nature

In a Raspy Voice
origin of my blues poems in 2018


On a sultry day waiting in the Honda 
while my Muse shops in Trader Joe’s,
hoping she doesn’t forget my soft licorice,
sweating cuz the air’s turned off
and she didn’t leave the keys, admiring a gal
bending over to shove grocery bags in her trunk,
suddenly my dry mouth dropped open,
out rushed a raspy voice I didn’t recognize,
“I got the blues.” A deep breath. “I got the blues.”
Over and over, I repeated the oracular words.
As Sonny Terry has crooned, I was a white boy
lost in the blues, though I was six decades away
from being a lean pimply kid, dateless,
singing loud and off-key in the church choir.

Needed to figure out what I was bluesy about.
Couldn’t duet with John Lee Hooker
cuz I don’t have the house rent blues,
or with Etta James misty about lost love,
or with Trixie Smith or Sonny Terry 
cuz I no longer sprint beside lonesome tracks, 
leap into the frigid box car of a lonesome freight.
Even beside Muddy Waters, I’d be nobody’s 
Hoochie Coochie Man with mojo, a black cat bone,
making pretty women jump and shout.

Back in ’02 paddled a canoe with my friend Paige 
the Big Muddy from St. Paul to New Orleans, 
reminded of Leadbelly as we passed Angola Prison,
Son House as I climbed over a levee to fetch water,
Robert Johnson as we rambled through Rosedale,
Earl King as I glided at last into Audubon Park. 
But now I’m a tourist, no longer a traveler 
who lifts a thumb, waves a hand-drawn sign,
converses with drivers who want to laugh or confess.

B.B. King could sing the blues after paying his dues,
lying in a ghetto flat numb and dusted with rime, 
turned away at the welfare office, staring in a mirror 
at the lined, slackening truth wrought by Father Time.

Cataracts clouding my eyes, got mobility issues 
so I shuffle to avoid tearing soft tissue. 
Prick my figure every morn, swallow pills
I don’t wanna take, remember and rue
every time I try to snooze. Google ex-girlfriends,
sorrowful to find them dead. Sometimes dizzy
when I clamber outta my bed. Are these my dues?
Not sure how I’m gonna do it, 
but I’ve gotta take a deep breath, bellow my blues.

Through The Altostratus

A pale and weakened light fights to be seen through the altostratus
It’s a few shades brighter out in the middle of the lake
Almost dog piss yellow near the distant horizon
That light rests on an endless bank of sea smoke laid out across the big lake
It would take a herring gull more than eighty flight miles to reach it and return
The diminished rays in its middle offer a brief sense of hope

Then fade back to gray and with them a pull back to melancholy
They leave a slight foreboding and a caution in their vacuum
This expanse of emptiness conjures a baritone choir of long dead mariners
A shanty from the lost Seamen of Superior moaning a dirge
More of a warning than the seduction call of their Siren sisters

An infinite army of continuous and tired waves storm the beach and then retreat as the pebbles and stones chase them back to the sea

Standing alone, silent and cold I study the colors like a painter and survey the sawtooth coast
A curious gull screeches hello and decides to join me
She lands near the shore, spreads out her wings and looks up to me just as a single glorious ray burns a far away hole through the cheesecloth sky
A million brilliant and blinding sparkles are coughed up by the lake and echoed by the wind with its efforts
I watch the sun continue to fight its way to the front of the line as it struggles to rip a hole across the vast cold rolled sky
Thanks to the suns exertion hope returns and the lake seems a bit kinder now
I can’t feel its warmth but I marvel at its radiance
Full of gratitude I take a mental Polaroid and wish the gull well as I move on to the possibilities

The Beatnik Cowboy

Orman Day

Scott W Schuler