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Songs
________________________________________
It takes a little extra oil
but it hauled my ass here
and it sure isn’t for sale.
+ + +
A scurrying burger wrapper I
mistake for a possum billowing
across the field.
+ + +
We sing these songs.
We sing them wrong.
We are so grateful!
+ + +
Headlights illuminate the horse
Riding a trailer down the road.
+ + +
A senile emperor presides
but all is not lost:
the pink sky;
the fables;
the snare drum.
+ + +
The foster dog shifts his head
just as I do on the old pillow
out here in the woods I think
we’re starting to make it work.
+ + +
She gazes and squirms
while I move to music!
+ + +
Doing that chrysalis thing
with this quick generation:
ready to open onto spring
but still a little ways away.
+ + +
With newly broken teeth
I fall through the cell phone
and land at your feet.
+ + +
Savor your pleasures!
The boys in the desert,
the boys in the jungle,
kill and die
to make us rich.
+ + +
Grandmothers pause on the bench
remembering the instructions.
+ + +
On this rodeo morning we
wake in the mud to the
sound of trucks lurching,
memories in their beds.
+ + +
With these forty dogs
she rides the
long winter.
+ + +
Such grimy errors
I no longer make
with this priority
here at the door.
+ + +
Man walks past
himself,
dressed in pink,
dressed in brown.
+ + +
I dream a pitcher plant that
changes place to catch a gnat.
+ + +
They cannot call the cops
fast enough to catch me
so I will undress right here
under the sun on this river
and let God make the call.
+ + +
My best friend is so patient
ducking in deference to this
silly small behavior of mine.
+ + +
That drunken neighbor produces
a loud loogie over the fence.
+ + +
Sitting in a rebel’s tent
on a liar’s recommendation
I have only great sympathy
for how hard life can be.
+ + +
Any heat around here
our bodies create.
+ + +
My old friend
are you there
or is this your
spouse talking?
+ + +
A good deal we’ll give you
out here in the country
says the man with a belt
made from a dead cow.
+ + +
Obituaries run long
for friends of empire
while the death toll
of freedom fighters
we murmur gagged.
+ + +
He was a good boy;
now we have just
goodbye to say.
+ + +
Bizarrely,
we fly!
+ + +
While you and your mother equivocate
I leap in through the hole in the ice.
Under here I smell the algae!
Under here I smell the algae!
+ + +
With the raked up leaves
I have much in common.
+ + +
Our friends worry about us
because we laugh and laugh.
+ + +
Speak in your tongue
so we can be honest
about this difference.
+ + +
Men with FBI files likely
lead interesting lives
making them much more
American than mere
patriots at the grocery.
+ + +
Our descendants
will also stare
into campfires.
+ + +
You teach
me patience as
I worry after
you for hours
at home.
+ + +
Nicholas often weeps
or goes to the doctor.
Does he not know his
way to the beach?
+ + +
We cast a baited line
into the pile of pills
you swim around in
and wait all evening.
+ + +
In the way of trappers,
truckers, and sailors,
I mail my heart home
on a constellation.
+ + +
Who needs that sleep?
Shouldn’t this time be spent
celebrating your beauty?
+ + +
Of crimes I committed
to get me to this place
I have so little to say.
+ + +
Lines on your face
say you are an old man,
but you are not an old man,
you are my father.
+ + +
With my payday loan
I buy some ingredients
and make for you my
oldest family recipe.
+ + +
Please come out of the monastery.
I’m so sick of your medicine talk!
I’m so tired of your morning hums!
I’m so done with your new beginnings!
Plus they won’t let me in until you
give up your room in there.
+ + +
Strolling this laurel gallery
the raging outside
becomes invisible.
+ + +
My mama’s pain
I recite on only
most normal nights.
+ + +
We see you kissing at
Denver International Airport.
Under the fluorescence,
even!
+ + +
He empties
out completely,
rich with trust.
+ + +
Sometimes the ocean
you are
tosses me ashore.
Without thinking
I wade back in, soon
again a fish.
+ + +
The noose scowls
jealous
of the playground swing.
+ + +
My eyes
with your chest
at each breath.
(I try to die
alongside you.)
+ + +
Unyoke us!
The endless world
yearns to be known.
+ + +
Socks in a
bin, the people
are unsorted
socks.
+ + +
Organs, give me
guts, give me
invisible things
unseen
until we spill.
Oh we spill!
+ + +
Flag at his hand,
gold in his mouth,
the judge
carries me away.
+ + +
Schools close this week
as deer season starts,
rekindling a more
ancient curriculum.
+ + +
Bone-tired,
I cannot walk.
Take my skin!
Make a canoe!
Go in me fast,
and farther!
+ + +
Incense dyes
the senses
purple.
Cedars sway
beyond
stained glass.
Do You
now
hear me?
+ + +
I stopped here for water and
here
I go to weddings,
to funerals,
and wave at passing cars.
+ + +
All the sky-blue hours
hard work consumes me
until velvet falls again
to let me crawl inside
the great mystery.
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Postscript
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No one likes poetry. It drones, it rhymes, and it obfuscates. Even when it’s good, we don’t have time for it because our attention spans have been brutally maimed by the last decade.
Salvaging the genre will take a chameleon move. Poetry can find its place in the fractions of imagery that saturate our very visual lives. It can become part of the scrolling onslaught: the blurry sequence of pangs; life flashing before your eyes; Caesar stabbed 23 times.
But it should stay poetry, which means it should mean.
Via a Navy songbook, a grandparent’s delusion, a relevant introduction by Vine Deloria, Jr., and the hard work of scholars circa 1900, I stumbled into a model. The collected Songs of the Chippewa, a product of 10,000 years and many tens of thousands of singers, can be found recorded in The Path on the Rainbow and elsewhere.
Here, I follow those songs to reflect the cultural enterprise I know best. These are them, songs of the baldhead.
Skookum Atlas 