song in my head.

If art really is the residue of living

                        (Cohen again), then

relax: This poem is only ash.