Last night I took a trip from central Pennsylvania back to my home in New York City. It didn’t go well. Here’s my account of the doomed voyage, as told to my Twitter followers. You can be one of them by following @jasondcrane.

The story begins about an hour into the trip…

• 8:48 p.m. — Looks like our bus has broken down somewhere in rural PA. No announcement yet, but we’ve been on the roadside for a while now.
• 8:54 p.m. — It is very, very, very dark out here in rural PA. The bus is completely off. We’re sitting in absolute darkness.
• 9:00 p.m. — Aaaand now we’re moving again. Let’s see how long this lasts. I keep expecting the bus driver to be Rod Serling.
• 9:04 p.m. — I’m no mechanic, but I give this bus a 40% chance of making it to New York City.
• 9:06 p.m. — I also love that the bus driver hasn’t said one word to us all this time about what happened.
• 9:50 p.m. — We just hit a deer. This bus is doomed.
• 10:03 p.m. — Post-deer, we’re pulled over again. The bus driver asked for a male pasenger to go outside with her. I went. Front of the bus is smashed.
• 10:15 p.m. — We’re going to limp along to a rest area where we’ll switch to another, hopefully less doomed, bus.
• 10:42 p.m. — I’d like to publicly thank @reneeyoxon for suggesting I make this Voyage Of The Damned today.
• 10:46 p.m. — Picture, if you will, a man trapped on an eternal bus ride through Pennsylvania. There’s a signpost up ahead. It reads…The @Megabus Zone.
• 10:57 p.m. — Driver has MacGyvered part of the busted headlight and Mr. @Megabus has cleared us to leave. Driver is eating a salad. Then we’ll go.
• 11:01 p.m. — “@Megabus: We’ll get at least part of your bus to its destination, no matter what we have to kill along the way.”
• 11:08 p.m. — Sweet weeping Jesus, we’re on the road! New York here we (possibly) come (if we don’t hit anything else)!
• 12:34 a.m. — You have got to be kidding me. Now we’re stuck in a looong line of cars on the highway at 12:33 a.m. Accident? Construction? God hates me?
• 12:45 a.m. — I don’t know what I did to anger the gods before this bus trip, but I’d like to apologize.
• 1:03 a.m. — People are getting out of their cars and walking around on the highway. That’s a good sign, right? I hate Pennsylvania.
• 1:06 a.m. — It’s on nights like this that I wish I still had the cyanide tablet that Mom used to pack in my lunchbox.
• 1:32 a.m. — Guy behind me is having a heated argument with a woman. He keeps smacking my seat. I ask him quietly to stop. He starts yelling at me.
• 1:35 a.m. — A breakdown. A deer strike. A huge accident. We haven’t moved in an hour. Six hours and counting for a 4.5 hour trip. Not out of PA yet.
• 1:47 a.m. — We are doing a k-turn. In a bus. On the highway. No idea where we might be going. Doesn’t look good.
• 1:54 a.m. — Off the highway. Driving on surface streets through a small Jersey town. Presumably toward our next accident or hijacking.
• 2:01 a.m. — Passed a billboard that said “Think Red.” Guy behind me yelling into his phone. At someone on the upper level of this bus. I’m thinking red.
• 2:07 a.m. — The guy behind me is so loud that the bus driver just turned on her mic to ask him to be quiet. And you’ll never believe why he’s angry…
• 2:08 a.m. — …He’s angry because he apparently fell asleep with his thumb in his mouth and his partner slapped it out. And he’s enraged.
• 2:16 a.m. — Every other truck that was rerouted by the cops continued straight on this road. We exited. We’re pulled over again. Driver on her cell.
• 2:24 a.m. — If we ever do reach Manhattan, I’ll still have to get to Brooklyn by subway in the wee hours on a Sunday.
• 2:41 a.m. — Hour 7 of this 4.5 hour trip.
• 2:55 a.m. — We’re at the Lincoln Tunnel. I may start crying with joy.
• 3:04 a.m. — Off the bus. Headed for the subway.
• 3:55 a.m. — Home. Going to bed. My 4.5 hour trip took 8.5 hours. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I wrote this on the bus from Albany to New York City.

The Blues

1.

it all goes back to the blues
that’s what they’d have you believe
the gravel your boots crunch
must lead to a dusty crossroad
every baby’s cry is a bottleneck slide
on the worn strings of a scarred guitar
whiskey runs from the kitchen faucet
the radiator’s busted so body heat will have to do

2.

snowscape bus rides to big city lights
he’s seated across from a pale redhead
who looks like she’s crying but isn’t
he pretends to be watching the trees
safe in the anonymity of sunglasses
they won’t be meeting later in a juke joint
she won’t nurse a beer or lean in close
to hear him over the sound of the band

Listen using the player above.

/ / /

the trick to travel
isn’t remembering
your underwear or socks
it’s knowing which books to take

/ / /

part of a river of stones

I wrote this poem a couple years ago during a train trip from Albany, NY, to Rochester, NY. (The poem is in my book, Unexpected Sunlight.) I shot the video yesterday while traveling by train from New York City to Albany. As always, I like to acknowledge my debt to Dave Bonta for inspiring me to try my hand at video poems.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I first lived in Japan from 1991-92. During that time I picked up a Penguin edition of Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho’s book Narrow Road To The Deep North. I’ve loved him ever since. Not just his work, but the very idea of him.

Ah, Basho, who were you really?

My friend the Japanese literature scholar –
by which I mean to say he is a scholar
of Japanese literature and a literature scholar
who is Japanese — thinks you were a ninja.
Or a famous warrior of some sort.
I can’t quite remember. But his point
is that no mere poet could have passed through
all those military checkpoints.
And no old-man poet could have covered
all that ground as fast as you say you did.
Were you lying? Is all poetry fiction?

Perhaps you started out from Tokyo –
they called it Edo then –
with every intention of completing the journey
along that famous narrow road.
Perhaps you packed your paper and brushes
to write those glorious verses.
Perhaps you set out upon the path,
made it as far as the first resting place
before your old bones got the better
of your young heart.
Poets invent whole worlds –
all you needed to do was describe
the world that already existed. Even a mortal
could do that.

Me, I like the ninja idea.
Poets are thought of as many things –
deadly is rarely one of them.
We need more poet ninjas, creeping about
on moonless nights, stealing
into the rooms of young lovers, leaving
a verse or two on the pillow.
Gone as silently as the break
in this line.

Then again, maybe I’d rather
you were just a poet.
Not a liar. Not a ninja.
Not a warrior traveling in disguise.
Just a man who wished to see the mountains
of Japan’s interior with his own eyes.
A man who used his paper and his brushes
to let us see those same mountains,
thousands of miles away,
all these many years later.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #14 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a “crossroads” poem.

Pennsylvania or bust

five hours from anywhere
he stares out the bus window
wipes off the occasional
condensation, sign of life
the big buildings of the city
give way to the small towns
on the border then to the
trees and trees and trees
there are still pastures here
acres and acres of land
given over to cows and sheep
he falls asleep as the sun sets
head resting against the window
dreams traveling
in the opposite direction

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Poem #13 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a question-and-answer poem.

What is loneliness?

10:30 p.m.
34 degrees
corner of Western & Tryon
waiting for the #10 bus
with two drunks
& a dead phone battery

what we choose to remember

in the park on the hill
trees shade the monuments
to the dead, the killed

mottled sunlight hits the plumes
of a fountain, the breeze
carries mist down the hill
toward the center of the city

a man with twitching legs
smokes pot on a bench
in front of the courthouse

do this in memory of me

there’s a rainbow on the east side
of the fountain
I’m glad I don’t live here

From 100925 Pine Hollow Arboretum

Here are photos from my trip to Pine Hollow Arboretum in Slingerlands, NY. I took a tour of the grounds and then heard Walt Franklin read his poetry and travelogues. What a wonderful afternoon (with a nice bike ride there and back, too). At the bottom of this post is a video of Walt reading an excerpt from one of his longer poems about trees.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Another poem written on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga.

Water Song

how many lives have been lived along this water?
what was here before?
before the condos
before the artificial park
before the riverboats full of tourists
before riverfront revitalization
before speeding cars on one bridge
and Sunday strollers on the other
how many souls has this water collected?
what songs have been sung on its banks?
and if it’s quiet enough, can you still hear them?

Listen to this poem using the player above.

On the Tennessee River

woke up in a Manhattan hi-rise
going to bed a Tennessee riverboat
neither of them is home
home is a carousel horse
I can never quite grab on to
not these lightning strikes
or the rain on this river
home was our shared bed
the sound of little boys wrestling
it’s so quiet now, so very quiet
there are bridges on both sides of me
and I have nowhere to go on either one

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Another poem written during my recent stay in Chattanooga, TN.

Lights, Camera, Action!

this town is like a Hollywood set
look behind the storefronts
the buildings that line Broad Street
there’s nothing there
the bricks rise to the skies
joggers clot the river bridge
but the heart has been cut out
Walter Cronkite once said
this was the dirtiest town in America
it’s cleaner now – wiped clean of its history
all the people shunted out to the pavement
paradise, never far from a strip mall
there are historical markers
on every downtown street
they are little more than headstones
marking empty graves, the city’s corpse
long ago merged with the soil
covered with the dust of razed landmarks
“Right where Starbucks is, this is where
your granddaddy built tank engines
to fight the Nazis.”

Listen to this poem using the player above.

in any given set

we walked around it all day
that little Japanese tea cup
sitting on what had been the dining room floor

it said Sanriku on the side
in bold yellow kanji
evoking memories of contented nights at the restaurant

when I arrived in Japan
my host mother could only say
“Are you Jay?” — still three more words than I

could say to her
ignorant as I was
of foreign tongues and other people’s customs

nineteen years gone
and I know more words
but I still wonder whether I understand

most of what you say
or what I am supposed to do
in any given set of circumstances

the little tea cup
occupies its fixed place
on the floor, forces us, unknowing, to give it room

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I wrote this poem today while sitting on a rock along the Housatonic River in Connecticut. The photo below, linked from this site, is of the exact spot where this poem was written. That seems like a remarkable stroke of luck, but actually this spot is one of few along this part of the Housatonic with easy access from Route 7. You can click the photo to see a larger version.

Housatonic Reverie

This is my river, the Housatonic.
This water flows through my land.
I learned to walk near its banks,
Played on a street that bore its name.

I had to turn around and come back to find it –
give up the illusion of forward motion –
to sit on this rock and hear the water’s voice
singing a long-lost lullaby.

Tadpoles swim in a pool sheltered by stones.
They, too, will learn to walk
along the banks of the Housatonic.
Those, that is, who survive

the difficult road to maturity,
a road whose casualties
line the shoulder
like so many car-struck deer.

I put out my right foot to steady myself,
place it on a rock that wobbles;
a handy metaphor to remind me of the
uncertainty of even the most solid objects.

Down the river a ways, a hawk makes silent circles.
The occasional car covers up the water’s voice,
but its song always returns, summoning me
home to my river, my land, my life.

Sure, reading poetry to a room full of people is fun, and I’ll do it whenever the opportunity presents itself. But on Thursday, May 6, I had a chance to experience poetry in a totally different way – by talking about it in two classes at Monroe Community College (MCC) in Rochester.

My friend Julie White (to whom “It Isn’t Merely The Fashioning” is dedicated) works in the Student Life office at MCC’s Damon Campus, located in downtown Rochester. When I booked the Rochester Poets reading, I asked Julie whether there were any opportunities for me to talk with students at MCC about poetry. Julie reached out to several faculty members, and I ended up scheduling two classes with Julie Damerell, an MCC professor who is herself a poet.

I showed up in Julie’s first class at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday. She warned me that attendance wasn’t always stellar, and that the previous class had seen one student attend. The class was a transitional class, for students who needed some extra guidance in English as they began their college careers. On this day, four students came, and it turned into one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had with poetry.

I have to be honest – I had absolutely no plan whatsoever when the class began. I’d given some thought to what I might say, and Julie Damerell had also suggested some topics. But when the four students were seated around the table and it was my turn to talk, I hadn’t decided on anything other than, “Hi. My name is Jason Crane.” Once that was said, I was winging it all the way.

The first thing I did was read them a poem from Unexpected Sunlight called “The Soft Friction Of Sliding Glass.” After I read the poem, I explained that it’s about my first serious girlfriend. This was all Lawrence, one of the students, needed to hear to begin a conversation. We talked about including a poem about an old girlfriend in a book dedicated to my wife. Lawrence thought that was a crazy thing to do, and he was sure that it would cause some kind of problem. I told him that my wife and I have been together 15 years, and that I want my memories to be close to the surface because I believe that makes me a better husband. Samantha, another of the students, chimed in to say that people don’t have to forget what happened to them just because they aren’t with that person anymore. The discussion carried on for several minutes, and I knew we were going to have no problem filling up the class time.

Next I asked the students to read “Gene Ludwig” and then tell me about the man described in the poem. I asked them to describe him physically and tell me what he did for a living and what he was like. They made their guesses, some closer than others, and then I told them about Gene and his career as a jazz organist. Julie looked up Gene online and showed the students his picture, and Lawrence talked about how Gene “is true to himself when he plays music. He can show people who he really is.”

Laura, another student, had been reading my poem “For Henry Grimes” during the latter part of this discussion, and she said she wanted to know about Henry next. I asked her to read the poem, and then asked the class to describe Henry. Lawrence said Henry reminded him of the old men who sit on the stoop on his street and watch the neighborhood. I described Henry’s incredible story of success, disappearance and rediscovery and asked Laura to read the poem again with this new knowledge.

We read more poems and talked about them, with the conversation veering into general discussions about life and art and creativity. Laura told us about her grandfather and her siblings and Samantha talked about the poems she’d written. They read more of my work aloud, and I decided partway through the class to give them each a copy of Unexpected Sunlight.

These four students opened my eyes to a new way to hear my own work, and their intelligent, often surprising observations were a joy to hear. I’m truly grateful for the experience. After the class, I wrote a poem called “Attention” in tribute to them.

Following a fun afternoon of poetry in Avon, NY (see part 1), I headed to St. John Fisher college in Rochester, NY, for the May edition of the Rochester Poets reading series. I was one of two featured poets, the other being my friend Matt Smythe.

Matt and I both went to high school in Canandaigua, NY, a picturesque town about 40 minutes from Rochester. The town sits on one end of Canandaigua Lake, with Naples at the other. Matt graduated in 1990 and I escaped the following year. We never hung around in high school, although we each knew the other existed, and we had some friends in common. We both left town after graduating and didn’t see each other again for more than 15 years.

In 2008, our mutual friend Travis Nixon died after a long battle with cancer. He was 36 years old. Travis owned the gift and game shop Coyote’s Den in Canandaigua and served on the city council. He was beloved by the community, and people of all ages were at his funeral. Matt and I were among them, and we talked for a few minutes after the funeral. Matt had spent nearly a decade in the Army, then ended up getting an advanced degree in literature with a focus on poetry. Not long after, I sent Matt an early version of the manuscript for Unexpected Sunlight.

Sending out a manuscript to other poets is a tricky business. For the most part, in my experience, you’ll get no comments at all. Occasionally you’ll get a short note. If you’re very lucky, you’ll get what I received from Matt – detailed, poem by poem, line by line analysis of the manuscript with suggestions and comments. Matt’s careful eye made the manuscript much better than it would have been, a fact for which I’ll be forever grateful.

Fast-forward to 2010. By some freak of publishing fate, the lovely folks at FootHills Publishing decided to risk the complete collapse of their 25-year-old press by putting out Unexpected Sunlight. That meant it was time for me to start organizing readings wherever I could. And although I’d lived in Rochester from 2000-2007, I’d been completely inactive in the poetry scene. The two names I knew were Frank Judge and Writers & Books. I contacted both about doing a feature reading, and Frank responded to say he had a slot in two weeks and could I make it? I accepted and requested that it be a co-feature for Matt and me.

And so on Wednesday, May 5, a group of about 30 people gathered in the Hughes Rotunda of the Wilson Education Building at St. John Fisher College. Several of the attendees had never been to a poetry reading. A friend was there whom I’d last seen her in 1991. Two of my sister’s friends were there (huzzah!) as were many other friends from my years in Rochester. Thanks to everyone who attended. It was wonderful to have you all there.

The reading itself was a lot of fun. Matt and I asked Frank to call us both up to the front of the room so we could flip a coin to see who would go first. My side of the coin came up and I led off. I read a mix of poems from Unexpected Sunlight and some newer poems, too. I also read two poems of Matt’s (“Stoplight Red” and “The Air On Bourbon”), because we’d decided in advance to each read the other’s work. I love Matt’s writing and enjoy reading it aloud even more.

Matt followed me with a strong set, some of which came from his master’s thesis, a book-length collection called All Water. Matt is passionate about music and fishing and human relationships, all of which comes through in his work. As I mentioned, he also spent eight years in the military, and his experiences certainly inform his writing. Matt read two of my poems, too – “Come with me, Shelby” and “Lottery.”

All in all, a rewarding evening of poetry, surrounded by friends and fellow poets. And I don’t think it will be the last time Matt and I work together. Stay tuned!

Coming up in part 3: I was the guest speaker in two classes at Monroe Community College on May 6. It was a transformative experience. Read part 3.

Thanks to Rome Celli for the photos used in this story.