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Category: Audio Poems

POEM: deepwater horizon

Published 11 June 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: Housatonic Reverie

Published 7 June 2010 by Jason Crane

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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.

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POEM: by chance and trembling

Published 4 June 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: pumpkin

Published 3 June 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: The Truth About Art Pepper

Published 28 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: the ghosts of suburbia

Published 27 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: The Last Siren

Published 26 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: to swing you in the arms of the stars

Published 25 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: Lark Definitions

Published 25 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: Stand up, Moses

Published 22 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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​?

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POEM: 91

Published 18 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: This is the end

Published 17 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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?

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POEM: convenience store sushi

Published 13 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: Red Truck Elegy

Published 12 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: Ingredients

Published 11 May 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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