Wild Wild West

 
The way she dangles her Pall Mall
from her poppy red lips knowing
the cowboys at the coral will whip
out lighters from back pockets
faster than a firearm, then takes
a long drag as their eyes slide

from her platinum wedge
haircut, Siamese blue eyes,
to her button-down blouse
and designer jeans
showing more curves
than a country road,

nobody can tell her daddy -
a big shot lawyer in LA -
has just dropped dead
of a heart attack and her mother
has dragged her out of UCLA
summer school and driven

her and her brother to a Wyoming
dude ranch in the early sixties
where Julia, her mother and I
serve salad, steak and Stout
to cowboys and dudes. The way
she wrestles with the wrangler

on the bed of his Chevy pickup
stinking of collie and Coors
no one ever suspects she is engaged
to an LA student with the scent
of Brut and marijuana. I don’t
tell anybody. So I probably am

the only one who isn’t surprised
when she goes back to LA
at the end of the summer
and her cowboy gets hitched
to another waitress named Julia
the next summer on top of the Tetons.

 

I’m the Wife, She Says


Her voice is as smoky
as the saloon where she
sits on a stool downing
a Bacardi Daiquiri

sucking on a lime
and licking salt
off the rim while
I sip a Singapore Sling,

my voice as sweet
and syrupy as a sunset
sinking behind
the Superstitions.

She is trim as Tammy
with a short shag
while I wear Dolly’s
blonde wig and breasts,

which is why he slow
dances with me
to George Jones
on the jukebox

and she shares
her sob story
with the bald
bartender

until the kids run
in and grab him
by the pantleg
and her by the hand,

and they squabble
over who is taking
the night shift before
driving off in the SUV

leaving me to hitch
a ride in a pickup
truck with a cowboy
who smells like a skunk.

here and there these days
 
my mother is slowly
falling apart
 
the hip, the back,
the shoulder
 
she swears her brain
is fading and mentions
suicide here and there
these days
 
i check on her every
morning
 
i figure one of these
mornings she'll be
finally at peace
 
all i hope is i won't be
considered a suspect
-------------------------------------------------------------
just a fading soul
 
here comes the anger
 
the rage from deep inside
 
they told me when i was younger
to write out the pain
 
let others know they aren't alone
 
others?
 
do i look in the mirror and see others
 
no, just a fading soul grown older
than he ever wanted
 
remember every scar
 
every woman that said i love you
and then walked away in the arms
of another
 
these are the nights where the knives
used to get hid in the bushes
 
and all those better angels found some
other sucker to steal from
 
loneliness, the only friend that dared
to say i understand
 
we'll drink the bar dry tonight
 
wake up the in the morning with
no regrets
 
rinse and repeat
 
put the coffee on
the war is just beginning

A Sign

It was probably a sign
When the old preacher,
Who, these days, did
More funerals than
Weddings, topped off
The ceremony with,
“I now pronounce you
Husband and wife…
Rest in peace.” 

INDIAN HAU

White man and all his heavenly court

Of warriors and pedophile priests

Be murderous colonizers

Hypocritical, obscene, deceitful

Thieves, looters, rapists

That all their effort was

Fool and hallucinate with little mirrors

Trinkets, stamps, crucifixes

To a whole people and nations

Who worshiped the Sun and the Moon

Some making human sacrifices

That have nothing to envy

Their daily femicides.

Hau Hau

Your fight against our Indian chiefs

Is the same that held Priapus with the Donkey

Letting us see who else murdered, raped.

Thanks to your crosses and swords

You left us embarrassed and defeated

Naked, stolen our jewelry

Our wives and daughters.

You used so much ardor to violate them

That you left your Castilian surnames

In the land fortunes

Where our dead children were left.

The few that got away

To leave their heads lopped off

They only got

Thumb sucking

Being left as slaves working

In the shadow of their own eggs

Suffering remembering

Your very obscene actions.

Damn with You White man!

NOTHING TO DO BUT LOSE YOUR MIND

As the minds start to stir a

Dollop of madness into their

Mixes the lock-down drags

On leaving some with

No recourse but to disconnect

And let go for there is nothing

Else worth doing.

The library in town is shut

Whilst my own catalogue is

Being read with a gusto that

Suggests i wont have much

Left for my planned old-age

And then the horror of no

Pubs being open. 

 

It’s been the three longest

Weeks of my life until now

Since i last walked in and

If it weren’t for this here

Writing i’d surely have been

Dragged off by now by a

Mental health nurse.

The other night i was sat

Here, because quite frankly

What else is there to do,

Nursing a beer and some words

When the downstairs flat

Came alive with a voice

Booming out song after song.

Childhood memories of hating

The pop music of my adolescence

Came to haunt me as first she

Tortured me with some heavenly

Delight courtesy of a former

Go-go and all i wanted was to

Either hide, remain silent, or

Put down this laptop, climb from

My chair, pull Damaged off my

Records shelf and blast it until

She learnt not to confuse me with

One of those losers she used

To hang with during her school

Days as i think we’re about the same age.

Sometimes when we

were closing up
at 4 AM after last call
the Irish owner
and I would have
a pint. Watch as
the students paired off
and went who knows
where. “I hate to see
that.” He said referring
to a red-haired colleen
arm in arm with
a black guy.
I said. “I didn’t mind.
They’re young,
in lust and consenting
adults.”
“Her parents live on
my street back home.
They’d lose their minds
if they could see her now.”
I thought, that’s one
of the reasons she left
with him. So, you’d see
her, tell her parents.
So they’d lose their minds.

-

Doug wanted to


Climb the water tower.
Add his initials to ones
already visible from
the Sunrise Highway.
I didn’t ask him why.
It was a Mt. Everest thing
I thought. I sd. “Everyone
will see you. It’s like a
totally exposed staircase.”
“I’ll go when it’s cloudy.
Or better yet, when
it’s raining.”
I didn’t point out how insane
it was. He was determined
to find out on his own.

Next time it rained,
off he went with a spray
can and a pack of butts
he filched from his mom.
He’d light one when he
got to the top. About halfway
up he was discovering what
that: Slippery When Wet
sign meant at the base of
the stairs.

I knew he saw me waving
at him but he just stood there
holding on, not waving back.

Yellow Ashtray


on the night 
horns grow from my head


my father 
is on the back porch smoking
a Winston

the yellow ashtray 
like a runny egg of moonlight
on the cracked stone step

he looks 
at the horns 
but says nothing 

rolls up 
his shirtsleeves 
& stubs out the Winston

I follow 
the thread of violence 

& clip him
with a parting blow. 




Front Hook Spin


the kids 
with fishing poles 
& stolen Vodka 
decanted in 
hairspray 
bottles

find him first 
& pull him out 
of the millrace, 
lips blue & front hooked 
with the last night 
on earth  

pole dancing girls 
spinning go-go hard-ons 
at the Novelty Lounge

must’ve
taken the tracks home
& fallen in 

scared 
all the 
fish 

William Taylor Jr.


There’s a poet
I admire,
William Taylor Jr.
He’s kind of like
the underground voice
of San Francisco.
He’s not aware
that he’s on
my radar
but maybe after
this poem.
If I get a chance
to talk to him
I’ll say
listen,
enough with
the references
to the old writers –
Kerouac, Ferlinghetti,
and Bukowski.
I’m guilty of it,
too –
I know
you miss them.
But all this
name-dropping
isn’t going to
bring them back.
It’s up to
you and me
now
to carry the torch.
We both live and write
in California.
You cover the North
and I’ll cover the South.
We’ll be correspondents
for the written word.
And if you get
a collection published
with City Lights,
would you mind
name-dropping
for me?

The State of Poetry


A poet whose work I admire announces on Facebook the recurrence of her brain tumor. Another has already been admitted to hospice care. A third, a clear case of burnout, is giving up writing to attend mortuary school. And people wonder if poetry is dead!

&

The doctor looks up from studying the x-rays of my battered and crumbling spine and asks, “Do you do heavy labor for a living?” I almost laugh. Do I do heavy labor? No – unless you consider sitting hunched over a desk every day for most of the day, straining to lift words onto a page, heavy labor.

&

Then there are the times when I feel cast out, abandoned, a mutineer marooned on a speck in the ocean and forced to watch from far off as words, like the black ships of Magellan’s armada, their sails puffed out and all their flags flying, plunge over the edge of the world.

Atomic Blueprint


The molecules arrange themselves 
into human shapes

according to the elements of fate

in nuanced forms of expression
and blunt atomic reactions

colored by happiness and suffering
in the not so visible spectrum.

This all takes place
at the outer heart of inner space

where worlds collide and lovers lay waste

to the compound structures of fable

seated at the periodic table

with all creation’s carnal relations

jealous of eternity 

and her sex 

and her power

and her appetite for death

at the banquet of experience

where the earth spins naked

and the moon blows kisses

and the sun winks knowingly

and the stars dare us to be
more than what we see

on this inexplicable journey.




The Poetry Racket

     
A few nights ago I attended my first poetry reading.  ( I’m 67)  It was sponsored by a local poetry organization whose website I’d just discovered.  I liked their mission statement.  I knew nothing about the featured poets or the bar downtown where it was taking place, but after a little internet sleuthing it seemed like it might be the right opportunity to meet other poets and share a few poems during the open mic.

I was hesitant, but it was something I felt like I had to do after running alone in my own private poetry marathon for years.

Almost a dozen people attended, (mostly scruffy old men) and it was a little weird trying to read poetry in the backroom of a bar next to the biffy, with a shitty microphone, no mic stand, no podium, poor acoustics, and lots of boisterous noise competing from the crowd of beer drinkers in the next room.

But I’m glad I did it.  Winter’s coming, and I don’t think I’ll be driving into the city after dark again until spring.

I’m trying to be honest with myself.  What’s my motivation for riding through the valley of the shadow of poetry?  Is it the desire for public approval?  Love in the form of recognition?  Personal accomplishment at an affordable price?  Camaraderie?

I’ve worked hard to get my ego out of the way and write poems that are both cathartic and artistically satisfying.  I like exploring ideas, crossing internal boundaries, self discovery, becoming more expressive, less emotionally constipated.

When I first started charging down this road I was so naive.  I had just crawled out of a factory.  I thought poetry would connect me to a better class of people, enlightened rogues and mystics, explorers, brothers, sisters, bird men and women, a contemplative tribe of confidants and sun dancers celebrating life.  What a fool I was.

I’ve seen the stacks of unwanted chapbooks gathering dust in bookstore wicker baskets.  I’ve been patronized by academics, ivory tower sentries, and effete personalities hiding in their literary rabbit holes at credentialed membership clubs.

Not long ago I was reading some essays by Robert Bly, Wildness & Domesticity.  He spoke disparagingly about much modern poetry, about its emptiness, its deadness, how it took a wrong turn years ago.  He told a story about his friend James Wright being snubbed at a U of M  English faculty party for complimenting Walt Whitman.  WTF?

Yesterday I veered onto The Loft’s website.  They have many resources for aspiring writers.  I can get personalized help for one whole year while trying to get a book published at the low, low price of $7600.  Astonishing!

How many chapbooks would I need to sell to break even on that venture?  It sounds like a great vanity project for anyone with a lot of extra money to burn.

And so I continue to ride through the valley of the shadow of poetry, “bloody, but unbowed” as Invictus said.

I’ve had some poems published in various print and electronic magazines.  There were a few where I had to pay for the privilege of reading my own poems. 

A year ago I read a poem on Rattle.  It was an outstanding confessional poem by a dead author who confided how it took him 40 years to make 15 dollars for his troubles.  “Why" by Robert Funge.

A couple of months ago I submitted poems to an online publication.  I received no acceptance or rejection response, then I sent a query letter.  Crickets.

Maybe real poetry has and always will exist only on the margins of society where touched individuals from all walks of life talk in crazy fractured heart bursts attempting to convey whatever divine message streams in through the broken windows of their psyches.

Maybe that’s what poetry is, a lonely lifelong marathon of men and women who belong to no tribe but their own.  Consider the old Chinese poets who walked into the mountains and disappeared in the clouds. (Hello Gary Snyder!)

Poetry is an ancient art, as old as any.  You’d think that with all the billions being spent on endowments, museums, institutes, public parks, commemorative statues, etc. that some visionary philanthropist would have thought to construct a dedicated poetry pavilion in a city park or attach a small quiet annex to some public building in a central location where poets could easily have readings, share, discuss, and hear themselves think above the din. Perhaps I’m still a fool.


Guy Roads

November 12th, 2022