MR. WONDERFUL DOES THE BEST HE CAN (7/4/21)

if my mind was geography
​
I hate to write poems
about being unable to write a poem
but let’s face it…

if my mind was geography,
it would be the Chihuahua Desert, nothing
but dry sand, angry frogs,
prickly pear cactus
and ugly bugs…

if my mind was a ship
it would be saying, “What
iceberg?”…

if my mind was a parking lot
it would be deserted
but for oil drips and
skid marks where glories past collided
with reality present…

if my mind was a coffee cup
it would be empty
except for coffee scum and a wet cigarette butt
on the bottom…

if my mind was a mountain
it would be underwater, never seen
and never climbed…

if my mind was an ancient Egyptian
it would be a mummy
wrapped
in sandpaper…

if my mind was a burro
it would be climbing
the Andes on cracked red
toenails…

if my mind was a sentry at Fort Knox
it would be asleep,
dreaming of copper pennies
and the baubles that bought Manhattan

if my mind was a poet
it would be writing about the twitchy fella
in the booth up front, my god,
he won’t stop talking,
facing the wall all a ‘bouncing
in his seat,
perhaps he’s the poet
in the woodpile,
twitching with the trickle
of a poem tickling
between his
ears

a poem, I’m thinking
nothing
like this one




​

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Riot on Sunset Strip

barku express

night
an envelope
closed
around me -
marked, “return
to sender”

---

parked bus
rumbles -
in the dark,
writing
my
first poem

---

crossing
the continental divide -
soft snow
drifting, first
snowball
fight

---

walking -
university
to downtown -
snow,
falling, cold,
soft angels touching

---

homes carved
in cliffs,
fires, cold
relics,
deserted -
all lost

---

Indian boys
replay Bighorn
revenge -
flatten grass
over
Custer’s grave

---

distant
mountains -
white on blue
like clouds
cresting -
first snow

---

dog pees
intently,
doesn’t see
rabbits
in the brush,
watching

---

journey ends
for the day -
dog snores,
dreams
rabbits -
running

​

my function

it is a beautiful day
today,
the kind of day I love,
temperatures in the mid-twenties,
bright sunshine,
the icicle splinters flying
in the wind gone, the air still,
trees reaching high
to reassert themselves
as tall guardians
of the day…

it’s the early mornings,
before the sun has risen that
has been hard on me
for the past several days,
the cold, colder in the dark,
a silent knife slicing
skin from my cheeks and nose…

dog-walking in the freezing dark,
the dog loving it all, sniffing and smelling
every leaf hanging cold and crisp
and dry on every ravaged
bush along the way, looking for,
who knows a dog’s mind, especially
this dog, near strange
in the extent of her curiosity,
missing her cat friend
who would walk with us
and encourage dog along if she began
too long dallying, pushing her cat head
against dog’s neck, time to go, time
to go, the cat, like me, not so happy
with the cold as the dog, the cat, Mama
cat, our morning companion, unseen
for over a week now…

I woke, as usual, at 5 this morning,
lying in bed, dog, as usual,
impatiently rattling her collar
beside the bed, time to go, time
to go, lying in bed,
thinking of the cold and the dark,
wishing dog had an opposable thumb
so that I could give her the leash
and tell her to go walk
herself

she would in a minute if she
could, I know, my small function
in our morning exercise,
we both know, is only to hold the
leash

An excellent place to be leaving

Even the non-believer driven to morning prayer

I can see the moon
through the large window by my booth,
hanging low over the meadow
like a silver coin
on a black felt table, so bright and clear
in the dry, cloudless sky
I can see all its dark ridges and rills,
and the face, a president’s
profile, eyes watching resolute
to the south, all clear and sharp,
the president’s pigtail
on the disc’s northern edge,
“in God we trust,”
it declares,
a declaration of dependence,
hopeful that he’s paying attention,
that it’s his moon
too
and that his fearsome eye
will not burn so brightly in the coming day,
his fire banked
and fresh breezes blowing
instead

​The big lie

just like my first girlfriend
​
my liberation box
is tight around me today…

feel like I should be doing something
that isn’t this…

a drive to the coast, or a slow dance on dusty country roads,
or a jaunt
out west, Hondo, Uvalde,
maybe all the way
to Del Rio…

or stay at home,
do those things I’ve been avoiding
all summer -

fence to repair, the volunteer oak
up front, couple of feet tall now, too close
to the house, perfect place
for it out back
with my other volunteers…

but I’m stuck in idle,
motor running
but going nowhere but here
in the parking garage of good
intentions…

dead time…

and I hate dead time,
too old for dead time, time too precious
to waste, but brain too clogged
with not-now, not-today, next-week, maybe-tomorrow
to figure out what to do with it…

everything sounds great
until the first step
is called
for

and it’s just too damn
hot
to take the call…

but that’s just an excuse

real reason
is my brain waves have gone flat

like yesterday afternoon


black clouds on the horizon,
the calm before the
storm
except
the storm
told us to fuck off
and went east
instead of south

a lot like my girlfriend
back in 1962…

thank you, Jesus
​
I am thinking this Sunday morning of Sundays
past, when I was a kid, in the back seat
of whatever beat-down Plymouth
we had at the time, going the eight miles
to the Lutheran church in the next town
over for a boring sermon by an intense, boring
pastor, a middle-aged man with a little
mustache like a gray-haired caterpillar on his upper lip,
an old-fashioned hellfire and damnation preacher
who taught us in confirmation class that
fossils were left buried in the earth
by Mr. Devil, crafty fellow, left there
for us to find so as to tempt us away
from the literal truth of the seven
days of creation…

half-asleep in the car, half-
asleep during the sermon, except
when the singing started, for despite the fumbled-fingered
organist, ancient woman in a modest hat, butcher
of music religious and profane,
I loved the singing…

the woman did her best, and was a volunteer, worth
all the nothing she was paid, so everyone sang, loudly, in hopes,
I suspected, of drowning out the organ, including my mother
who had a fine high voice, and my father whose deep
baritone vibrated the dark, varnished timber of the pews...

I sang along, too, trying to imitate my father’s voice,
coming out, instead, more like the crackling growl
of a coon chased by the dogs up a hackberry tree…

me and the old woman at the organ, we did our best,
preserved, despite the pounding we were giving it
the glorious old hymns, the beautiful, joyous
music of faith and affirmation
and although I haven’t passed through
the doors of a church except for weddings
and too many funeral in at least 50 years,
music I still love to hear…

“haven’t passed the doors of a church,” I said,
because I enjoyed the benefits of an excellent education
in the religion of my youth and later in other religions, becoming
an atheist, as do so many well-educated in the mysteries
of gods and their disciples, this transition from believer to skeptic,
to the intellectual wakening of certain non-belief,
coinciding, not entirely serendipitously with my discovery
of the pleasures of slow Sunday morning coffee
and a copy of the New York Times, my alternate sermon
of all the truth that’s fit to print…

it’s a long and not so interesting story, this passage
from Pastor Westermania, earnest and determinedly ignorant
for the sake of his faith, to the New York Times, but I am reminded
of it this Sunday a week from Easter Sunday, remembering
that my favorite church services were the sunrise
services, the faithful gathered on the church parking lot on Easter Sunday morning
as the sun rose on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God and Man, Bringer
of the gift of eternal life to all who believed in his holy name and cause…

it wasn’t so much the revelations that brought me
pleasure, because, in fact, I slept through most of it

it was the pancake breakfast that followed…

thank you, Jesus, I would think, for delivering us unto these pancakes
and can we do this again next year?

lust

like ol' Jimbo,
I lust
in my heart…

for power and fame, for a lottery winning number,
for another day, every day,
for some good chicken and dumplings
like my mother used to make,
for a sweet tasting watermelon like nature
grew in the field beside
the swimming hole when I was a kid,
for a more comfortable pair of
shoes, for a flatter belly and broader
shoulders like in days past, for hair to return
to the spot its departure left bare
on the top of my head,
for fast cars and, occasionally
loose women

ol’ Jimbo, he got to be President,
so I can’t feel too sorry for all his unrequited lusts, but
me, I’m going to have to settle today
for a meatloaf sandwich at that little restaurant
in the middle of tiny Utopia, Texas,
about
fifteen miles down the road from Welfare,
on the way to Comfort where
the old stone buildings
promise, at least, long life
in a place where old people in short pants
and flowery sun dresses and
straw hats will come
to visit
and take my picture…

---

but that won’t stop me from thinking about
chicken and dumplings and comfortable
shoes and fast cars and, especially,
loose women

Too early to declare this post done, so what to do next.

Maybe a couple more photos.



​

Mr. Wonderful just does the best he can
​
the Wonderful Wizard
of Oz
wasn’t so wonderful
but he wasn’t a bad guy
either, just a piss-poor wizard

though good enough, in the end,
to keep Oz safe in his so-un-Kansas world
with witches lurking at every point
of the compass and flying
monkey-monsters, and rusty tinmen,
and highly-flammable straw men
and lions who could never, ever
be counted on when the chips were
down, and munchkins, don’t forget
the munchkins, everywhere under
foot with their lousy singing, always
singing in their fingernail-on-a-chalkboard
squealy voices (how is a wizard ever supposed
to get a good night’s sleep)…

I mean, it takes a maybe
not so necessarily wonderful
but still
a pretty good wizard
to keep the gears of that
kind of place running, keeping
Oznians happy and content
and not having riots in the streets
and such and, not to forget,
the inflationary spiral since the devaluation
of gold bricks, simple things like
Oz-bread going from two gold bricks
to two and a half in just six Oz-months

you pretty much have to have
something on the ball
besides blowing curtains and a projector screen
and a booming, scary voice
to frighten Oz-children who might venture
into the wonderful palace
of the mighty
Oz…

I mean you try it,
even without that pesky girl
and her vicious mutt
it ain’t easy
being
the Great & Mighty
Wizard of anywhere, especially
a cockamamie place like
Oz

THIS POST IS COMPLETE

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