poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
Epiphany At Jimmy Johns
One day at lunch,
eating a veggie sub,
the sadness just went away.
Who can explain
the inner workings
of the human heart,
or why sprouts,
cucumbers and tomatoes
are an elixir stronger
than lost love?
8 December 2012
Auburn, AL
/ / /
Sometimes, if someone hurts you badly enough, you think you might never get over it. But you do. Tempus omnia sanat.
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Under Orion
As the sun comes up over the hills south of town,
I start rebuilding the house, brick by brick.
I’m careful, avoiding the easy mistakes,
meticulously placing each brick — still cool
from the evening air — on the soft bed
of mortar. They sink onto the row below
like lovers leaning back onto the pillows.
I do this because I have to. The house
needs to be remade. But I also know, as sure
as the sun is rising, that tonight, like every night,
the bricks will fall like stones in an avalanche.
I’ll hear a thump from the back of the house.
Then another from over by the bathroom.
Within a few minutes a sound like a steady rain
will fill the night air, and when I open my
eyes — held tightly shut against the falling —
I’ll be standing in the night air under Orion’s
glow, stripped naked and shivering.
5 December 2012
Auburn, AL
The Nurse
Sitting at the bar with a twenty-something
who gave up firefighting to become a nurse.
He wants to save people in a different way.
He vice-grips my hand rather than shaking it,
the way some young men are taught to do
so everyone knows: No Funny Business Here.
Today he put a catheter into a man
whose midsection was swollen with urine.
He said the man’s face changed in an instant,
and he asked my new friend for his name
so he could thank him properly.
How powerful to take away a stranger’s pain.
4 December 2012
Auburn, AL
Listen to this poem using the player above.
Popcorn Shrimp At The Crossroads
A young man with an acoustic guitar
wearing a black suit and a fedora
is trying to resuscitate Robert Johnson
in a concrete shrimp shack painted like
the inside of Jim Morrison’s head.
It’s a long way from the crossroads
where Johnson made his bargain.
Either the music’s too loud or
I’m too old. I’m worried it’s the latter.
The groove is good, though, making
me wish I had my saxophone, which
is back in Brooklyn with so many other
things I wish I had.
Once again I’m using napkins
to capture a poem.
For never having had a drink,
I’ve written many of my poems on
napkins taken off bars with pens
borrowed from bartenders.
It’s hard to learn something isn’t
your scene anymore. Now I’m
happy with a book and a cup of tea
or a good record and someone to
listen to it with me. But I came
because someone asked and
if you don’t understand this
sentence then this must be
the first of my poems
you’ve heard.
2 December 2012
Auburn, AL
Safe Distance
Three feet away, she reads River-Horse
in a winter hat, even though Alabama
is warm in November, warm like
spring in the Northeast, with which
I’m more familiar, having gotten my start
in the Berkshire hills and stayed just south
of Canada for most of my life. She is
twisting the back of her hair, the pendant
around her throat dangling over the pages.
She says she’s thinking of giving up
nursing school to drive to Colorado;
she says she needs to travel, to explore,
to get away from the walled-in-ness
that comes with an academic life.
And look, we all understand there’s a lot
I’m not writing here. I’m a little surprised
I’m able to type at all, being as I’m just
three feet away, which is nowhere near
a safe distance.
30 November 2012
Auburn, AL
shatter
no music tonight
I am made of glass
the slightest sound
might shatter me
29 November 2012
Auburn, AL
the kindness of this world
because after the tears
stop
and the shaking subsides
there are still people
waiting
at the other end
of the phone
28 November 2012
Auburn, AL
/ / /
The title of this poem is another permutation of this, which morphed into this, which is where I first saw it. I haven’t read either of those pieces yet, because I wanted to write this just using the title as a response to something that happened tonight.
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Two Eyes, One Contact
“I went to Texas to escape my life,” she said.
“Then I realized I needed to escape from
my escape, and I ended up back here again.”
We were sitting on a park bench facing nothing.
Well, facing something, but nothing worth looking at.
Which is just as well, because she had two eyes
but only one contact.
Every place is a magnet for somebody.
26 November 2012
Auburn, AL
/ / /
This poem is partly a composite of things people have said to me recently.
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New Computer Speakers: A Love Song
It’s when my new computer speakers
with the word “Logitech” on them
make me all misty and wistful
that I know things have gone too far.
I mean seriously, who gets all nostalgic
over a pair of speakers? Even if the last pair
played the sound of the rain while we
were pressed up against one another
on a hot Brooklyn–
Oh god, there I go again. Ridiculous.
Except it’s not at all ridiculous,
because if you don’t have a person
who makes your pulse increase
for no other reason than that she
comes out of the bathroom and
climbs into bed and doesn’t mind
that you snore … well then, my friend,
you just aren’t living.
So I’m going to crank up Graceland
or Songs From The Big Chair or Cafe Bleu
or maybe even something from
the decade in which I’m living.
And even if it hurts a bit,
I’m going to sit back
and think about her for a while.
24 November 2012
Auburn AL
Pushed, Pulled & Prayed
for Tina and Kelley
I drove the reluctant old truck
to the outskirts of town,
where my friends’ house is hidden
down a long gravel driveway.
Maybe that’s the only sane place
to put a house these days.
We passed a small dog around
so she could take turns sleeping
in each of our laps
while we told stories and ate
pumpkin pie with Cool Whip
and drank perfect sweet tea.
“It’s a fucked-up old world
and no denying it.” I think
Gandhi said that.
But then you find yourself
at the end of a gravel driveway
on the near edge of Alabama,
warmly embraced by people
who were strangers just a few
months back, and you think
maybe there’s still a chance
that this story will come out
all right in the end.
That’s why I’m not worried
that the truck wouldn’t start
after dinner, no matter how much
we pushed and pulled and prayed.
I’m sure it’ll start tomorrow.
And anyway, I like walking.
22 November 2012
Auburn, AL
Briefly My Father
Sitting at a stoplight.
It’s November, but also Alabama,
so my window is down.
I notice I have my elbow
partway out the window,
the backs of my left index
& middle fingers resting
against my lips.
This is the same gesture
my father makes
in this situation.
Like him, I also drum
on the steering wheel
and whistle along to the radio.
Although he’s a better whistler.
Good enough to have gone pro,
I always thought.
Someone once said it’s funny
to open your mouth and hear
your father’s voice come out.
I live alone now, and have
fewer opportunities
to impersonate him.
But at this stoplight,
with “Layla” on the radio,
I am, briefly, my father.
21 November 2012
Auburn AL
Hank Williams Played Here
Hank Williams played here
on a night just like tonight.
A crescent moon hung in the air
like the whispered promise
spoken by one lover to another
out behind the cinder-block
dance hall. They loved well,
danced better, turning
around the room as Hank sang
about cold hearts and purple skies,
his fingers firm on the steel strings
of his guitar, its painted flames
blazing in the single spotlight.
On this night of all nights,
Hank knew he’d be young forever.
He was right.
21 November 2012
Auburn, AL
/ / /
The photo is by Mark Humphrey of the Associated Press.
Leave a CommentCorrespondence
Every night
I write you a message.
Every night
I delete it.
20 November 2012
Auburn, AL
They Took Hank Williams To The Moon
They took Hank Williams to the moon.
It’s too bad they never had a chance to land,
because I think he would have liked it there
on that dusty little, lonely little rock.
The kind of place where a man might find
some peace and a short respite from sadness.
The sort of sad that flows like warm blood
through all those old country songs.
The ones sung by men with high voices
that crackled through the radio like
beacons from another world, saying
“Come here. We understand you.”
If I drank whiskey I’d do it in Alabama,
maybe in a little shack at the end of a road.
One where they don’t ask for your license
because anybody who makes it that far
deserves to be let in out of the night air.
I’d take my glass and step out back,
look up into the sky at that crescent moon,
wonder how Hank’s voice would sound
on that lonesome gray rock. Then I’d recall
that it wouldn’t sound like anything without
oxygen, and I’d think maybe I’m lucky
that I ended up down here after all.
17 November 2012
Auburn, Alabama
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There’s a Brooklyn-shaped hole in my chest
At night I listen for the sounds of traffic on the BQE.
When my feet hit the floor in the morning
they point, on their own, toward Terrace Bagels,
a quick thousand-mile walk from here.
Buying freshly made tofu from the nice Korean lady;
using one of our woks to make fried rice in my little kitchen;
watching Billy Bragg and Steve Earle on Coney Island Beach;
coming up from the subway next to the church.
These phantom limbs are attached like my arms and legs.
I can feel the sidewalks of Windsor Terrace and
the cobblestoned streets of DUMBO, smell the miso ramen
at Naruto, hear the church bells on our corner.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy the news channels
are filled with photos of the flooded city.
All I can think about when I see them is how much
I miss those streets, those tunnels, those bridges.
12 November 2012
Auburn, AL