4-4-22 Approximately Excellent

 new world rising
​
from Austin, north central, time to go home,
back to the old world, San Antonio,
forget I-35 through the city, most days, especially
this time of day, most days, the longest linear parking lot
in the United States of America, but I lived here, 60 years ago,
visited many, many times since, I know the old way across town…

45th
to Guadalupe;
Guadalupe
on
the strip
bisecting
the
UT campus,
then
through
downtown
in
the shadows
of the new
gleaming 
in the
sun
residential
high-rises;
across
the bridge
over
Lady Bird
Lake to
1st,
running
parallel to
South
Congress,
the whole
south
central
part of the city
now called
SoCo
(for a while
ten years
ago
after
development
chased
out
all
the
street
corner
prostitutes,
called
affectionately,
NoHoNoMo);
then
over to
Congress
at
Ben White
to
Slaughter Lane
and
a jag
to I-35,
which
though moving
slow,
by this
point
at least
moving…

A drive through the heart of the city and everywhere crowds, walking, biking, sipping lattes and cappuccinos and americanos at sidewalk cafes, people everywhere, crowds of young people, pretty young women in Saturday Brunch clusters, young men in Austin-fashionable shorts and flip flops and it’s like some alien or international force came to the city and took away everyone over 25 years of age and now there’s no one here but these youngsters, way-hip and happy and it must be an exciting place to live and I remember it was exciting when I lived here, back when, in the redneck-hippy days, but we didn’t have the place to ourselves as it seems these young folks do, had some old folks around, in fact, a lot of the redneck-hippiest were old folks themselves, old Beats, old philosophers and poets and grand-standing forever students, academic hangers-on, loving the life and the nubile young coeds, studying some but never finishing, finding new and exciting beats, new and exciting music hillbilly-hip and nirvana blues, from the heart of a city where most everything was new - those times were exciting too, but it seems different now, as I think a lot of us were hicks in those days, astounded at the new possibilities and the new batch seem immune to the astonishment, assuming assumptions we would never think of in the old days…

But then, maybe it’s just being old that got to us, unable to keep up, giving up and moving to Topeka.
​

,
Mickie knows the down-low

Mickie Mondragon knows the down-low
and can take you there if you're willing
to pay the price 

Mickie is a tiny woman,
5 feet and a fraction, 80 to 85 pounds,
crooked gremlin smile and black hair
dark as the bottom of Chacon Canyon at midnight,
a small strip shaved above each ear,
visible only when she laughs…

denizen, 
some say queen,
of the deep and dark Zarzamora Strip 
on the South Side,
an old brick Pentacostal church
on the corner the only hint of grace in the district
surrounding the church, music clubs,
heavy metal to conjunto
strip clubs, male and female,
the genitalia of one’s choice writhing
in erotic frenzy on a rose-lit stage,
straight bars,
gay bars,
bars for the undetermined, looking for something new
biker bars, a churning tidal pool of testosterone looking for a fight,
knives and chains preferred, to be worn
and to be used
high class cocktail bars
for those who want to slum
without getting too slummy, millennials,
and college kids looking for something to talk about
at the banking or real estate conventions of their future,
the semi-daring who want to walk the down-low without touching
or being touched, a prophylactic encounter with evil,
and the down-and-out bars, linoleum tabletops,
pickled eggs in streaked glass bottles, breakfast, lunch
and dinner de jour, the bar, the slobbering drunks
asleep at the tables, fronts for the $1,000 ante
poker tables behind the green, felt door in the back

Mickie, known and welcome everywhere,
knows the down-low and will take you there,
show you the sights, introduce you
to all the most colorful characters,
all the shady gents and ladies
who will pat your back and call you
by your first name like you are
an old reform school buddy…

Mickie will take you there...

but be ready to get out on your own
If you can,
because that part is just not
Mickie’s job

a 78-year-odd fat man
​
so,
​I’m a 78-year-old fat man…but wait,
poetry is about truth and beauty
and while there is no beauty in a 78-year-old fat man,
truth is still important, and the truth is, though
I am already a fat man, I’m not as fat a man
as I used to be, and I just turned 78 a few weeks ago…
so
abiding by the poetic requirement for truth
it should be more correctly said that I am
a recent 78-year-old, not-as-fat-as-he-used-to-be
man, and the further truth is like so many in my contingent
I hate change and mostly I hate change
(affirming, because change means I’m going to have to learn new stuff
and I believe, fervently, even, that at the age of
just 78, fat, skinny, or perfectly formed,
such a man should already know what he needs to know
to live a full 78-year-old life…
I mean, I like many in my regiment, I always like
to read new stuff about stars and galaxies
and dinosaurs and ancient tribes of ancient peoples,
and various other oddities and monstrosities of life
unknown before my time, but I only like to learn such stuff
as long as I don’t have to learn too much about it,
in fact,
I prefer to know just a little bit, just enough to know enough
to set my imagination churning,
because, it is
a fact,
my imagination churning produces much more interesting stuff
to know than anything I would know by actually knowing
real stuff…
and that works great for me, since I read such
science news and other such stuff just looking for
stuff to fill me up like an over-ripe melon with pseudo-science
and interesting fantasy that I might expound upon here
and at other venues where actually knowing stuff
is not strictly
required…
but other than that kind of stuff,
the stuff I don’t want to learn is the stuff
most sixteen year olds already know and I figure
if a sixteen year old already knows it why in the world should
a 78 year old, not-as- fat-as-before man bother with knowing it
too because it just seems to me that such a man
ought to know
just about everything he actually needs to know to make it
though his day…
as to the rest,
well,
take my computer, so old it’s almost steam-powered,
but old as it is, it is my faithful friend
and like any of the other friends
I’ve buried or except to bury within the next few years,
I dread the time when its time is up
and I have to go looking for a new computer friend,
it is just like I hate the idea of going out and finding new regular
friends when the old ones
bite the dust…
it’s oh so much more complicated…
learning a whole new set of demands and expectations and idiosyncrasies
and all the other stuff that goes with maintaining a healthy and productive
relationship…
like my phone and my wife’s new car - I’ve been talking on a phone and driving
for 65 years and none of what I learned now seems irrelevant
to making a phone call or driving over to the corner store
for a Baby Ruth, except that the complications now on both the phone
and the car almost make me hesitant to go out in the world
without a tag-along second grader to keep me legal and in the technical
loop…
and, ah, Baby Ruth, now there’s a constant in my life but I’m finding them
harder to find in the candy aisle
is that the next indignity, Baby Ruths becoming another historical oddity
confined to glass display cases in museums of the latest antiquities,
leaving me to learn all the particular rules
and wherefores and whereupon
of a Snickers or Mars Bar?
wouldn’t surprise me…
but then with 78 years upon this twirleybird
planet,
not much does…

​

​
saved by the blond with long legs and large breasts

breakfast this morning
amid a cohort
of old men, their little convention badges
hanging from their shirt pockets

an old coot’s convention
at one of the nearby hotels,
I suppose

a convention chair, I imagine,
calling the convocation to order, loudly,
the hearing in the audience leaning over
to pass the message on to those
whose aged ears
can only hear sounds in two or three
frequencies that only dogs
can hear, certainly not
to the human voice, no matter how loudly
announced…

two by two they come into
the restaurant, wives (usually younger)
in tow, sitting with their fellow
conventioneers, tables of old men
leaning across the table to hear,
conversation of whats? and whats? and
say that again…

makes me think of years ago
when I was the keynote speaker
at a gathering of deaf people
(yes, I know, what does a hearing keynote
speaker have to say to a room of the deaf
and how often does he have to say it)
and I remember seeing
all the people crowding the hotel
restaurant, signing to their friends
at their table and across the room,
the whole room a tidal wave
of waving hands and fingers, naturally
leaving me wondering what
they were saying
about me

but that’s another story…

meanwhile , just as I was about
to succumb to the contagion of crankiness certain
when too many old people
mingle together
in too small a space,
a young woman entered the restaurant,
tall, leggy and blond, with large beasts like the prow
of a golden sail ship pushing softly
and proudly through
the creaky curtain that enveloped the room,
the age haze that made it hard for me,
a cranky old man, myself, to
breathe, the thick air that exposed
all my ego driven lies and evasions, the ones
we tell ourselves and pretend to believe,
the crowd of old men
like mirrors that tell truths I cannot tell myself,
that, like it or not,
shows you exactly as you are,
all those secrets that make the me
no one else can see
saved this day
by the lovely proud breasts and long legs
and blond hair like sunlight in
the dark, allowing back into the room
the magic of this old man’s
gift of self-deception

​

 
my life with chickens

let me summarize:

much of my early life
was spent shoveling chickenshit
from beneath roosting nests

every Saturday
when other kids were watching Howdy Doody
I was shoveling chickenshit

later in my life
as I continued through my course of education
I continued to shovel chickenshit
pushed by dim-witted persons presumed
to know more than me

then
even later, a job delivering frozen chickens
to supermarkets, naked, pink-pimpled bodies on ice,
laid out like a serial killer’s trophy case

(at least, there wasn’t any chickenshit involved, unless
you count the boss whose chickenshit daughter
dumped me for a former best
friend)

and finally, as I
ever climbed to new levels of authority
in my profession, I became
an acknowledged expert in the conveyance
of chickenshit to the unfortunates
who worked for me,
a highly successful career I had,
owing in large part
to my near-lifetime experience
with the subject
at hand…

​

​A child of San Antonio
​
Little Lina,
Born an Afghan child,
Now a child of San Antonio
Since moving here with her family
Two years ago…

Three years old when she disappeared
From the play area in front of her apartment,
Turning four now, wherever she is
\
An area-wide search, thousands of volunteers,
Through the city and near-by cities,
Through the hills and pastures in between,
Navy divers search the rivers and creeks all around

Little Lina not found yet, sleeping last night
And many nights before in a strange bed,
In strange places, amongst strange people

That is the last best hope
Of her family, for, if she sleeps,
Wherever she sleeps,
She is yet alive

Against all hope, the city joins her parents
As they weep, pray to all the gods of San Antonio,
And await her
Return
​

 want to go deep
 
I want to go deep,
find that far-down place
available only to true spelunkers
of souls abiding
in cosmic
deep

but
I
can’t
go
deep

when the conversation
in the next booth
up
is so interesting

a woman, a teacher I’m thinking,
talking to an attorney,
the teacher
trying to convince the attorney
that a child, a three-year-old,
is in danger,
being abused by his parents,
and she marshals her arguments,
one after another, a catalog of observations,
and the attorney objects to each one,
you’re being such a defense lawyer,
she says to him,
I’m having nightmares about this
she says,
but the attorney is unmoved…

such a strange discussion over breakfast,
I think,
breakfast business
meetings
commonplace in these parts,
but usually a boss type
giving sales updates, handing out attaways,
describing bottom lines past
and expectations
future,
pretty standard, an exercise
in power, getting people out of bed early
to listen, on their own time,
to the latest pin stripe
exhortations…

lots of business meetings
I’ve been to, meetings I’ve called or been called to,
meetings I’ve listened in on from here
at my corner table, but never a meeting this intense,
even when it was lovers meeting,
trying to build a relationship or, sometimes, with tears
and angry words, trying to put a dead relationship in its grave,
people in extremis, but this meeting, this impassioned defense
of a child at risk, ultimately failing, ultimately a casualty
of a lawyer’s disbelief, the intensity of the meeting
and the ramifications of its inconclusive
conclusion…

how in the world am I supposed to plumb the depths
of my soul when this kind of stuff
is going on
around me, my spelunking blocked
at the cavern’s entry, like giant stones rolled
from the side of the hill, blocking…

---

don't bother trying to roll the stones away...

I just won’t get down there today
anyway…
​

cold truths of life and death in black and white

atop a rise
a mound of earth
an ancient burial mound
looking out over
a snowed-over field
white field
black skeleton of a winterized tree
thin black line of a frozen creek
five black horses
led by a white horse
ghost against the snow
legs lifted high
above the snow
crossing

(Colorado, February, 2008)
​

From my first book, "Seven Beats a Second" in 2007, art on every page by Vincent Martinez.



Eyes Of Sister Jude 

sharp eyes
like tempered blades
that cut clean through angry


guarded eyes
that weigh and judge
and stand ever alert for betrayal



dark eyes, deep,
softened once for love,
then moistened by a long night's weeping


but only once,
and it was long ago
​

a back-story on this. when my son started at Texas State University, we bought a small trailer out in the country for him to live in. when he finished school, we began to rent the trailer, which worked fine for a couple of years. until we ended up with a renter who we finally had to toss out. when leaving he did several thousand dollars' worth of damage to the trailer. most of the repairs we paid someone to do. some we attempted to do ourselves.


APPROXIMATELY EXCELLENT


Today
Was another day
At the money pit,
Laying down
Kitchen tiles this time


It is said to be a very precise business,
This tile-laying thing,
And I’m not
Widely known as a person
Of frequent
Precision


More
Of an approximation type guy,
That’s me, but I put that new tile down
Anyway,
And know my knees hurt,
And my…
Well,
Without bothering to name
All the various parts,
Just say,
Everything,
Hips down
Hurts


And it may be true,
Even precisely true,
That an individual of a perfectionist bent
Who insists on a true northerly orientation
Might find fault with the trueness
Of the line
Of my
Tile


But another person, say,
Another person of a more approximitistic nature,
Willing to drift his orientation a degree or two,
Or even three, north northeasterly could very well
Look at how my tiles line up
And find it quite
Sufficient,
In fact,
That person, knowing that the lowest professional
Bid for this work was 965 dollars
And 37 cents
Precisely,
Would almost certainly
Say that the free work done today
Was, in fact, quite excellent,
approximately

​

Slipping Away

1.

my mind is blind
to the crisp autumn sky
and the creek running clear
and the squirrel 
teasing my dog,
a backyard clown
mocking the quivering
puffed-chest forward
self-righteousness
of a small dog
facing a large world

my eyes see none of this,
for like a fist
clenched tight against itself
I am closed to all but anger,
a simmering constant
since the last election,
anger,
not just at the loss
of mine against theirs,
but at the outcome
as a symptom
of the nature years of my life
in these later years
like a lifetime
of being on the wrong side

ii.

I feel the passing of time now
like never before,
time and opportunity
slipping away,
life space lost, like
water squeezed from a cloth,
disappearing in an eddy
down a drain,
leaving an approximation of me
to fill the place i had before
until the day I need no space at all

iii.

as I read the obituaries in the morning
or stand at the grave of my father
as I did last week in a park
green with the growth of recent rain,
I cannot reconcile the contradictions
of death and life, how the life I see
in the obituary photos and the light
I remember in my father's eyes
can disappear in an on-rush of dark,
one minute to the next, life to death,
how it is that I, too, will some day slip
into that vortex of night and never return

iv.

I think of the eternal nature of atoms
and how they combine and recombine
over uncountable eons to create
illusions of form, and in some
of those illusionary constructs
a spark of life and consciousness
and beings like you and me
and all those whose obituaries 
I read ever morning,
and my father dead 42 years,
the illusion of him gone forever
to seed the soil he lies in
and the grass and trees and clouds
over his head and, someday
in the great recycling that brings
all the old to something new,
perhaps another form with life
and a sense of self and universe
outside of self that is the cradle
where rests the truth, for life to last
​forever, we must over and over die
​

Art by Vincent Martinez - with poem, from Seven Beats a Second


lying in the sun with Susan

quiet bay

no sound but the light rustle
of marsh grass in the gulf breeze

she
lies on the deck, legs spread,
as if to thrust herself
at the summer sun

sweat glistens 
on the inside of her thigh
and my tongue aches
for the taste of her