poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
In August, several of my friends participated in an event during which they wrote a poem a day on a postcard and mailed it to someone. They in turn received postcards from other poets. That was all too much for me, but the “poem on a postcard” idea was a good one, so I started writing the occasional short poem and sending them to friends. Here’s the first one, sent to my friends Kevin Baird and Jenn Cornish in California:
permanence
some names are carved in stone
because they cannot be erased
ours are written on paper
which burns
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?
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.
Leave a CommentI 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
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.
2 CommentsListen 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 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.
Leave a CommentListen 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.
2 Comments
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.
Leave a CommentListen 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