roots (revision)

i went back and looked at “roots.”  i like to leave a poem alone for several months before i go back and look to revise it.  it helps to distance myself from it and fall out of love with it.  i can look at it from a more objective (and, hopefully, better) perspective.  here’s what i came up with.  it still needs some tweaks.  

We haven’t pulled potatoes
in years but I still
go.  In the thickest Augusts
when breathing is like
drowning I find pine shade,
feel needle-filtered light flow
through just a little green,

and slip into my Uncle’s papery,
folded hands, his knuckles
like rises and ravines sinking
below the surface and unearthing
thick root.  We fill the bucket,
I wedge the handle of it in the pit
of my arm, and he swings me
from his hip as the barn

brings us in.  I can breathe
and see through the auburn
dark when I go, but only clay
here–fired and blown
to the rock below.  I break
away rows of dead bark, lean
back again and feel us

hugged together in the wheat-filled
shade.  Tobacoo and okra jars
line the barn, shine
like crow feathers in the dull
glow.  I place the bucket
on the table and take
a pickle from the ‘fridge–

his specialty.  We haven’t pulled
potatoes in years, but going there
spreads the night and darkens
bright day.  One day I’ll drive
into those mountains, to his home
where he’s buried.

One day I’ll go into those
mountains for good.  He grew
old, out of control of his own body
and garden.  The barn barely
stood–rotting holes in the roof,
land crawling over the sky,
trapping the heat in.

Light pierced through and shade
had become steam.  Unable to
peel the heat from his hands,
he leaned onto the shotgun
and pulled the trigger like he
pulled his roots:  hard and firm.

found poem…

Here is a found poem that I put together.  Haven’t revised it or anything.  I thought it sounds kinda cool—could lead me to an idea later.  (fyi:  a found poem comes from looking through a newspaper article and finding words and phrases that stand out, writing them down, and mixing them together to make a poem).  this article was about how bananas glow blue under a black light.

 

A couple
hunches, in contrast
to humans, stabilizing
under the ultraviolet
range of the spectrum.

Blue energy from light
peels away as it is
entirely overlooked

She says, “This
luminescence is
degradation–concentrated,
short-lived.”

“The fruit is ripe,”
he says, and breaks.

heredity

Mother took pieces of you away and made stories-
your voice in shortwave, ringing through radios
across the sleepy city, weaving
into the frequency of sun rays rising over
canals and smoke stacks.

She took pieces of you away and wired them
into her own family-Atlantic Records
Soul Classics, Euchre games, how to
pitch a horseshoe.

You were away when the children came in
from their snow caves and drift
tunnels, your face splayed
gray on television screens bringing Buffalo
home from the cold. You would
return from work stumbling
lightly into their cheeks, missteps and missed
kisses fluid with Canadian Mist.

Hidden in those wobbles and wavelengths
were pieces that skipped
a generation like cuts
of static; ones mother couldn’t find, slow
poison of pills and whiskey like dead air.

Mother couldn’t take that lifelessness away-
your chest cold like folds of lake snow pooled
into deep pockets, dusting through in muffled
pulses-your daughter waiting there, pinching
your cheeks, whispering, Wake up, Papa. Wake up.

Therapy

I.

I am birthed
into the thunder-covered
clearing, ponderosa seal peeling
back like a broken rib
cage.  Arteries of water
weave endlessly into the earth’s pocket,
moss quilting its wet, bouldered banks.
The rough, rust-stuck hinge
between horizon and sky
erodes, and I descend
from the dulled stone overlook
into the throat of the waterfall.
The mist is particulate and supple;
the air as thick as it is drinkable.

II.

These walls are all psychology
books–bricks of tips, tricks,
lists of questions that search
for right answers.  Long pauses
like drought plant dry
sockets in talking.  He scribbles
down the wilderness, the scabbed-over
knife bites on my thigh,
the coffin of lichen; he siphons
out of me the incantations
of mountains.  I become
tangled notes on legal sheets
to be neatly tucked
away until next week.

III.

I step forward, toes curling
over cliff edge, sound pouring
down into cloud, into blue pools
wrought from incessant pounding.
I lean into the dust as into
casket padding, as into
a lover, and feel it swell
back against me.  I am un
-tangled, pen dissolves from paper.
This is no longer where life
breaks; this is not where I fold
into the earth.  There is a bottom
to everything.  This is where scars,
becoming smooth with skin, sink.

Family Dream

We are three shades from reality,

skirted in azaleas, rhododendrons

holding back pine forest

like shoes at mountain-foot.

We shrug away hills and shoulder

the sun.  Bees figure-eight,

halo around the rim of the sky.

Pinks reach up with us,

bring the blue down.

            *

Three worlds of azalea flower:

dimensions of pistil, petal,

stamen.  We are dream-people,

picking weeds, black-edged

fingernails,  smoking,

sacks of gold dandelions

in the spaces, men picking

weeds, glue to hold together

the opening folds of dream.

            *

The sky is three hues

of blue—concave, folding

in on itself towards the earth, wetting

our heads with color.  I can feel

myself crying in my sleep,

pillow case clinging

to my cheeks.  I can feel myself

laughing with them in the field,

dipping our fingers into outer space.

            *

Three decades before

we smoked and laughed about it,

pulled triggers for quail, picked weeds and

swallowed sweat that crept

into our mouths.  Now we are

one man dreaming of brother and

father, laughing at the shadowy summit

of death—heart attacks, suicide

and lung cancer.

            *

He is three sizes smaller,

a wilted version of himself caught

in an I.V. spider web, tubes into

holes, holes where eyes have sunken

back.  Asleep or comatose, jaw unhinged

hanging open, disconnected,

Cherokee nose and cheekbones.  I can see

clogs in him, blocked blood backing up,

stale puddles behind his ribs.

            *

Three shotgun shells in rows,

organized like the nails, hammers,

swept piles of sawdust.  The stiff

cold steel barrel warms

against his chest, grains in the stock

run together with creases

and calluses—mountains,

valleys in his palm.  Trigger

a black sliver of moon.

 

            *

The three of you were brought together

so they could let you know

they’re okay, my sister tells me.

She’s wrong.  I had to bring heaven down

to the field so they would know

I’m living on without them—

I’m okay without them, far away

from azalea fields and sinking

blue sky, far from them.

            *

Dream is three healed men

harvesting weeds in a field

of wild azaleas.  No shotgun holes

in my brother no dammed arteries

in my father no ashtray lungs,

black sacks of drought in my chest.

We smoke, pull triggers

for quail, laugh our hearts out

of our chests.  Two ghosts and me.

            *

I bend to pick a dandelion.

More dirt digs in, sweat slides

in our mouths.  It is a stemmed

cloud, perfect sphere of dust.

Blue sky bends with me, doubles

down and scatters the white

fluff.  Disappearing with dandelions,

we fade into the halo of honeybees,

stroke sky with black fingertips.

Averasboro

Mile-Marker 72

For a day, men lost tongues, faces;
ribbons of fog slipped into fresh holes.  Smoke-filled
chests held explosion echoes.  Stiff black puddles
cradled bodies–cords pulled from throats, droves of voices
hanged, limp like wet grass down neck-sides.
Tumbling

                  sun partially
eclipsed by tall-reaching fast food
palaces in the sprouting commuter town–
I wince at the brown glare knifing
from the tourist sign:
Averasboro Battlefield
March 15 – March 17, 1865.
Quick enough to read while speeding.

Mile-Marker 71

Field wheat aches, gashed
by cannonballs and canister-shot, soil like coal–
soldier-burned, baked by minie balls, hardened
by battle-filtered sun.
The fuzzed hum of rubber

                                               on asphalt
scrapes the field’s edge, erodes it–
tire paths tracing battle lines,
erasing them, trash bags like
decaying infantrymen on the road-side.

Mile-Marker 70

Bottom and top halves of men
gone, bellies exploded
inward, rips in eye meat–
whole world

                      ridden with holes.
The ringing dead scream louder
than traffic, hold back the world
in another losing stand
amidst the rushing sound
of rushing by too quickly.

Mile-Marker 69

I toss a trash bag, soggy
and leaking, into my truck-bed,
take its place on the wilting back
of Averasboro Battlefield.
                                              Everyday,
men lose tongues, faces here.  They bellow
above the rubber buzz, pray someone
will sit on their field’s edge
and pin it down.

Roots

We haven’t pulled potatoes in years but I still go.  In the stickiest
Augusts when breathing is like drowning I find pine-shade,
feel needle-filtered light flow through just a little green, and go–

Uncle’s papery, folded hands following mine below
the surface, unearthing thick root.  I fill the bucket, stumble
with it as we move and swinging from his hip, we go to the barn.

I can breathe and see through the dark heat when I go but
only clay here–fired, blown to the rock below.  I break away
rows of dead bark, lean back again and go–barn-shade

is the best kind.  Wheat-filled air hugs us together, tobacco perched
above like crows, okra jars and shotgun barrel licked with dull glow.
I place the bucket on the table and take a pickle from the ‘fridge–

his specialty.  Going there spreads the night and darkens
bright day but we haven’t pulled potatoes in years.  One day
I’ll drive into those mountains, to his home where he’s buried.

One day I’ll go into those mountains for good.  He grew old,
out of control of his own body and garden.  The barn barely stood–
rotting holes in the roof, land crawling over the sky, trapping

the heat in.  All was as we had left it–bucket on the table,
jars lined around.  But light pierced through and shade had become
steam.  With shotgun barrel like ice in his hands, he decided to go.

Before Catching a Bus Alone in London

She makes me call her Princess since my mouth can’t handle Polish and she calls me Honeybunch to keep it even.  Her hair shines straight black like back-alley shadow and she loves vodka, so I love it too.  Bass-drums quake in rhythm with up drink down pour up drink down pour and after the fourth round we press tight like countries on the verge of war.  We count miles and nautical miles, kilometers, and we erase them with hands, cheeks, neck-grooves, jaw-lines.  With peripherals shrinking, edges humming and blurred, our borders begin to braid together, up drink down pour, and we find ourselves in tongue-lock, exploring soft, wet corners–feeling for something foreign.  I tap the beat on her back, living just above the panty-line on the precipice of falling in love and just before closing time, mouths tangling heart arteries, trace the outlines of our new country where space between us doesn’t exist.

Attempting Religion

Bus metal burns against sun smashed between blue
layers of deep blue space.  Valley shrinks as I climb,
Loch Ness shrinks as I climb higher, bending
through fog–sky a cyan summit.  We’ve stopped,
haze attached to the rock-edge of the overlook–

flattened with fog, valley made parallel to the sky.  Horizon
shoulders deep with shadow, center-white of sun
kneading space, opening particles.  Fog streches
blue over white over heather.  Scotland sky, mirror-water
taste the electuary of rising mist, heavy buds on the crests–

seven peaks saturated with pigment, parallel
palm of the sky.  Is it real?  Down in spaces between
marble shores–is there a breath clinging to the heather?
I see fingers swing down, spin fog-caps in slow

twists of evaporation and faith.  Kneeling, I extend
my forehead out to them, nearly slipping
into the mouth of the mountains.  The last fog absorbs
into the darkest layers of atmosphere–rising strips like snapped

church rafters.  I stand, shivering, God sliding by me again,
the last planks nailed into place in the low-hanging ceiling of the sky.

The Everlasting No

“What Stoicism our Wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within…”

-from Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle

Pupils open like broken levees, sky folds in,
purple light mutters
over muzzy earth in flows.
As train wheels and whistle scream
westward along wet steel, echoes
peel through hard, streaking storms–
fat drops spattering across silk horizon.
With day closing, night lies
soaked and alone and writhes within itself,
rubber and asphalt brine
frothing in clogged ditches.
Trying to drive out my soggy No
beyond cumulonimbus gods,
I tongue watery beads along the way and swallow
hollow clouds with evermore room for rain.