Wayne F. Burke - 2
A Moment "...the wave breaks over its own breaking"
—Jorie Graham, Never a misty Gulf Coast morning, white-capped waves lolly-gagging onto shore and creeping onto the beach before sliding back into jade overlap one wave after another leaving a wet stain of tan on mauve sand a sort of hem to the slippage back until waves meet in-coming out-going capped recapped talking in a megaphoned whisper and occasional Clap out beyond where waves KABOUSH the breakers fold and roll spreading a white froth for the lazy stroll shoreward and then retraction and again the frothy lace slide and spread the stain of wetness and scrum of newly formed jade wrinkles slowly advancing like old age. FallTrying to decide what to do with myself,
I sit on a park bench in the sunlight to think and I get caught in whirlwinds of yellow and rust-colored leaves rushing from one side of the park to the other like a mob storming a Bastille but then lying down just as quickly, spent apparently, until they get up and renew the rush only in a different direction obviously confused and unruly; a tornado of them whirls into the road and is run through by a truck and scattered; they are a spiritual force mainly though make a clatter on the sidewalk like tiny horses' hooves scuttling like the clouds across the sky, not sure where they are going either. Northdrying leaves like
clenched fists holding onto October trees; I am coming to the end of Celine's NORTH his tragic-clown-chronicle of post-collabo days when he, his wife Lilli, his friend and fellow fascist Le Vig, and Bebert the cat, fascist too, fled France and lived as "Franzosen" in Prussia, protected by remaining Nazis, ones not dying in Berlin, 1944...quite a trip...the good Doctor Destouches...the racist Celine...his apocalyptic style...the three dots...three Franzosen...they've kept me company...800 pages!..me, alone in Vermont...I'm not complaining! Not at all... just a fact...like the leaves... dying, clinging to the trees with my fingertips. Stone Cold Dead
One of the other LNAs ran
out of the room shouting help help! and I ran in. Henry was lying in the bed vomiting spewing it out like a geyser from the spout hole of a whale. I cranked the head of his bed up fast as I could. Vomit covered his front like a multi-colored party bib. He looked up toward the corner of the room and his blue eyes turned bright; then his face turned gray as cement and he died as the other LNA returned with the suction-machine and the nurse neither of which was of any use then. |
A Lark Up the Nose of TimeWe left Kansas after
the bars closed, Ron and Steve and me in a station wagon that I passed-out in the back of and woke below a huge steel arch high above like a gate to heaven, but it was Saint Louis which we bombed through all the way to Daytona and got a motel room on the beach and sat indoors for three days as hurricane winds drove white sea horses to shore and branches of palm trees whirled like broken helicopter blades... On day four we got sun burned and drunk and I was so hungry I punched-out the Plexi-glass of a candy machine and tried to eat a candy bar older than Methuselah and in the morning I woke wet from piss in my bed and covered up the spot and we drove back out of money out of smokes and Ron got ugly without his fix and Steve a born-again liar told one whopper after another all the way to Ottawa. Sophomore
Walking with my girl,
holding her hand, to the drugstore downtown for a cherry coke, careful not to slurp from the straw, hearing cat-calls from my buddies on the street and listening to her chatter as we made our way to the cemetery where we made-out on the soft grass, her softer jacket the tombstones granite she had to be home by nine her jacket stayed buttoned like her; I would have betrayed Christ for a touch but she was locked-up tight; I dumped her for an older girl, a tease who dumped me and I began to hang out on the corner, drinking beer and acting tough, one of the boys who went “over the line” on weekend nights to drink in New York State bars and drive back drunk along snaky roads and passing cars like A. J. Foyt at Indy. Octoberthe afternoon sky black,
baby blue, charcoal gray, streaked white, full of specks, birds, windblown leaves; the hissing trees jiggling and a witch with pointed hat, broomstick, shoots like an arrow behind two big pines and goes down along the ridge line somewhere as the air turns ice cold and a mile-long train of crows, ragged scraps flap their fingered wings over trees blood-red and tangerine. Muhammad Ali: Dead at 74boxer with a knife-sharp mind; his decency
shone through, through the cameras he sat or stood in front of, framed in the picture of our times: his metamorphoses from caterpillar to butterfly part of the history of the 21st century. He's in every family's tree; real as Nixon and Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X and Martin King; his victories "shook up the world," his defeats saddened all who favored brains over brawn, wit over witlessness, poetry over the prosaic; he brought class to a de-classed sport; brought light and laughter to those trapped in dark places; brought good-nature to an ill-nature world; he was the King, like Elvis, of his domain, and glad I am to have lived during this King's reign.
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