Storytelling

telling stories in our hotel room
keeping my game face on
my Superman fights a giant robot
John’s defeats a huge gorilla
Bernie’s Man of Steel takes on a fire monster
he’s tired so he forgets
sometimes his villain is a robot, too
I’m wearing a necklace made of Kryptonite
my powers are fading
keeping my game face on so they won’t notice
never expected this hotel room
never expected the hurricane
and yes, that’s a metaphor
what kind of kit do you pack for a storm of rejection?

A few months back my first book of poetry was published. It includes a poem called “Charity,” which gives a snapshot of a nurse in New Orleans as Katrina approached that city five years ago. When my book came out, I read that poem at a gathering of poets who had work published by the same press.

Later in the day, I overheard a poet from New Orleans talking about the fact that several non-NOLA poets had read Katrina or New Orleans poems, and this poet wasn’t particularly happy about that. A couple weeks later, at another poetry event, this poet mentioned that many New Orleans writers had struggled mightily after Katrina while non-native writers were publishing books and poems and essays about Katrina and New Orleans. The poet suggested that this was a form of theft – the non-NOLA writers were taking money and opportunity away from New Orleans writers.

I said on that day that I thought all artists – and all people, for that matter – had a right to make art about the things they feel strongly about. In my case, although I’ve sold some of my books, the total number is so small that it’s very difficult for me to believe that my tiny book with one Katrina poem is taking food off the table of anyone from New Orleans.

I can’t think of any public event that has had as deep an impact on me as Katrina and the subsequent engineering failures that flooded New Orleans. (Please note that I although I use “Katrina” as shorthand for the disaster, I’m fully aware that it wasn’t the storm that caused the flooding – it was the failure of the man-made structures that were installed to protect the city.)

I did a lot of crying at the end of August and the beginning of September in 2005. Like many Americans, I spent hours in front of the TV trying to understand what was happening in New Orleans. I also spent a lot of time on the phone with my friend Satoru Ohashi, a trumpeter I’d known since I was an exchange student in Japan in 1991-92. Satoru lived in New Orleans and was scheduled to start a graduate program in jazz performance in the fall as part of the Louis Armstrong Quintet at the University of New Orleans. Now he was staying with a family member of the founder of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band several hours north of New Orleans and trying to figure out what to do next. UNO wasn’t going to be opening up anytime soon and he needed to be in school to stay in this country. I was living in Rochester, NY, at the time and was working with friends on the faculty at the Eastman School of Music there to see whether they could help him.

A few days after Katrina hit, Rochester held its annual Labor Day parade. I worked for a labor union at the time that had many members in the hotels and casinos of New Orleans. I printed up thousands of flyers with information about the union’s Katrina relief fund and passed those flyers out (with the help of a fellow employee) to everyone in the parade and to the crowds along the route. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

I was a political radical long before Katrina, but the government response to the disaster was still worse than I could have imagined. As I watched our leaders leave an entire city to die, I felt as though the final veil had been pulled from my eyes and I finally saw this country for what it had become. Yes, millions of people contributed money to the relief effort, and thousands traveled to New Orleans to assist in the relief and recovery efforts. But as the waters rose and dead bodies floated through the streets, our government seemed unable and unwilling to help its own people. Sure, we didn’t care much for the civilian casualties we were inflicting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but our own citizens? How could this be happening?

Where were you when MLK or JFK or RFK were assassinated? When Armstrong walked on the moon? When Pearl Harbor was attacked? Those are the questions that have defined generations of Americans. For some people, 9/11 is the contemporary moment that changed everything. Certainly our nation has never been the same, and our downward slide shows no signs of halting anytime soon.

For me, though, Katrina is the defining public moment in my life. It is the clear demarcation line before which I had some shreds of confidence in our government’s unwillingness to let its own people perish on their own soil. After Katrina, that confidence – tenuous as it had been – was gone. I felt as if the ground beneath my feet had shifted and I couldn’t quite catch my balance.

Five years later I wrote “Charity” and included it in a book of poems that otherwise have nothing to do with Katrina. The poem was also published (under a different title) in Blue Collar Review, a journal of working-class literature. I’ve also interviewed musicians from New Orleans on The Jazz Session, my online jazz interview show. Sometimes those interviews were explicitly about the storm and its aftermath (such as my interviews with Terence Blanchard and Andrew Lamb). At other times, what happened in August 2005 was present in the interviews or mentioned, but not the main topic of conversation. For the first two years of The Jazz Session, I featured a “Cause of the Month” and encouraged listeners to donate. Several of those causes were charities in New Orleans such as Musicians Village or the Tipitina Foundation.

As we commemorate the fifth anniversary of the storm and the human failures that devastated a city I’ve never set foot in, I still grapple with my place in the story that is New Orleans. I worry about being a cultural tourist, as suggested by the poet I mentioned above. But deep inside I know that’s not true. I don’t feel the way I feel because I want to make a buck or because it’s trendy to like New Orleans. I feel this way because what happened there happened to all of us. Because of all of us. We’re all New Orleanians now. And it isn’t over yet.

Highly recommended political commentary, interviews and comedy from Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny.

I’m happy to announce that an updated version of my bicycling poem “this two-wheeled life” will appear in the next issue of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac. I’ll post details here when it comes out, which will likely be in October.

I wrote this poem after the Third Thursday Poetry Reading tonight, based on a comment Dan Wilcox made during the reading as the sound of sirens faded on the street outside.

Life Is Whirling Around Us

While we are reading poetry,
an elderly woman in a flower-print dress
is clutching her chest in a kitchen on Hamilton Street
she knocks over the pitcher of cream she’d just poured
for the cup of coffee she’ll never get around to drinking

While we are reading poetry,
he finally gins up the nerve to lean toward her
and she leans toward him and the moment
they both spent the whole night thinking about
is even better than they’d thought it would be

While we are reading poetry,
the passing sirens are responding to a cigarette
left unattended in a bed already stained with cheap wine
as flames lick the newspaper he hadn’t really wanted to read
but had fished out of the trash can anyway

While we are reading poetry,
the newest father in Albany feels his knees weaken
and his heart grow three sizes as the doctor
places his crying daughter in his arms
and the man turns to show her to his wife

While we are reading poetry,
a kid from Sioux Falls is taking his first major-league at-bat
in a city he’s never been to, in front of a crowd of strangers
and back home his mom is wiping her eyes – and so is his dad –
as everyone he’s ever met gathers around the family television

While we are reading poetry,
a housewife is discovering a stack of letters
she never would have found except that she’d finally decided
to clean her husband’s dresser drawers all the way to the backs
and now she’s hunched over sobbing on the suddenly massive bed

While we are reading poetry,
a kid is coming in the door from his job bagging groceries
to find a letter in a fancy envelope from the college
he’d applied to without telling anyone
he runs up to his room to open it behind his closed door

We are reading poetry while
life is whirling around us, depositing the ore
we’ll mine for the next stanza, filling the good earth
with a rich lode of the precious materials we’ll find
with lamps mounted on our helmets, down there in the dark

The Deepwater Horizon oil platform ablaze on April 21, 2010. Credit: U.S. Coast Guard.

I’m pleased to announce that “The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky” and “deepwater horizon” are now featured at Poets For Living Waters, a poetic response to the oil crisis in the Gulf.

I asked my landlord for a weed wacker / and he gave me a slingblade

No, that’s not the first line of a terrible, Billy-Bob-Thornton-inspired blues song. Read on.

For those of you who know me even slightly, you know there is one underlying philosophy that informs every aspect of my life. It is the beacon of wisdom that lights my way forward, and it is this:

I hate manual labor, especially if it occurs outside.

So when I asked my landlord to borrow a weed wacker so I could clean up our side of the block, I fully expected to be pulling a crank line and buzzing my way down the street. Instead, I had a lovely opportunity to study the life of a 19th-century farmer as I hacked and chopped my way down the street.

Before we go to the video, allow me to mention two other facts:

• It was 78 degrees Farenheit
• The humidity was 96%

Let’s go to the tape:

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Tennessee Horizon

I am a little bit in love with everyone, including you
and this Tennessee horizon will no let me go.

Who is the giver of names for the things we most cherish?
In the dawn light I can’t see you clearly enough

to know whether you are crying or maybe that’s the rain.
It’s raining in everything I write.

I could take shelter in you, if only time is a circle
and I’ll have this all to do again.

Tennessee is a terrible beauty and you are a fleeting gift.
Whosoever has cause why this couple should not be joined,

let him speak now. I loved you in the dim and bright,
in the thick silences and the sticky-sweet mornings.

Sailors always knew the world was round
because ships disappeared over the horizon.

That’s how I knew it was time to go.
I’m still a little bit in love with you and with Tennessee

and with this dawn light and with this rain.
If you let me go, I’ll come back to you

because time is a circle
and the world is round.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

The music in the audio version of the poem is “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” performed by Sidney Bechet.

I never heard Buddy Bolden say a goddamned thing

never saw Count Basie swing
never felt Duke love me madly
never heard Prez bend a note so sadly
never saw Miles though I was alive
never watched Mingus struggle to survive
never danced round and round with Monk
never moved to Lockjaw’s roundhouse funk
never smelled the flower in Billie’s hair
never tasted Coltrane’s thickly burning air
never swung my girl to Chick Webb’s drums
never stared amazed at Tatum’s thumbs
never laughed as Ella made up the words
never cried as Lacy called down the birds
never asked Jackie what made him tick
never nursed Charlie when he was sick
never bopped when Dizzy beed
never copped what Dexter’d need
never thought they had it made
never forget a note they played

Listen to this poem using the player above.

dust to dust

ours is not to wonder why
though of course we do wonder
why?
because we like you
and when we say we, we are speaking royally
as in screwed blued tattooed
an indelible mark that reminds one –
or more –
of who one is and what one was and why
are such pretensions necessary?
it’s OK to say “me” and “I”
and to cry for spilt milk
ours is both to do AND die
I never understood the “or”
as if the doing could avoid the dying
when all light collapses into the black hole
in the center of it all
nothing can escape
all lights falls as night falls the light falls
as falls Wichita so falls Wichita Falls
and Niagara Falls and Sue falls
if she’s not careful
ours is to do and to die and to wonder
to stumble over coffee tables
on the way to the bathroom
when the rest of the house is sleeping
even our mouse
even the king’s mouse
and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
will return to ash when their chips are cashed in

What I Would Give For What We Had

In Lenox, Massachusetts, on the picturesque corner
of Main and Housatonic Streets,
is a building with walls made of butter-yellow brick.

Looking up from the sidewalk to the second floor,
you can see the windows
through which my family used to see the world.

There was a drop ceiling in the den that gave way
under the weight of rainwater,
dousing my grandfather as he removed a sodden panel,

standing on a chair to get a better grip, while lightning
lit the windows of the pharmacy below.
There is a shop that sells art photos and gourmet chocolate

where the garage used to be. “Home again, home again
jiggety jig,” my grandmother would say
every time. Back when she used to ride in the car, back when

she used to have places to go. I am so old I can remember her
driving herself, the modern woman, cigarette
fashionably cradled by elegant fingers, red nails catching

the sun that elsewhere lit trees on our famous hills.
It was only in the leaving that I realized
the loss, only in the black-and-white grandeur of deco

living rooms and dancing at the Crystal Ballroom.
Now I would trade anything for that place,
that time, those days when a street corner was the world
and all I knew was safe and protected within it.

I’m not saying I know how to do it, I just know this ain’t it:

Dear Jason,

Though your work has been declined by our editors, we thank you for allowing us to consider it.

Sincerely,

The Editors Of A Famous Poetry Review

I don’t mind at all that they rejected me, but I do mind that people who would write a sentence like that rejected me.

I was just at the edge of sleep when this tiny little poem floated through.

drives

the purple bitterness
drives the little nothing
to death

My poem “deepwater horizon” was published yesterday in State of Emergency: Chicago Poets Address The Gulf Crisis. You can read it here.

Listen to the show using the player above.

More photos:

I had the pleasure tonight of performing a featured poetry set with the Poets Jazz Trio — poet Dan Wilcox on saxophone and percussion, poet Tom Corrado on bass, and me reading my poems and playing saxophone and percussion. We played as part of the Dan’s Third Thursday Poetry Series at the Social Justice Center in Albany. Many fine poets came out for the open mic and it was a joy to see them all. In this post, you’ll find photos from the event taken by poet Alan Catlin, along with an audio recording of the set that you can listen to with the player at the top of this post.

Thanks to Dan and Tom, and to Jason Parker of oneworkingmusician.com for his transcription assistance.

Tonight’s show was dedicated to the late jazz organist Gene Ludwig and to his wife, Pattye.

Organist Gene Ludwig passed away yesterday, July 14, 2010. I didn’t know him well, but he was a guest on The Jazz Session in August, 2009, and we spoke several times in person and by phone and email. Gene and his wife Pattye were extremely kind to me and to everyone with whom I saw them interact, particularly during Gene’s performance last year in Schenectady, NY. My thoughts are with Pattye and with their families at this time.

Gene’s Schenectady gig inspired a poem that appears in my book, Unexpected Sunlight. You can read the poem here at jasoncrane.org.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Umbrella

I’m bringing my umbrella in case it rains
I’m writing this poem in case it doesn’t

Last night you were out when I called
You’re often out these days, somewhere

I’d never noticed how empty a room could sound
Never wondered where these pans go

Sometimes I stand in the kitchen waiting for your voice
To tell me what to do next, who to be

Then the phone rings, full of hope, but it’s a bill collector
Looking for me to pay what’s owed

Everyone is looking for their due
But my cupboards are bare, my reserves are empty

And most of the time it’s raining
And I’ve forgotten my umbrella

I thought it was a good sign that the key to my new apartment contains a partial line of Shakespeare:

Click to enlarge

This Thursday, one night only: the Poets Jazz Trio at the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave in Albany. Poets Jason Crane (poems, sax, percussion), Dan Wilcox (sax, percussion) and Tom Corrado (bass) will perform a 20-minute set of jazz and Jason’s poetry. There will also be an open mic hosted by Dan Wilcox. The shindig starts at 7:30 p.m. Be there!

Listen to this poem using the player above.

this two-wheeled life

all I could think about
as I sucked in diesel fumes
on 80 East was how much
I’d rather be riding my bike

how it was time to sever
the steel shackles
of my automotive life
to take to two wheels

as my creed, my gospel
my response to every
yelled curse and flung
container of french fries

I would yell “you first!”
when told to get off the road
would carry a lance
to joust with those

who referred to me by its name
and like Quixote before me
I would tilt – not at windmills,
but at the ceaseless turning

of the four-wheeled apocalypse
because there are more kinds of freedom
than choosing the radio station
and more kinds of individuality

than spinning rims and fuzzy dice
I would recapture
that nearly forgotten thrill
of being my own master

not a slave to the poisoners
of the Gulf, the savage
inequality of fossil fuels
they are better returned

to their undersea beds
to lie and sleep
to be forgotten as we zoom
and glide through this two-wheeled life

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

I contacted the poetry journal Meat For Tea about a submission I’d sent and hadn’t heard back on. They responded to tell me it was published in their last issue, but they’d forgotten to notify me.

You can read “North Greenbush To Albany” in Meat For Tea Vol. 4 Issue 2 by ordering a physical copy or a $5 PDF version here.

UPDATE: Upon closer inspection, it turns out that my poem “Origins” is also in the issue.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This poem was inspired by Normanskill poet Alan Casline’s poem “My Navajo Butterfly Song.”

Seeing Eye
(for Alan Casline)

The Navajo sign said “no photos” –
I prefer to think of it as advice, not warning,

encouraging us to capture images with the lenses of our eyes,
to store them on our natural hard drives.

“Doesn’t anybody ever just remember anything anymore?”
George Carlin asked. He was right.

We’ve become victims of instant nostalgia,
our minds grown lazy, our brains soft.

It’s so bad that I’ve forgotten the first line of this very poem,
and the way my sons looked when they were born.

My therapist said chronic depression impairs
the memory centers of the brain, causes

gaps

in the remembered narrative. That was a relief to hear.
I always wondered why my life was a highlight reel,

the entire three-plus decades condensed into three-plus minutes,
like always seeing the bus but never being hit by it.

The Navajo sign said “no photos.”
Pretty smart, those Navajo.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Another poem for my wife.

The Oak Tree
(for Jennifer)

I had already asked you three times
you’d wisely declined
I was too young, too unproven
played the saxophone in a latin jazz band
you repaired houses for the poor
we each made barely enough to pay the rent

the fourth time was under an oak tree
at your mother’s house
you finally agreed, throwing caution
to the Pennsylvania wind
we were back East on a rare trip
to see our families, to display one another

that tree had been there for years and years
since the fields next to the dairy farm
were turned into a housing development
for upwardly mobile college professors
whose daughters spoke two languages
and traveled the world on the way to good lives

no one thought we’d last
they all said I was too young, too unproven
played the saxophone in a latin jazz band
couldn’t provide for you
all those beautiful 1950s sentiments
born of monochrome evenings with the Cleavers

but under that oak tree –
a sign of stability, of permanence –
you agreed to place a bet on the long shot
I held your hands as a stray leaf fell,
like your resistance, to rest
in the lush green grass behind the houses

after you said yes
we traveled north to my parents’ house
my mother gave me a wedding ring
that had been her grandmother’s
granting us her blessing
even though she doubted our future

the oak tree is gone now,
cut down by your mother
all these years I’d thought she hated what it represented
only found out this week that it was damaged
in an ice storm and had to be cut before it fell
so many things misunderstood

I picked up T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party on the side of a city street, one of a stack of books being thrown out by someone with a taste for poetry and Eastern religions, to judge by the other books. I gave it a quick scan and discovered it was a play, so I didn’t shelve it with my other poetry books. It made its way to the basement and I forgot it existed.

Then yesterday, there it was, in the dining room, somehow having made the trip back from the basement and into a place of prominence. I don’t know how this one book was spared in the frenzy of moving and packing and loading and donating, but it was. I read it this evening and was completely captivated by it.

The play is difficult to describe. It’s set in London and begins at a cocktail party. There is almost no physical action in the play. Rather, it’s a series of conversations between a half-dozen or so people, all of whom are having various sorts of existential crises. There is one shift of setting and many surprising connections are made between the various characters.

This can hardly be called a review, can it? Suffice to say the play’s stark rendering of people’s life choices was very moving and appealing to me, particularly at this moment in my life. I think I may try to get some folks together to read this play at some point. And in the meantime, I recommend it to you.

Painting by Michelle Spark

Long Day In America

shimmering cymbal rises off the stage like heat from the pavement
I’m at a table near the band, drowning my sorrows in a glass of water
or at least drowning, anyway

this is one of those days when I wish I drank, something strong and obliterating
that would wash it all away like a sand castle falling to high tide

I come back to reality for a moment while the bass player looks for a chart
a course through the tune so he won’t get lost
I wish it were that easy

these are the times that try men’s souls, then stomp them with boots made of
   money
and unfulfilled potential and disappointment

two tables away a guy is talking loudly, so the band turns up and he talks louder
so the band turns up and he’s shouting, and eventually an old man in a natty suit
leans over from the next table and tells the guy to “please shut the fuck up”

maybe it’s the language, maybe it’s the old man’s audacity, but it works
a hero is born

saves me the trouble of driving my rented U-Haul truck right through the front
   window
smashing the moron to a pulp, smearing the carpet
with his like-new brains

there’s no way to summarize all the things you are on paper
but that doesn’t stop people from trying – my life is a bulleted list
in 12-point Arial or 10-point Times New Roman if I’m feeling professional

I’m bored and terrified, can’t focus
lose the form of the song, even an easy one

my eyes are burning

I may regret all this openness later, but for now a little missive here on the blog seems like the easiest way to answer all the questions that are coming up now and will be sure to come up soon. It’s getting more difficult to come up with plausible stories about what’s happening, so let’s try the truth.

Tomorrow, Jen and Bernie and John (my wife and sons) are moving to State College, PA, to live with Jen’s mom. In a couple weeks, I’m moving into a one-bedroom basement apartment in Albany – even more downtown than I live now. We’re not sure how long the new arrangement will last.

Why is this happening? Primarily because we can’t afford to live together anymore. Jen’s been out of work for 18 months and counting, and I don’t make enough to pay the bills. In fact, my most recent job change was probably the straw that sent to camel to the poor house. I’m thrilled to have my current gig and to work in the world of bicycle advocacy, but it pays what non-profits often pay. We gambled that one of Jen’s many high-scoring civil-service tests would pull our fat out of the fire, but New York State has no budget and isn’t doing much hiring these days, so that gamble didn’t pay off. We lived on fumes (and with the help of our families) for a long time, but the tank is now empty.

This is a very dark time for the rebellion, and there’s no way to sugarcoat that. Our hope, though, is that something will turn up and allow us to get Jen and the boys back in time for school in the fall.

So now you know the rest of the story. Wish us luck, and keep us in your thoughts, along with the thousands and thousands of American families who are going through exactly the same thing.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Based on a recent New York City experience.

dead pigeon

dead pigeon on a gray sedan
gray sedan under a dead pigeon
dead gray pigeon sedan
gray dead sedan pigeon

heads turn, shake, pass
passing heads, shaking, turn
shaken heads pass, turning
shaken heads, turning, pass

soft feet slap pavement
soft pavement feet slap
slapping pavement, soft feet
slapping, soft, feet, pavement

head bleeding slow trickle
bleeding head trickle slow
slow bleeding head trickle
trickle bleeding head slow

gray dead sedan pigeon
dead gray pigeon sedan
gray sedan under a dead pigeon
dead pigeon on a gray sedan

Listen to this poem using the player above.

First Night of Summer, 2010

At the Mobil station on the corner of Quail and New Scotland,
an obese man in a tank top delivers a lawnmower from the trunk
of his NASCAR-stickered beater to a young man in the latest

summer fashions. The obese man plops back into the driver’s seat,
reaches an arm through the open window to haul the door shut,
cranks up the radio, loudly injecting a surprising R&B track

into the first night of summer. Did the Indian or Pakistani or Sri Lankan
cashier in the Mobil station ever imagine himself here?
Did he play soccer or cricket as a child back home, dreaming

of the night when he’d sell Cheetos and Double Chocolate Milanos
to another obese man in dirty shorts, while R&B blared
and nervous SUV drivers stopped on the way to the suburbs?

Did any of us dream of this night? We sat on our mothers’ laps,
had our backs rubbed, dreamed of being paleontologists
or marine biologists or superheroes, not of schlepping to the gas station

to buy crap before the Red Sox game. In case you hadn’t guessed,
I’m the Second Man, one before Welles and not that many pounds off,
selling no wine before my time, plodding past the young and beautiful people

at the bars to get to the late-night sanctuary of those with no place else to go.
How the fuck did this happen? Where did the dumpster in my driveway
come from? Who put all those memories in there?

I want my mother, or at least the possibility she represented.
I want to go home, but I’m already there, and there’s a dumpster
in the driveway, and in a few days the men will come and haul it away.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This poem was inspired by a tweet by trombonist Jeff Albert. His message became the first line of the poem.

Separation

The MacBook Pro’s headphone out does
not have clean stereo separation.

It cannot effectively separate the
left from                  the right.

Nor can it color-code cull the allowed from
the illegal.

Or sit at the base of the wall in the cold
desert night, waiting for what the coyotes bring.

The MacBook Pro’s headphone out sends
a steady stream of sound

straight to the bones inside your ears,
causing tiny vibrations that your

brain magnifies then translates into
language you can understand.

And yet, left                  and right
will not be properly separated. Will mix

inappropriately, causing some in the room
to murmur their disapproval.

Are you murmuring your disapproval? Casting
a sidelong glance, perhaps

catching the eye of another partygoer, who
responds with raised brow or a

cluck

of the tongue?

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

Can you separate
left                  from right?

Do you know where you bread is buttered?

Do you want to wash the dishes?

Listen to this poem using the player above.

McLemore, Fabricatore & Buttonwood

started out across the grassy plain

ate buffalo meat on the shores of Lake Erie

learned new languages & wooed exotic birds down from the trees

were of sound mind & body, were of sound body & mind

encountered the Kraken & debated the pronunciation of his name,
only to discover that he was a she, & really quite wonderful at chess

were undaunted in the face of adversity

sat beside the wine-dark sea, telling lies & braiding hempen ropes

signed their names in the guestbook at a hotel on the edge of an active volcano,
the ash settling slowly about their shoulders

could see the valley below, but could not state its true name

sailed across the ocean blue in a hastily built marshmallow canoe

were rescued from certain death by a one-legged man who knew whereof he spoke

are as real as you or I

exist purely for our amusement
do not exist at all

McLemore, Fabricatore & Buttonwood
will be back soon, will demand answers, will show slides of their trip
to an uninterested audience in the local library

will realize that the road is better than the rest stop & will start out again
across the grassy plain

Listen to this poem using the player above.

BP chief Tony Hayward. (Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters)

deepwater horizon

ironic, choosing a name
implying distant vision
when the one thing you
can’t do is see

white belly bobs
pointing at the sun
like the face of a flower
or a tree seeking nourishment

but the sun has set
on this day of days
the long night has begun
under a blanket of oil

the Cayuhoga burned
at least thirteen times
oozing not flowing, said Time
magazine with its barrels of ink

the word “gulf” comes from
kolpos, a Greek word meaning
bosom, the chest, the repository
of emotion and intimacy

now we surround the heart
of the world with the heavy ooze
of consumption, the debilitating murk
of driving by yourself with the radio on

nineteen million barrels
each and every day
seven hundred ninety-eight million gallons
each and every day

and that’s just one country
one nation living the dream
the chosen people of a god
who created the dinosaurs

solely to power our factories
propel our cars, fuel our
wildest fantasies, a pornography
of petroleum delights

you can’t get it off unless
you scrape it off with a tool
something no bird can manage
no fish can finagle

it’s like napalm without the fire
smothering, covering
a deadly skin that can’t be shed
can’t be burned off

in Los Angeles, in New York,
in New Orleans, in Chicago,
in towns you’ve never visited
in towns I’ll never see

a man, a woman, a kid with
a new license
looks at his sneakers, her bike
the bus schedule

and grabs the keys instead
turns the engine over
hears the oil-fueled explosion
then turns up the radio

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.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

The title of this poem comes from the title of one of composer Andrew Durkin’s blog posts.

Image by batega

by chance and trembling

by chance and trembling
he touched her
though perhaps it was
not by chance

a design buried deep
beneath his skin
below the rush of blood
the pounding heart

intricate tracery
coloring his cheeks
as the tips of his fingers
hummed against her pulse

there are moments of clarity
instants when the universe is tactile
when nothing is left to chance
when the trembling stops

Listen to this poem using the player above.

pumpkin

she’s almost at the end of the poem
when she slips and says
“punkin”

just like that, all those careful years
peel away, she stands
in a flower-print dress her mother made

reading in front of the class
stumbling over the hard words
in her accent the kids made fun of

she spent years silencing that voice
replacing it with the calm, assured
sophistication that befits a woman of means

she catches herself – puts the “p” where it belongs
but it’s too late, everyone has seen
the scared girl behind the sophisticate

the sweat-soaked dress clinging to her past
the voice she cannot silence
pouring from her mouth

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Art Pepper is my favorite alto saxophonist and one of my favorite musicians, period. I wrote this while listening to Stuttgart May 25, 1981 – Unreleased Art Vol. V. Art’s wife, Laurie, has been on The Jazz Session twice. If you’d like to learn more about Art, please listen to her appearances in 2007 and 2009.

Photo (c) Laurie Pepper

The Truth About Art Pepper

Art’s life is Synanonymous with art, the making of
with the alto saxophone, the playing of
with Ginsberg’s angel-headed hipsters, the slaying of

Art’s sound is a soaring cry that no bird of prey can outshine
he is a misty-morning muezzin atop the minaret calling the faithful
to the temple of pure emotion, architecture without artifice

Art is the inmate released, outpouring pent-up desire
archetype of the madness that bound those bound by the 50s
survivor of the plain old lives that crashed in the purple mountains

Art for Art’s sake, one foot hokey-pokeying on the ledge
the people like ants – aren’t they always? – far below
(although Art was never one to put himself above the people)

Art could play a ballad like he had Cupid’s arrow lodged between his ribs
could play the blues like he’d been struck down on a dusty road
could blaze like the nucleus of the sun, irradiating the audience with love

Art was the original Comeback Kid, cutman in his corner dabbing
his sweaty brow with a towel, handing him a new reed soaked
in the jar of blood and guts beside the ring

Art could take a punch, roll with it, let the kinetic energy of the blow
travel from his gut to his spine, slide up to his brain
there to spark the next invention, the next flight of fancy

Art is beauty and beauty is truth and therefore Art was the truth
he was the news that stays news, the last dispatch from the battlefront
Art could make the shooting stop, could arrest breath and pause time

Art’s most magical reality was that he was purely human
not carved from marble by a holy sculptor with a careful eye
but made from the same clay as we all, gifted with the breath of music

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is the kind of poem you write when you eat lunch in a cemetery.

the ghosts of suburbia
(for Bunny, whoever she is)

the woman with bottle-colored hair
locked her car door at the cemetery

perhaps an overabundance of caution
among these long-sleeping thieves
on this false-summer day

like the bunny named on her license plate
she darted from the car to a grave
bent over momentarily and was gone

before the trumpeter playing on my car stereo
finished the first chorus of his solo

this visit was less about communing with the dead
more about checking in
either to make sure they were still there
or to confirm to them that she was

it looked like a visit to a silent parole officer
Sergeant Murphy no longer a desk jockey
now pushing daisies rather than papers
in triplicate, two extra copies to eventually
go to the landfill, as Murphy himself has

a few hundred feet away she stopped
at a second grave, repeated the ritual

apparently her relatives had hedged their bets
against the day when the housing development
next door would expand into the cemetery

they’d spread the family around
to buy the long-term mourners more time

in this oppressive heat their presence
is Bunny’s challenge — a test of her willingness
to leave her air-conditioned Lincoln

she passes the test and is allowed to live
until her next appointment
with the ghosts of suburbia, the spectres

who haunt Lincoln-driving women
with bottle-colored hair

Listen to this poem using the player above.

The Last Siren

you can’t take your eyes off her when she reads
she says it’s the microphone
you say the microphone’s in the way

the word allure comes from the same root as lure, bait
her words dangling at the end of the hook
you can’t resist biting
and then she has you – all of you – not just the eyes

sometimes she pretends not to hear
but only because she’s already been there
written her message in blood on the wall
where it waits for the unsuspecting traveler

wandering in from the night
to a room full of aspirants who hang, writhing
on her every word

she is the last Siren, come from her island
on a boat of pages torn from your secret journal

Jason played his lyre to drown out her song
Odysseus strapped himself to the mast
but still begged for release, screaming
until the ship drifted out of danger

and now here she is and here you are
and she is still singing and no amount
of beeswax can stop your ears
and you can’t look away

Listen to this poem using the player above.

A poem dedicated to the jazz musician Sun Ra, written after reading an article by Nate Chinen.

to swing you in the arms of the stars

you don’t need a rocket to get there
there wouldn’t be any there there if you got there
anyway

but HE would be there in a long robe
dime store rhinestones a glittering milky way
HE is a high priest with a congregation of everyone

arms lifted to create a horizon, the sun medallion
set into HIS space pope’s mitre
your eyelids are getting heavy, it’s all getting heavy

doo-wop be-bop swing and free
Space Is The Place for you and me
and HE and we and Muhammad Ali

the Black Christ descends from the highest peak
of the Andes, looks around slowly, sees
nothing of interest, climbs back to the summit

for some, it is just too much chaos
but there was order, too, and beauty, and reason
a cover story for those long kept under the great white thumb

isn’t the homesickness of 746 million miles
better than the sickness of a home in Alabama
where being a little green man would be preferable to being what HE is?

sure, HE had a name, HE was her man, her little boy
a baby from a womb not covered in stars
but released in blood and tears like all the rest

pushed into a world not of HIS choosing, HE chose not to be of this world
adopted for HIMSELF a new birth in the undiscovered country
fell from a new womb with the slight bounce of nine percent less gravity

as has been previously noted, we are spinning on a marble
that is whirling around a fire
the hole in the middle of the universe surrounded by black wax

HE pressed grooves into that wax and drew forth sound from the needle
while the tables turned – the polarity reversed – up was down
the black man was a cosmic prince, the king of the moonlit desert

couldn’t Pat Patrick wail over this awakening?
couldn’t John Gilmore swing you in the arms of the stars?
couldn’t HE tell you what your blood knows but your brain fears?

on the summit of the highest peak of the Andes
the Black Christ is clearing brush to make a landing place
for the ninth rocket, the one that will carry him away

we travel the spaceways from planet to planet
humming a tune born of a south too deep to bear
midwifed in stardust and held up in the harsh light of the sun for all to see

Listen to this poem using the player above.

A poem for the Lark Tavern in Albany, NY, which was destroyed by fire in May 2010 and which will return.

Lark Definitions

it’s a bird noted for its singing
it’s a verb meaning to play
it can denote a certain lack of care
but that is itself a trick
a surface appearance that masks
desperate attention to detail
for we do care, each of us
we’ve stood naked under lights
that show blood red on film
we’ve bared all, opened our bone cages
to let fly the nightingales
(also noted for their singing)
we’ve confessed lovers, told
strangers truths no one else knows
all under the watchful eyes
of attentive servers who
notice yet don’t let on
a man in a bookstore asked me
how it feels to be the last
featured poet at the Lark
“I won’t be the last,” I said

Listen to this poem using the player above.

A poem for Albany-based writer and poet Moses Kash III. The first line is from a poem Moses read at Dan Wilcox’s Third Thursday Poetry Reading on May 20, 2010.

Photo of Moses Kash III by Keith J. Spencer

Stand up, Moses

white people have got hold of all the cash
except Americus Moses Kash the third
he remains independent of their influence
standing tall on bad knees and black sneakers
proclaiming … this word … and … this word … and …
the word, born of life lived with tall vision
he does not shirk his duty, tells it like it is
as he has seen it, felt its sting
captured its image in his lens
boxes and boxes and stacks and stacks
stacks and stacks and boxes and boxes
he still uses the word “mimeograph”
as if time stopped in the 1960s
and maybe it did
can you prove that your heart is beating​?

Those of us in the bicycling community who have way to much free time are known to write “baiku” (bicycle haiku) from time to time. My latest is over at RocBike.com. There are more on that site by various members of Team RocBike. Just type “baiku” in the search box.

Enjoy!

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I wasn’t going to write about the passing of jazz pianist Hank Jones until I saw this article in the New York Times.

UPDATE: Hank Jones’ manager, Jean-Pierre Leduc, posted this in response to the NYT article:

Hank had a huge farm up in Hartwick, NY, and he had most things he needed. He was not unhappy or hermit-like. I wish he had treated himself to a bigger space (he could have lived anywhere), but it was clean and right where he wanted to be — Upper West Side. On tour he had the best suite in the best 5-star hotels, and he was on tour a lot, even very recently. The article in The Times was a clear invasion of privacy.

I considered making revisions to the poem based on this, but I don’t think that’s necessary.

(Rafa Rivas/AFP/Getty Images)

91

“On the cluttered night-table was a book of Sherlock Holmes stories.”
– From a New York Times article on what was found in jazz pianist Hank Jones’ tiny one-room apartment after his death.

the detective used the violin
as a tool to sharpen his thoughts
the pianist practiced on an electric keyboard
using headphones so he wouldn’t disturb the neighbors

91 years is a long time
to be good at something so few understand
unlike Holmes, Hank never got a chance to stand in the parlor
to explain how he’d figured it all out
how he’d arrived at the real answer

he had to depend on ears and brains and beating hearts
to understand the messages pushed into ivory
by two hands, ten fingers, a billion synapses firing

when he died they broke into his room with a hammer
it was locked from the inside
a detail the detective would have appreciated
they found rumpled sheets, accolades
long ago forgotten and newly given
manifestations of his talent not sufficient
to encapsulate the world-altering beauty of it

there is nothing elementary
about 91 years of a black man playing the piano
no sidekick to remark on just how heavily
the odds had been stacked in opposition

could even the most talented sleuth
have pieced together the long road from Detroit?
inspected the dust of a thousand thousand footsteps
and traced the route from segregated hotels
to the grandest stages in the world?

91 years is a long time to breathe in and out,
to push down on the keys, to bear the weight of memory
the memory of waiting for his time in the spotlight

yet he could have walked down any street in America
and no one would have looked twice
he was a king, an 88-keyed deity who could
swing you into the ground and could pass
completely unnoticed among the multitudes
more concerned with the camera flash

in the end he went out playing
in a world that was richer for his footsteps across the stage,
his particular selection of notes
his attention to detail, elegance
and the long slow curve of 91 years of history

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is the end

this is the end, so settle in

grab a bottled water

recline in your easy chair

do people still have easy chairs?

from the east-facing window

you should be able to see it coming

sweeping across the hills like

an angry sunrise, devouring

even now, when it’s far too late

many people insist it’s not real

a chimera created from the plots

of summer blockbusters by the

pocket protector crowd

because they can’t get dates

how could something so innocuous –

something that dimpled Dave

on Channel 11 uses smiley-faced suns

to explain to Ma and Pa Kettle –

possibly cause us any harm?

are we not men? have we not

mastered the universe, or at least

our small outpost within it?

Listen to this poem using the player above.

The first two lines of this poem (and thus, the title) were suggested by my friend Kim, to whom the poem is dedicated. Thanks, Kim.

convenience store sushi
(for Kim S.)

convenience store sushi
and vegetable chips
that’s what’s left
the kind of lunch you bring
when you’ve got no ideas
when all you can think to do is listen
looking down at the clear plastic container
with its fake lawn, greener than the one
on either side of your fence
time was you would have shared
the warm pieces of tuna and salmon
offered each other the last piece of
California roll, but today
she’s not hungry, sits with her hands
folded in her lap, talks in a low voice
so the people on the next bench over
don’t hear the world break
she’s done you that courtesy, at least
when it’s over – really over –
the sushi looks like modeling clay
you can’t even think of eating it
later a bird will pick the contents
of the package out of a wire trash basket
stuck to the top of the container
a note reading: we need to talk

Listen to this poem using the player above.

My assistant helps me repair the truck.

Red Truck Elegy

Dozer, the beefy black lab, wants into the car
he sniffs the air, scenting my son’s watermelon lollipop

just a few feet away sits our red truck, silent, flashers on
a gift from my dad, it’s different from the red truck

my wife and her baseball team would cram into the bed of
back in Oregon, after the game, going to get ice cream

this red truck is smaller, though it’s hauled its share of wood
the bottom is rusted, looking like something you should

discover with a submarine while searching the ocean floor
I performed my only successful automotive surgery on this truck

using the last wire coat hanger in the world to wire up
the muffler and tailpipe, which were grinding against the axle

my dad couldn’t have done much better, because he
doesn’t know anything about cars or trucks either, despite

being much better versed in practical things than I am
and more comfortable with getting his hands dirty

John flits around the garage, moving from mechanic to Dozer
to the two lazy German shepherds who lie at the feet

of an elderly couple on the garage’s only two chairs
eating submarine sandwiches and adding to the local flavor

if the truck is dead, we’ve decided not to resuscitate it
we’ll just cut the cord that anchors it to us and let it sink into memory

captured in the occasional photograph, just like its bigger brother
with my father-in-law’s head poking into the flower-packed bed

I’ve heard enough stories about that truck that it looms in my created past
almost as large as he does, gone just after I met him, gone too soon

this truck, though, was here just long enough to carry us to the top of the hill
and now we’ll walk down the other side on our own

I’ve popped up in a couple places recently on the Web. Here they are:

Thanks to these folks and everyone else who is helping me spread the word about my slow destruction of the world of poetry.

Otto Bruno is a very talented broadcaster, writer and historian. And he’s not, shall we say, a big fan of poetry. Thus is was with some fear and trepidation that I read his review of my recent reading in Rochester. See for yourself:

Poetry?? Really, poetry?!?!

Otto also inspired one of the poems in my new book, Unexpected Sunlight. That poem isn’t online, so you’ll have to buy the book to read it.

And his despite his low opinion of the (non-)rhyming arts, some of Otto’s own verses have appeared on this very blog. Enjoy!

Photographer and musician Keith Spencer started taking photos of my leather satchel at poetry readings. My wife bought the satchel for me when we lived in Japan. My bag has a fan page on Facebook and nearly two dozen fans. And now, it has a poem. Thanks, Tess!

On Jason’s Bag
by Tess Lecuyer

Infinite possibilities has too many fucking syllables
so this is not a haiku, it’s a goddam sonnet.
Sonnets are like a leather bag, a rectangle filled
and folded and pocketed with various straps-on-it.
I did that on purpose. I’ve been reading Ogdan Nash;
the silliness just seeps in so about Jason’s bag…
We met at the Wordfest, late, at the very ash
end of the night, when adjectives wore hats and spit jagged
modified nouns, addled verbs. Antipestic sang, badly,
and iambs skipped along pretending to be sober.
Infinite possibilities lurked in Jason’s bag,
so mutely lying, so folded casually closed.
Posing for the camera in an understated, artistic heap,
while whispering Lily, sweet Lillian, to sleep.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Ingredients

making this cake is neither good nor bad
all things are equal in the back-and-forth
I mix in the eggs, whisk them foamy
so many broken, so many cracked
it’s easy, she says, you just read
you just follow the directions
that’s always been my problem, though
I’m a bad follower, I can’t be folded in
I’m the shell fragment that you find later with your teeth
the little mistake that crunches and unsettles

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.

A tribute to four college students who helped me appreciate poetry in a new way.

Attention

Laura calls her teacher “Miss”
when they meet after class
she’s grown up in a family
that understands the weight of respect

Lawrence laughs flashing gold
his experience etched on the surface of his skin
he navigates with no need of a compass
gives nicknames to the old street-guardians

Samantha hooks her long brown hair
over her right ear, the better to hear you with
she’s already a swimmer
wet from the ocean of words

Jeff is the quiet one, taking it in
but he reaches for the book
leafs through the pages
asks what needs to be asked

Laura’s grandfather calls his daughter
by the wrong name, always hard to understand
but he’s had to learn two languages
breathing this air with his heart in other soil

Samantha writes poems, too
she knows what it means to love
can discern the crucial differences
can hold on to what’s real

Lawrence’s car has a fancy muffler
misnamed, in fact, because muffling
is not its purpose, it is a trumpet
heralding his presence

these four cast wide nets
infuse old words with new meaning
give a precious gift with no expectation of return
these four make the words worth the writing

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.

What could be better than a day full of poetry? How about two days full of poetry?

I traveled to the Rochester, NY, area this week for a series of poetry events. On Wednesday, May 5, I made my first stop in Avon, NY, about 30 minutes from Rochester. I joined Alan Casline, John Roche, Paulette Swartzfager, Stephen Lewandowski, Dwain Wilder and Ken Warren for an afternoon of poetry beside the cannons in the park. The park is in the middle of a traffic circle in downtown Avon, so our reading was accompanied by the slow circling of cars and trucks and the occasional, slightly confused pedestrian.

Alan Casline [pictured at left] brought ambrosia with mead to share with the group. It was a gorgeous afternoon, so we sprawled out on the grass to listen and to soak up the sun. Alan read several poems, including one about a hike he and Steve Lewandowski went on that included a line about Steve sliding down a snow-covered bank “like a third grader on a lunch tray.”

Ken Warren [pictured at top] was visiting from Ohio. [Correction, via John Roche: "Ken Warren spent decades in Ohio, but recently moved to a town near Lake Ontario northeast of Buffalo."] He read a few poems and then a longer prose piece remembering the killings at Kent State, the 40th anniversary of which had passed the day before. It was a very powerful essay, well researched and full of moving quotes from people who had been on the campus that day.

John Roche [pictured at left] paid homage to the location of the reading will several poems about Avon, the town where he makes his home. One of his pieces was a protest poem about the closing of a local watering hole. I enjoyed John’s intensely specific words of protest — it’s important to be reminded that protest poems can be very, very local.

I went next, reading a new poem, “The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky” along with “I Am Not An Indian.”

Stephen Lewandowski, [pictured at left] a longtime chronicler of – and advocate for – the Finger Lakes region, ended his set of poems with one that took me completely by surprise. It was a poem about the increase of the signal strength of Jazz90.1 (WGMC) and Steve’s resulting ability to hear Oscar Peterson and other jazz greats at his Finger Lakes home. What made this poem so surprising for me is that boosting the station’s power was a project I oversaw as station manager of Jazz90.1 from 2002-2004. What was even more surprising was that it was a complete coincidence that Steve read the piece – he didn’t realize my connection to the station. I was very moved to hear someone who so appreciated the results of all those thousands of hours of fundraising and advocacy.

Unfortunately, I had to leave right before Dwain Wilder [pictured at left] and – I assume – Paulette Swartzfager read (sorry!), so that I could make it to my own reading that night at St. John Fisher. But I thoroughly enjoyed spending an afternoon in the company of such insightful people. I hope the “poetry at the cannons” reading will be just the first in a long series of such events in Avon.

Coming up in part 2: My “book tour” continues at St. John Fisher with fellow poet Matt Smythe. Read part 2.

Thanks to Paulette for the photos in this story.

The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky

There would be no point in climbing this mountain,
not even to speak to the wise man at its summit.
He has no answers, no solutions. He is merely old,
and that’s no achievement when you live on a mountaintop.

There are two men trapped at the bottom of a deep well.
Were they to assist one another, it is possible they could escape.
Instead they choose to urinate on one another, destroying
their supply of drinkable water and ensuring they remain trapped.

The wise man can see the mouth of the well from where he sits,
because years ago a climber with no money gave him, as payment,
a powerful set of Zeiss Classic 20×60 binoculars, strong enough
to turn a busy colony of ants into a whirling dervish of people.

By the time the climber had reached the base of the mountain,
he’d realized that the binoculars were more valuable than
anything the old man had said, but the thought of re-scaling the peak
turned his stomach to ash and filled his mouth with regret.

Turning northward, the old man can see the last piece of ice under the sky.
Upon it sit two polar bears, and between them on the ice is
the last fish from the water, their final sustenance. Inevitably,
they tear one another in two, rather than the fish, their blood staining the ice.

None of that really happened, did it? asks the filmmaker on the summit.
He’s come to make a documentary about the old man, to record his wisdom
for a decadent, unenlightened age. But the filmmaker is an unbeliever,
refusing to accept what he can see through the camera’s unblinking eye.

The old man smiles and extends the binoculars, offering
the filmmaker a closer look at the world-as-it-is, as it, in fact, must be.
The filmmaker shakes his head sadly, packs his camera back into its case,
and begins the slow climb back to the foot of the mountain.

He reaches the bottom and passes the well where the two men are still trapped,
their lack of drinking water also meaning a lack of urine for their battle.
The filmmaker thinks he hears moaning from the bottom of the well and almost
goes to look. But refusing to believe his ears, he turns and walks away.

May 5, 7:30 PM
Rochester Poets May Reading at St. John Fisher College
I’ll be performing a 20-minute set, as will my friend and fellow poet Matt Smythe.
Born and raised in Canandaigua, NY, Matt Smythe is a Creative Supervisor/Producer at Jay Advertising in Rochester. After serving 8 years in the U.S. Army he returned home to complete his A.S. in Biology at Finger Lakes Community College and his B.A. in English from SUNY Brockport. He received his M.A. in Literature from George Mason University, in Fairfax, VA. An avid outdoorsman, Matt writes poetry and non-fiction for his blog, fishingpoet.com, and has had work published in Redactions, Long Shot, The Ganargua Review, The Yale Angler’s Journal, Blueline, Frantic Egg, Noochbomb (online), Persona, Jigsaw, and The Kerf. He was also a 2000-2001 recipient of the Lannan/Folger Shakespeare Fellowship in Washington D.C.

DETAILS: Wednesday, May 5, 7:30 p.m. Hughes Rotunda, Wilson Education Bldg., St. John Fisher College. 3690 East Ave, Rochester NY. For more information, contact Rochester Poets President Frank Judge at rochesterpoets@gmail.com or 585-260-9005.

I don’t usually post two poems on the same day, but here goes. This is in response to the first-ever prompt from the new Big Tent Poetry. Click on the image below to enlarge. In many browsers. you can click on the bigger image, too, to make it EVEN BIGGER. Crazy!

all the world

in the hazy moments before sleep
I turn toward the window, think of you
my cheek resting on the cool pillow
I wonder where you are, what you’re doing
is your head cradled by soft down?
are you looking at the same moonless sky?
do you hold my face in your eyes,
imagine my warmth beside you?
once we walked along village streets
making plans for the future
now I sleep alone, think often of the past
memory is a vast theater of empty seats
the curtain removed years ago, the ushers released
I sit on the edge of the stage, swinging my feet
the echo of my heels hitting the wood
accentuates the exquisite loneliness of this room
a jolt as my body falls and I am awake again
face turned toward the window
cheek resting on the warm pillow
thinking, as always, of you

the chase

300,000 madcap monks
line up in rows

myopics who cannot follow
the treeing of the raccoon
by a pack of wiseacre hounds

the raccoon’s claws draw
molasses from the trunk

a dark glob balancing on its
nose like a circus trick

the monks follow the smell
to the base of the tree

where sits a Spanish violinist
who plays a jaunty reel

the monks begin dancing
the raccoon begins dancing
the tree begins dancing

the hounds circle round
find soft spots in the sticky grass
and settle down to sleep

Mark Rothko, No. 301 (Red and Blue over Red), 1959 – Moca Permanent Collection

Red is…

the color of the rush
the sound of the audience
the flame behind your eyes
the tingle in the fingertips
the vibration inside
the salt on the tongue
the cast of the rain
the taste of need
the washing over of the past
the end of the tunnel
the soft touch of skin
the hard echo of calling
the turn of the key
the clatter of footsteps
the remains of ashes
the promise unspoken
the thought unvoiced
the blush of truth
the cry of a hawk
the whisper in the hallway

Red is the ringing phone
that is never answered.

Red is the back that turns
to the pounding on the door.

Red is the question that
no answer ever rises to meet.

Red is the waning
of the moon.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Delaware

a deer crosses Delaware Avenue
flashing a shock of white-tailed rump
at the convenience store window
Thursday morning commuters jam the brakes
jarred from their talk-radio reverie
into an encounter with the world-as-it-is
this doe stops all the moving metal
the beat of her heart more powerful
than the combustion of the bones
of dinosaurs, explosions that
carry and eradicate the memory of nature

Listen to the entire set using the player above.

Bernie writing a poem on the side of the stage while his dad reads in the background. Photo by Bob Anderson.

UPDATE: The fine folks at Albany Poets sent me a recording of my set straight from the sound board. It’s higher quality than the recording I made and is now posted above. Enjoy!

Thank you to everyone who came out to see my set tonight at Poets Speak Loud at the Lark Tavern in Albany. I had a fantastic time and was very touched to see so many friendly faces (including the folks who would have been there anyway).

If you missed the gig, here is my set in its entirety. You can listen using the player at the top of this post, or download the mp3 file for later by clicking on Download, right below the player. The first voice you’ll hear is that of Mary Panza, the MC and one of the prime movers behind Albany Poets. Enjoy!

Listen to this poem using the player above.

April

already the sinking of autumn
a rough sack of wet leaves
thrown over the shoulder

sternum aching from bending forward
the slightest cloud across the sun
renews longing

air smells of metal, predicts the coming rain
sidewalkers with downcast eyes
avoid the discomfort of contact

a woman on a concrete bridge
measures the distance to Ophelia’s bed
thinks better of it this day

there’s rosemary for you, that’s for remembrance
there’s fennel for you, and columbines
Ophelia waits, open-eyed

unready, she’s thinking, that’s all
the time will come, my sweet
when I shall cover you up with my watery sheet

Reading at the Lark Tavern. (Photo by Bob Anderson)

I’ll be adding to this album as more photos come in. Here are the first few from the reading.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Photo of the Normanskill by Jason Crane.

Water
(for Carolee and Jill)

all my poems are wet
soaked through with tears
of realization come too late

before the ink is dry
as my pen lifts from the paper
my eyes well up and it starts again

every missed connection
every just-closed train door
every unreturned smile

there are never enough pages
to soak it all up, to absorb all these years
why does it take so long to cross this river?

This poster says 7:30 p.m., but it starts at 8 p.m.

I’m the featured poet tonight at Poets Speak Loud at 8 p.m. at the Lark Tavern, 453 Madison Ave. in Albany, NY. It’s an open mic, too. Sign-up starts around 7, so bring your own work along. I’ll be reading from my just-released book, Unexpected Sunlight (FootHills Publishing, 2010). Hope to see you there!

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Come with me, Shelby

come with me, Shelby
leave Dunkin’ Donuts behind
abandon the too-sweet smell of the batter,
the truckers’ glares,
long-separated from warm flesh
and soft mouths
leave your ill-chosen uniform
and the constriction of low wages
we’ll drive to the lake
sit in my pickup on top of the hill
try to spot the woodpecker
building a home
I’ll find us a tree
peck at it with my pointed intentions
burrow down
until the sap sticks to our skin
with a texture no glazed donut can replicate
we’ll have no natural predators,
feel no need to pray
content to perch
above the ebb and flow of this life
and to taste the sweet morning air

Listen to this poem using the player above.

A poem for my son John and his grandfather, after whom he was named. John Packard died in April 1996.

John, again
(for my younger son and his grandfather)

he’ll never smell his grandpa’s pipe
never hear him laugh or make a corny joke
he’ll never feel the rumble of the BCS
as it plows up the rich earth for planting
he’ll never sit at the oval table
never pass a bowl of fresh-picked veggies
or watch his grandpa butter warm bread
he’ll never be tickled by a mustache
or smell the sweat on an old t-shirt
never be picked up in a wiry embrace
or put his cheek against rough stubble
but he’ll carry with him the joy in the land
and he’ll walk with solid steps on country lanes
he’ll laugh when laughter is needed
and he’ll stop to help a stranger
he’ll see in his mother’s eyes
the eyes whose gaze he’ll never feel
and he’ll know what it is to be loved

Photo of Bernie at the 2010 Albany WordFest (Photo by Keith J. Spencer)

My son Bernie (age 7) just found out that his poem “Dance To The Chocolate” won in his age group in the Fair Trade Delmar Chocolate Poetry Contest. He gets a prize, gets to read at the award ceremony, and gets his poem printed in the paper. It’s a good month for poetry in the Crane house. Here’s his winning poem:

Dance To The Chocolate

Dance to the music right?
Wrong! Dance to the chocolate
Dance to the chocolate
Dance to the chooooooocolate
Yay!!!

Listen to this poem using the player above.

My first conscious attempt to use projective verse.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Smith's Tavern (Photo by John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)

This article ran in the Albany Times Union newspaper today. I’ll be taking part in the competition. Please come out and support local poetry!

Village tavern to crown poet laureate
Voorheesville watering hole hosts gatherings of wordsmiths

By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer
First published in print: Friday, April 23, 2010

VOORHEESVILLE — This low-key suburban village of 2,700 souls harbors a noisy secret: the place is crawling with poets.

Their currency is the spoken word, often loudly declaimed to carry over the din of the bar and the clink of pints of Guinness.

While it may not rival literary capitals such as New York City or Paris, the village is home to poetry workshops, poetry readings, a poetry publisher and, come Sunday afternoon, the first-ever Smith’s Tavern poet laureate.

Two dozen poets from as far away as Syracuse will vie for the $100 first prize, not to mention a laurel wreath and the laureate’s name inscribed on a statue of Shakespeare on a mantle above a fireplace in the tavern’s back room.

Read the rest of the article.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Light

from an essay by Kwame Dawes:
“to be at home in a lace that is full of light”

and to be held in its grasp, caressed by light
to feel the tendrils, the wisps of light
wrapped around your chest, softly
slithering down your thighs, grasping
the tender parts of you, this lace
penetrating flesh, seeping into blood
the soft glow in your veins, the rhythmic
pumping of light from the heart, spreading
illumined corpuscles, erythrocytes, leukocytes
traveling toward the extremities, pooling
in the fingers, the toes, rising
to the top of your head, the tips of your hair
to be at home in this lace of light
this lace that is full of light

My friends and fellow Albany-area poets Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond-Wickham, along with my not-yet-but-probably-soon-to-be friend Deb Scott are just about to launch Big Tent Poetry, an online community for poets. Stop by and visit them.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Observations from a recent drive from Albany, NY, to Middleburgh, NY, and back.

Photographer’s Web site

Middleburgh Sketches
April 19, 2010

tiger-striped hills
cloud-down hovering
one goose in the April sun

* * *

Cachao’s bass at the root
I on the mountaintop
summer salsero amid spring hills

* * *

thick-grown budding trees
guards posted beside the road
the city is a surprise

Listen to this post using the player above.

Gingerbread Man

“I’m uncertain,” said Heisenberg.
It was true — he was hard to pin down.
You have to get up
pretty early in the morning
to catch a man
traveling 66,000 miles per hour.
To meet him halfway is a challenge;
the distance always shrinking,
never quite closing.
We are, finally, unknowable.
Not fixed in both position
and velocity, evading
capture, measurement, taxonomy.
What’s in a name? And where? And when?
Heisenberg printed a label in neat
block letters, but could find
nowhere to put it. All his photos
were blurry. He could not
recognize the faces.
Who is the nucleus, who the electron?
Who is the fixed point, who
the orbiting satellite?

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Roughing It

“Could any of these people bear a week in Walden?” — Djelloul Marbrook

No signal?
Are you kidding me with this?
It’s a mile walk back
to the goddamned Starbucks,
and their wi-fi isn’t even free.
This was such a mistake.
I mean, I like burlap trousers
and a rustic fireplace as much
as the next guy, but
this shack next to a mosquito-
infested swamp is about as
pastoral as a prison camp.
When my agent suggested
Walden II as the idea for my
next book, I thought, why not?
If Thoreau could make a killing
writing about growing beans
and taking hikes, then so could I.
But come on, how is anyone
supposed to write out here?
The closest restaurant is
Karl’s Sausage Kitchen on Route 1.
I don’t know about you, but a diet
of sausage and West Nile virus
isn’t exactly the stuff great books
are made of. If I get a room
on the upper floor of the Ferns
Deluxe Motel in Saugus, I’ll be
able to see the pond
from the window. That’s got to be
good enough.
Thoreau can kiss my ass.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Guilt

1.

The scientist created a machine
that could look back into the past.
He called it Guilt.
When activated, his invention
could whisk the temporal traveler
off to days gone by:
the job left unfinished;
the lie told; the lover jilted.
True, this form of travel had a limited
appeal in the marketplace, but
it was a must for the connoisseur
of despondency, the rueful explorer.
The scientist kept his creation
secured in the topmost room
of his falling-down house,
far from the notice of the
established academic community.
Those who wished to take
a journey into the embittered past
were carefully screened to keep
out the crazies and the masochists,
for he intended his machine to be used
by the pure of intention, if not the pure of heart.

2.

It was on Tuesday last that the scientist
heard a light tapping on his door.
He thought perhaps he’d forgotten
to let the cat in, but when he opened
the door he was surprised to find
a young girl on his front porch,
hair exactingly braided and white socks
pulled up just so. “Mister,” she said,
“I want to take a ride in the machine.”
He refused, of course, although his
interest was piqued. How could this
child even know of his invention?
“My dear,” he said, “there is nothing
for you here. Run along home.
Someone must be worried about you.”
She took one step forward,
hand on the doorjamb, eyes fixed on his.
“Mister,” she said, “I’m going to take a ride
in the machine.” There was something
about her, an emanation, an aura,
and before he knew it, the scientist
had stepped back to allow her to pass
into the living room.
“Where is it?” she asked, taking in
each feature of the sparsely appointed room.
“On the top floor, my child,” he said, pointing.
“But you must go alone.”
She nodded once and began climbing the stairs,
holding the railing with one china-doll hand.

3.

The scientist sat down to wait, sipping the tea
he’d been preparing before the girl’s arrival.
He could hear her on the top landing now,
and then the soft creak of the door as
she entered the room where he kept the machine.
Ah yes, there it was, the throaty rumble
as the machine began to work.
Was that a whimper? he wondered,
straining to hear every sound,
every nuance from the top floor.
Eventually, he could no longer resist,
and began to climb the stairs.
He knew this was a breach of his
standard operating procedure, but this,
this was a special case.
As he neared the open door, the deep note
faded away, disappearing like a ghost
through the wall.
He stepped into the room.
It was empty, save for the chair
and the machine. But then
something caught his eye,
a white flutter under the chair.
He stooped to retrieve the piece
of paper. Written on it, in the assured
script of an adult, were two words:
THANK YOU.

4.

(SAYERSVILLE) – Firefighters
responded to a blaze at a house on
the Sayersville-Freedom line Tuesday
night. The house, owned by Dr. B—-,
a researcher at the university, was nearly
consumed by the fire when the firefighters
arrived on the scene. They focused
their efforts on stopping the blaze from
spreading to the nearby woods. No
human remains were found in the wreckage
of the house, a no cause has yet
been determined. Police say Dr. B—‘s car
is missing, and he did not report to work
at the university this morning.

My first collection of poetry, Unexpected Sunlight, is now available. The poems talk of love, family lost and found, music and musicians, and scenes from everyday life. These poems were written between 2006 and 2009. I’m thrilled to be able to share them with you.

The book is now available in the store.

There are some days that are hard to forget – your wedding, the births of your children … and the day someone hands you the first copy of your new book.

Saturday, April 17, was such a day for me. I traveled to Geneseo, NY, with fellow poet Alan Casline to attend the FootHills Publishing 25th anniversary celebration. More than 25 FootHills poets read their work, first at Dante’s Books and then at the Idle Hour pub.

Alan and I drove the four and a half hours from Albany in my tiny red pickup truck. Alan is well over 6 feet tall, and the poor man could probably write a nice elegy for the nerves and muscles in his legs after a total of nine hours in the truck. He was a good sport, though, regaling me with stories of his life as a poet and independent press owner, and enlightening me about the wonders of the Normanskill watershed, the area on which he focuses his passions. Alan was in the first FootHills anthology 25 years ago, and he was published by them again last year with his book Thirty Poems.

In fact, I was so absorbed in the conversation that I completely missed our exit from the Thruway and ended up driving an extra 20 or so minutes to the next exit and back. With just that little hitch, though, we managed to arrive at Dante’s Books (99 Main Street, Geneseo) a few minutes before the reading began. Poets had come from all over the state, from Pennsylvania and from as far as New Orleans.

There’s no way I can review or even comment on all the poets who read, mostly because there were so many and my usually faulty memory was wiped nearly clean by the time I arrived home. Here are a just a few brief sketches of people and poems I remember:

FootHills founder and traveling bard Michael Czarnecki started the day with three brief stories about serendipitous encounters with poetry, poets and lovers of language. These charming stories ranged from classrooms to caves to hot springs.

I read three poems from Unexpected Sunlight, the first copy of which had been put into my hands about 30 minutes before I stepped on stage. It was a wonderful experience to read from the pages of my own book. I also read a new poem about the difficulties of a Walden-like existence.

Robustly bearded poet David Michael Nixon spoke truth to power in a series of short, strong pieces.

Catharine Faurot teaches at SUNY Geneseo. Her second poem cleverly combined mythological figures with the inner workings of a car radio.

Around 4 p.m., we moved from Dante’s to the Idle Hour pub (5 Center Street, Geneseo). It was a much louder venue and required a lot of concentration on my part to hear the poets, but the reading was a great success. A few more brief sketches:

John Roche, the man who brought the entire event together (and also the person who gave my manuscript to FootHills – thanks!), is never afraid of political poetry. He read a poem from his book On Conesus about the objects he found after the winter on the lake after which his book is named. He also read a poem called “Joe The Poet” that appeared in the latest edition of Alan Casline’s Rootdrinker.

New Orleans native Paulette Swartzfager read several poems about her hometown, as had other non-native NOLA fans earlier in the day (including me).

Susan Deer Cloud, just back from AWP in Denver, read from her most recent book and from the anthology she edited, I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool). She was followed by another poet from that anthology, Rochester’s Monty Campbell.

Then it was my traveling companion Alan Casline with his carefully crafted observations of life and nature in the Normanskill area outside Albany. His creation poem about the naming of animals was a particular crowd favorite.

Finger Lakes bard Steve Lewandowski read two short works from his new FootHills collection. It was a delight to meet Steve, who had a fantastically wry sense of humor.

Bruce Sweet‘s voice alone was reason enough to listen to him read, and his strong writing made that voice even more potent. I was particularly struck by his final poem, a prayer for various kinds of political, social and economic change. It was laced with humor, but had a deep core.

I picked up several books by a variety of FootHills writers, including Michael Czarnecki, Susan Deer Cloud, Steve Lewandowski, Alan Casline and Dennis Formento. I can’t wait to dig into them, and to spend another wonderful afternoon in the company of FootHills poets.

(For another version of events and some wonderful photos, visit Martha Deed’s blog. And be sure to join the other folks who have left their own memories in the comments section of this post.)

Me with copy #1 of Unexpected Sunlight, my new collection of poems from FootHills Publishing.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This was prompted by a small contest over at the Poems Out Loud blog.

Muse, Inc.

Nothing happened.
I mean it, nothing.
I’d put my blank pages in
the Amazing First
Book Creating Machine
and pressed POETRY
on the display. I’d
driven to this bowling
alley in Duluth – all the
way from Plano, Texas –
because I’d heard that
Ginsberg and Olson
and Creeley and Ashbery
all used to bowl here
once a year. Scholars
always wondered, why Duluth?
Why bowling? No one ever
thought to check the Out-Of-
Order stall in the men’s room.
No one until me, that is. And
there it was. The machine
they’d all used to create their
first books. Howl, Le Fou,
Call Me Ishmael, Some Trees.
They’d all come out of this stall.
But when I put my pages in,
nothing happened. I mean it,
nothing. Maybe the machine
was broken?

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Strings

Perhaps Beethoven was wrong.
This may not be the best method
of organizing groups of tightly
wound cat intestines.

Or aren’t those used anymore?
That would be foolish –
there are certainly
too many cats.

Everywhere you look, they stare
at you with disdainful eyes
before turning away in disgust
to lick their own assholes.

There are too many people, too,
if we’re being honest. Of course,
most of us can’t lick our own nether
regions – we need help for that.

But we’ve each got 25 or so feet of
intestines. We’re each like our own
string quartet, just waiting
for someone to play on us.

Bernie reading at Third Thursday Poetry Night in December 2009. Photo by Dan Wilcox.

My 7-year-old son Bernie has been writing poems for the past year or so. Today he submitted his first poems and tonight he’s attending his second open mic at the 2010 Albany WordFest. I’m so proud of him and I’d like to share some of his work with you.

The first four poems were inspired by a contest being run by Fair Trade Delmar, an advocacy group in a small town near Albany. They’re looking for kids to write poems about chocolate. The prizes will involve chocolate and the winners will also be printed in the town paper. Here’s Bernie’s suite of poems for the contest.

Chocolate Poems

Chocolate

Chocolate chocolate chocolate
Chocolate is all I can say

Dance To The Chocolate

Dance to the music right?
Wrong! Dance to the chocolate
Dance to the chocolate
Dance to the chooooooocolate
Yay!!!

Chocolate Catastrophe

I love chocolate I’d eat
It day and night but
When you find them really
Take a big bite.

You Love It Too

You love chocolate too
Don’t you? Well if not
START LIKING
IT NOW!! Well eat
It now. I guess it’s either
Now or never.

* * *

And here are two more short pieces, the first of which I find both sad and beautiful.

I don’t know why

I don’t know why
I go to school
I don’t know why I eat
I don’t know why I even live
But I do and I know why
I’m me

me me and me

me I love me me you
love me me love me
me play me play me
play games me

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Lottery

Ida plays the lottery every day
walking slowly to the pharmacy
next to the pizza shop

she hands a worn sheet of folded paper
to the Pakistani man who
pushes the numbers into the machine

then she sits next to the display
of walkers and canes,
painstakingly checking the ticket

7 24 23: Eddie, her oldest brother
he always dreamed of being an actor,
until that day he hit the beach
and it never stopped raining metal

11 19 24: That was her. She was
the only daughter, Mama’s pride and
the light in Papa’s eye. She was the one
her brothers looked out for

12 24 26: Walter, born Christmas Eve
the same year they’d had to move
because Papa lost his job after Mr. Monroe
skipped town with the receipts

3 13 46: The war was over, she and Tom
had moved into their bungalow near the
rail yard, and along came Edie, named after
the uncle she’d never meet

7 1 49: That was Joe, the quiet one. He
didn’t say much, but he didn’t miss much
either, and she knew one day he’d
be there to lean on, and he was

10 14 74: Joe and Liza got married
at the old church. It’s a set of fancy
condos now, next to an espresso shop
that used to be Gianelli’s bakery

6 30 76: Edie was a June bride, thirty
year old. She and Tom had given up hope,
figured Edie’d be living with them until they died.
Then Edie met Leroy at a church picnic

5 9 77: The day of the accident,
when Edie wouldn’t stop crying.
The policeman said it was nobody’s
fault, just fog and a slippery road

1 17 80: Her grandbaby, James.
She loved her children, but she’d
never known anything like the shiver
in her stomach when that baby smiled

10 5 91: She’d been holding Tom’s hand
when the time came. Everybody was there,
and Tom was peaceful. She slept
on the couch that night, Joe close at hand.

Ida plays the lottery every day
the same careful numbers
she doesn’t play to win, just to remember

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Amputee

“don’t you miss it?”
that’s always the first question

for so many years
that metal was part
of my body, wedded
to my fingertips

I would wiggle my digits
and the conjured spirits
would wail and cry

“not really” I say
fixing my expression
to sell the lie

I’m an amputee, still
feeling the ghost limb

my appendage sits in a case
that the cat peed on
in the room where
I record the voices
of women and men
who would never dream of
allowing the doctor
to complete the operation

they would leap from the table
shove past the nurse’s grasping
hands, trailing the ends of
their open hospital gowns
and screaming “not that!”
as they plunged through the
double doors into the street

me, I catch sight of it
out of the corner of my eye
feel my fingers twitch

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I enjoy the visual work of Joanne Johns, whose blog I highly recommend. Today’s offering is in that spirit. As for the text: When you include multiple links in a Facebook status update, a window pops up asking you to type in two words to prove that you’re human and not a spambot. I’ve been saving those words for a while now, and this poem uses all of the words I’ve saved, plus some others thrown in for good measure. The title of the poem comes from a quotation from Melissa Harris-Lacewell, whose work I respect very much.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Listen to this poem using the player above. The music is “Down By The Salley Gardens,” performed on tin whistle by Jason Crane.

Another Song For Occupations

Walt didn’t mean invaders
he meant good work, done well
not camo-clad crusaders
turning Gaza into hell

not Kabul and not Baghdad
or next to Kandahar
a mother or a granddad
when is the bridge too far?

Walt thought of driving carts
of crossing on the ferry
hat doffed to gentler arts
eating, drinking, merry

not strafed by chuckling guns
the toys of discontent
not being forced to run
or tortured to repent

Walt never dreamt of walls
cutting parent off from child
obscuring blood relations
casting friends into the wild

although he’d been through war time
had soothed the soldiers’ pains
he’d thought that there’d be more time
to reap those hard-won gains

but now the jobs he spoke of
are gone, sailed overseas
Walt’s song for occupations
has faded on the breeze

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Comedy Gold
(for Jeff Vrabel)

laughter is the energy, compassion
the generator, a limitless supply
impervious to disruption
like the golden sun that permits flight

it’s a super-power, being liked
not everyone has it
some folks are more Kryptonite
than hoped-for hero

you don’t need the phone booth
although you’re always near it
when the call comes, ready
to rip buttons and leap

gold isn’t the right metaphor,
either, because gold is too soft
you can put marks in it
with your teeth, like a marshmallow

steel is more apt, or maybe iron
something that carries the idea
of strength, durability, conviction
you can throw what you will

at a steel pole or an iron bar
and it will be there when you’re done
scratched, maybe, but otherwise
just the same as when you left it,

no matter how long ago that was
that’s a promise on which no price
can be placed, to which no value
can be attached; it just is, thankfully

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Spring Robins

I’ve been seeing robins everywhere this season
on the lawn when I leave for work
outside my window at the office
in the yard while I’m playing with the kids

they wander to and fro, looking lost and confused
and who can blame them — it’s still early days
prey is scarce and the bright red gives them away
before they can pounce

I think the main problem, though, is that
they’re longing for Batman
he’d only choose one of them anyway
who ever heard of Batman and the Robins?

the warm weather always brings them out
once it’s clement enough for short shorts
and tights, they don their masks and capes
and head out in search of crime

do you think Batman and Robin were dating
like the Comics Code people claimed?
I don’t — they were too far apart in age, and
Robin was in great shape, he didn’t need to settle

for a much older man with obvious identity issues
that said, Dick did agree to let Bruce
dress him in that ridiculous outfit
he should have been twirling a baton

not swinging punches into the jaws of
painted evildoers and crazies
you don’t keep your boyish good looks
being eaten by a shark or buried alive

if you see a Robin, don’t feed him
you’ll only encourage him to come back
before you know it he’ll be on your porch
looking glum and asking if you’ve seen the Batmobile

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Oh Lord

Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me
When Charles wrote that,
the (magic) mushroom
seemed like a very real possibility.
Like there could be a day
when there were no more days,
when spring would jump
straight to winter
and the switch would get stuck.

Now his words sound quaint and old-timey,
like interring the Japanese
or smallpox blankets
or the city of gold that was exchanged
for dark flesh. Like bomber blackouts
on the West Coast and ships
in Davey Jones’ locker,
sent there by folks flapping their gums.

We don’t worry ’bout that no more.
We have seen the enemy and they are winning.
With friends like we’ve got, it’s just as well
Dastardly Dan leaves that girl tied to the tracks.
She’d better pray the train kills her,
because her insurance won’t cover just
losing a limb or two. That’s an act of God,
they’ll say. The Big Guy doesn’t like it
when you don’t pay your rent.

I realized today that there are a few things I’ve mentioned on Facebook and Twitter but not right here on the blog:

1. The Winter-Spring 2010 issue of Blue Collar Review is now available at partisanpress.org. My poem “Lillian Dupree & The Ballad of Frenchman Street” is in it, alongside a lot of other fine writing about working class issues. Please order a copy and support an independent press that supports working people.
2. The popular poetry blog TheThe has started to run book reviews, and their inaugrual piece is my review of John Gallaher’s Map of the Folded World. Enjoy!
3. There is some chance that my new book, Unexpected Sunlight, will be available as early as April 17 during the reading at Dante’s books in Geneseo. That means it should also be available at subsequent events, including my feature at Poets Speak Loud at the Lark Tavern, 453 Madison Avenue in Albany, at 8 p.m. on April 26. Watch this space for more details. Look below for a sneak peek at the cover painting by my friend Bob Anderson.

I’ll be one of many readers gathering in Geneseo on Saturday, April 17, to celebrate the 25th annivesary of FootHills Publishing. Complete information about the event is included in the flyer below, or on my events page.

Click on the image to see a larger version:

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Origins

Tell me where you’re from

from the Berkshire hills
from a yellow-brick building
with a drug store in the bottom
from a mother and a father
who gave me love and madness
from firefighters in a flooded basement
and old men with missing fingers
from the daddy longlegs, north-pointing
and the tobacco-scented southern earth
from industrial towns in upstate New York
and the blue-carpeted van
from this school and this one and this one, too
always new, always being introduced
from the haven of my room and
from dreams of the ocean
from dinosaur bones and long words
and pretty girls with the same first name
from 27 houses and apartments
in too many towns and cities
from first cars and first kisses
and second chances and third strikes
from the Irish and the German
from the 17th-century seafarers
from the town cowherd and
a documentation analyst
from a radio host and a typesetter
and the receptionist at England Brothers
from drunks and crazy women
who shouted at busts of Wagner
from the laundress and the waitress
and the jailed superintendent
from fire-red Mustang convertibles
and tickling under the dining room table
from submarines and Thailand
and the Housatonic River
from scalding sauce and icy water
and bandages and tears
from desert sands and bald tires
and cheese crackers and Wendy’s
from Chapel Hill to Lexington
Amarillo to Tucson
from the foothills to the mountains
to a backyard filled with stones
from a Big Wheel to a bicycle
to too many unknown homes
from the saxophone to the microphone
to the studio to the stage
from Citalopram and therapy
depression, bliss and rage
from messy rooms and folded laundry
from turn that down and crank it up
from countless hours of talking
and countless talking of ours
from Furukawa to Yokohama
from Catholicism to Methodism to
atheism to Buddhism to atheism
from selfishness to fatherhood
from one side to the other
from husband, father, lover, cousin,
uncle, friend and brother
from Main and Church, from Plunkett,
Chad Circle and Knapp Road
from Dodge and Tanque Verde
from Aoba-ku and Glendale
from Raymond Street and Kellie Court
from Lenox, Pittsfield, Lanesborough,
Syracuse, Oklahoma City, Rochester,
Potsdam, Hilton Head, Concord,
and more and more and more
from Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter Thompson
and Douglas Adams and Hayden Carruth
and George Lucas and John Williams
and John William Coltrane and Steve Lacy
and Charles Mingus and Paul Desmond
and Nova and Batman and Walt Whitman
and Donald Hall and Albert Goldbarth
and Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac
from doubt and fear
from courage and confession
from harmony and discord
from humor and illness
from long-dormant and active
from diagnosis and treatment
and from all the same places you’re from

so…

Tell me where you’re from

Photo (c) Andrzej Pilarczyk

Thanks to the wonderful Albany arts & culture site Nippertown for featuring my poem “Gravity,” inspired by Matthew Shipp:

“Gravity” at Nippertown

Listen to this poem using the player above.

North Greenbush To Albany

Start: the Sharp house, aging Greek revival
in what was once Bloominville.
They used to bottle spring water here
until the well dried up. Then it’s three miles,
nearly all downhill, because the Hudson
draws all riders to its level.
There are two bridges – the first
across the railbed, trains carrying what few goods
we still produce and the many others
we pull in like driftwood from the sea.
These caravans of metal containers are
bound for Manhattan, lodestone of heartbeats
and rushing blood. The same lines
carry women and men to concrete hope,
to the race, to the scurry. Some will return,
lowering their sights and settling in for the long haul.
Others will half-return, riding more prestigious lines
to their magazine homes. Or so I imagine,
in the ten seconds it takes my legs
to propel the bicycle over the tracks.
The second bridge is at the base of the hill,
the bottom of the gravity well. The concrete wave
crests atop the Hudson, that once mighty barrier-highway
that is now the scenic accompaniment to stroller moms
and weekend excursionists. The river is brown on this April afternoon,
laced with the white rush of recent rains. Soon
they’ll haul the old battleship back to the dock,
so children can giggle on the blood-washed decks
where their grandfathers stood taught, gripping the rails
with terror-strengthened fingers.
The river bridge descends into the city.
The Hudson is reluctant to give up the living,
and matches every descent with a grinding climb,
testing my resolve to leave its banks. A slow, steady rhythm
carries me past Albany Lodge No. 49 and the Beirut remains
of a once majestic hotel. This is the King’s Highway.
George Washington once climbed this same hill, walked
through this city when concrete was wood, pavement
was cobblestone or dirt, before Rockefeller’s bulldozers
created this modernity, drained its character for the queen.
The general is remembered with a street and a park and a blue iron sign.
The bells are tolling the three-quarter hour as I pass the chambers
where the laws are made, and the halls of education and bureaucracy.
Then it’s home, where a distant city’s baseball team is on the radio,
and I cook my imported convenience-store noodles and sit down to write.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

My first stab at a visual poem. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Most people know that Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855. What few people know is that he plagiarized many of the most famous lines in the book from a lesser-known Massachusetts poet named Whit Waltman, who published his own Keep Off The Grass in 1854. The only known copy of Waltman’s book has been passed down by my family for generations, and I’m very happy to finally offer excerpts from it here.

Excerpts from Keep Off The Grass
by Whit Waltman

I hear America singing,
And I wish it would shut the hell up.

***

I celebrate myself
And so should you,
Because every atom that’s yours is mine
And every atom that’s mine is mine.

***

Oh captain! My captain!
Do you think we could get this boat moving sometime today?
These runaway slaves aren’t going to return themselves.

***

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?
It takes a long god-damned time to mow, I can tell you.

***

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
And if you’re not here by 8:30,
I’m going to the game by myself.

This looks incredible.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

If someone were to ask me to pick one person as a personal hero, Lenny Bruce is who I’d pick.

A Photograph Of Lenny

I write my poems
under a photo of Lenny Bruce.
He’s staring straight out at me,
denim-clad (maybe),
in front of a chain-link fence;
bags under his eyes
and a strap around his neck
that trails down
below the edge of the photo
so I can’t see what it supports.
When I look up to find him
staring at me, I feel exposed,
as if he’s challenging me:
“What are YOU doing about it?”
I think the answer is probably
not very much, Lenny,
but I’m trying.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Transubstantiation Is A Crock(pot)

Thomas didn’t want to touch Jesus
because he doubted His existence;
he wanted to see if He was tender.
“Nothing ruins a sacrament like tough Christ,”
Tom said, casting a knowing glance
at the others. He spoke loudly
so that Jesus wouldn’t hear the fire crackling
in the next room, and to distract the Savior
from the stealthy approach of Simon/Peter,
who brandished a rock above his head.
He called the other night the last supper?
mused Thomas. He ain’t seen nothin’ yet.