Wayne F. Burke
Do the Herky-JerkyLines chopped like veggies. Ready
to go into the pot. Or like a bad driver's failure to anticipate. Quick stops: brake's red hot. Like Bennington, Vermont: a stop sign on every corner. Like an unfinished thought. Like a construction site. Be prepared for delays. Proust would never go this way. Nobody but a poet chopped. Or reader dragged behind like a tow line. From place to place. Like a corpse. Driven about. A drunk at the wheel of the hearse. The corpse says "let me out." The car is stopped. Or not. The periods accumulate. Like buckshot. An ellipsis sneaks in...why not? Louise Gluck: the less great early stuff. First book: Firstborn. Chopped on a block. Celery and carrots. Into the pot. A boiled plot. This poem has come to it's start. I chop it off with a dot. Pink ElephantsI spent years in a crib
in an upstairs room of my grandparent's home with dust motes in the shaft of afternoon sun and heraldic patterns of the gray floor rug and sheen of varnished woodwork and my grandparents who slept in the bed between my brother's crib and mine-- I had a plastic mattress, a smiling giraffe, a purple hippo; one night I heard my brother scream "PINK ELEPHANTS!" and the overhead light came on like a sun and my grandmother's face hung over the bars of my crib and the gold crucifix she wore around her neck swung like a pendulum. Pseudo-Artists and GigolosI lived with Steinman and ArturoIn a house in
Somerville, outside Boston. Steinman was a poet and Arturo an artist, but neither made much poetry or art, but did make plenty of girls—girls with names like “Bubbles” and “Sunflower”-- in and out the door. I slept on a mattress on the floor and did not make any girls because the girls were not interested in me: I got drunk and high and woke in the mornings by myself and hung over and pulled my unwashed janitor’s uniform on and caught the number 10 bus into the city, stuffed like a toe in a sock; another foot in the race, sweating and feeling bad, ready to puke as I pushed a vacuum cleaner, set up chairs, trashed… I climbed stairs to the roof of the hotel to Read or sleep. I was the only white guy until Frank got hired: I liked the black guys better. Frank had dead eyes, a broad planed face and said he hated “niggers.” One of the blacks, Cooney, hated “honkies,” especially me. He was happy as shit on the day he said that the boss want- ed to see me in the office. I knew what was coming, so did Cooney. Being fired was no big deal: hell, I was an artist not a janitor. Mammals & Reptiles
You sit like a keg, a boulder
on the chair twiddling your thumbs, leather wing tip shoes on a strut and Breel-Creamed hair shining in the electric light’s hum. Grandma apologizes again for waking us an hour too soon. I read my library book THE AGE OF MAMMALS and wait for the hour hand to turn on the face of the moon-shaped wall clock. Outside the sky is black as the La Brea tar pits where saber-toothed cats went to feed but met death. * Swirling black and white clouds war above the ridge line of the mountain. Into the back seat I climb when we reach Buddy’s house. The light comes on as Buddy enters, pumpkin-sized head in silhouette. “Who’s that, Al?” he says, glancing back. I ride in shadow on vinyl the engine sound a lullaby moving me to sleep. * The city is a cliff side above: smell of cigarette smoke and beer; I watch people walk in drizzle as windshield wipers beat time. Yankee Stadium is drenched and dark as dusk; a big man in the grandstand catches a foul ball in his bare hand and stands like the Statue of Liberty. A line drive hit by Maris sails into the right field stands like a bullet and I wonder who caught it and how badly it hurt. I am scared, in the public urinal to take my bibet out and pee, but do; after the game is rained out I follow you, broad-shouldered hippo in the crowd. * At the Bronx Zoo, while you and Buddy watch a crocodile eat a rabbit, I hop to a glass cage and watch a cobra rise like a rope and then suddenly strike the glass before my face… On the ride home you and Buddy laugh and smoke while I sit, invisible bored, staring out the window waiting for the Dawn of Civilization.
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The Sub-Mariner
(Note: The Sub-Mariner was a Marvell Comics
superhero, dating from 1939) The Sub-Mariner, 60-plus years old is sinking; he's still got the little wings and the Max Baer body but he's not as quick as he was and he's gulping for air some days though still powerful but routinely late now to the scene, like cops who stop for doughnuts, he gets there in his own sweet time, moving in like a manta ray with arms out-stretched like in a crucifixion only more symbol now than the real thing... The seas grew too big too violent like capitalism and he began to know fear-- the shark, the barracuda, the electric eel he used to drive away like children no longer move at his approach and even the walrus, whose whiskers he's adopted and the wrinkled skin around the arm pits-- doesn't move for him-- everything has changed, and The Sub-Mariner does not know if for the better. The Maidafter my grandmother
went into the hospital my grandfather hired Lena, a maid, big as a refrigerator with silver hair parted in the middle of her skull and plastered to her head like a shower cap; she took the nearly empty catsup bottle and run water from the faucet into it and returned it to the table; after dinner she encouraged the four of us kids to beat each other with pillows that we were not allowed to touch, and she roared with laughter as we slipped and slid across the linoleum, the only time the four of us ever did something fun together but the fun ended when my grandfather walked in with a face grave as sin and hawk-nose pointed at Lena who laughed at him too: levity trumping leviticus. Five Haikubusy afternoon:
clouds moving shadows lengthening leaves run like little fools across the busy highway dry leaves slither along the pavement on their bellies-- my father in the war the suckerfish
pushes up daisies in the garden walking into the nursing home to work last rays of sunshine on my face Words
Words that burn holes in cigarettes
words that stand like buildings on street corners sugary words on snow words on the run like 'tintinnabulation' or on the rebound like 'ding-dong' of sitting on their asses like 'plop' and 'glop' words to sing about like 'serosanguineous' words to write home about like 'lachrymose' tarchycardic words to have a heart attack over, sly words like 'estimable,' soft words like 'succor' and 'demur,' nonunion words like 'whopper-doodle,' dirty words like 'dipstick,' cute words like 'aver,' words that should not be said in public like 'medulla oblongata,' words for a rainy day like.'lugubrious,' suspect words like 'albeit,' Japanese words like 'hitherto,' over-used words like 'cool,' power words like 'Om,' words no one wants to hear any more like 'surreal,' words that sound like loose change in your pocket, such as 'insufficient...' Words and more words, up the ying-yang, down the hatch as in the beginning, and forever. A Man's Work
The clerk in the store said
“pickin’ oranges be a man’s work.” We had to rip the little buggers from the trees—like the state taking kids from a home—and the branches full of thorns, and the sweat pouring, enough to water lawns, and the farmer, a good ole boy racist atop his tractor, watching us bleed and sweat. Tied a noose onto a pole end to tug the topmost oranges off, wore long- sleeved shirts, laid a sheet to catch the yellow balls that fell in staccato bursts. A 3 by 5 foot bin 5 bucks worth. The farmer began to talk-up his daughter to us; Jamaicans in the next row out- picked us though; almond eyes, coffee skin, they did not chat. The bins filled slower than a baseball game; We got bored, ran out of talk, quit; had to boss each other: say “get to work you son- of-a-bitch!” Say “how about you, you ain’t done shit!” Like that. Cooled off at the swimming hole which was no Myrtle Beach but cold enough and wet. Listened to them bugs screech: WEEP! WEEP! WEEP! Regular as breath. Pocketed our money and headed for the coast and the Land of Milk and Honey, only we never made it, and probably never will. |
