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Category: Poetry

POEM: Oh Lord

Published 10 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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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.

9 Comments

Two reviews and a preview

Published 9 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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.

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POEM: Origins

Published 9 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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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

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POEM: North Greenbush To Albany

Published 8 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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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.

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POEM: Malcolm

Published 7 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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

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POEM: Excerpts from Keep Off The Grass by Whit Waltman

Published 6 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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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.

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POEM: A Photograph Of Lenny

Published 5 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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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.

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POEM: Transubstantiation Is A Crock(pot)

Published 4 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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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.

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POEM: no-night stand

Published 3 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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no-night stand

we met at a minor-league baseball game
she was there with someone else
but not really there,
if you know what I mean
I mean, he wasn’t much to write home about,
and she didn’t write home much anyway
so we chatted, like people do
I peppered the night with one-liners
made fun of the guy she was with
because I didn’t have a lunch box to hit her with
like I would’ve done if we’d been kids
by the time we reached the post-game pub
I’d fallen completely in love, like people do
we sat talking at one of those
small round tables
that make things either uncomfortable or intimate
some people are just easy to talk to
interested in what you have to say
not just waiting for their chance
we didn’t dance or walk in the moonlight
or discover the same favorite song,
it was just a long conversation
touching past, present and future
because there wouldn’t be a second
eventually it was time to go home
like many tragic love affairs
this one ended abruptly
not with poison or the blade
but with a debit card and a
“nice to meet you”
unlike many tragic love affairs
this one was experienced
by only one of the people involved

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POEM: Gravity

Published 2 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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Inspired by Matthew Shipp’s April 1, 2010 performance in Troy, NY.

Gravity
(for Matthew Shipp)

Matthew has to force his hands
back down to the piano
stop them from floating away
maybe from carrying him away, too

when it’s quiet you can hear the machines
tearing up Green Dolphin Street
they smash through the tarmacadam
down to the cobblestones

but then something goes wrong
some failsafe fails, and the machines
plunge on, grinding
into clay and on into the crust

a rock shelf gives way
there’s a long metallic groan
as the biggest digger spirals down
into the molten core

Matthew stands up from the piano bench
when the crashing subsides, then
he pushes against the piano,
forearms lean and tight,

really putting his back into it
slowly, so slowly you almost
don’t notice it at first,
the piano starts rolling

Matthew is sweating now,
his brow damp, his jaw hard
the narrow end of the piano
hits the crash bar and the door opens

flooding the theater with red light
a few dollops of lava
are already cooling on the remnants
of the pavement outside

Matthew pushes the piano through the door
to the edge of the hole
gets down on his hands and knees
and listens, peering into the pit

when he’s sure it’s time, he rises,
pushes the piano again
until the front wheel
clears the edge of the hole

Matthew plays one final chord
as the keyboard lifts off the ground
then watches as the piano tumbles
end over end into the pit

leaning out over the hole
he follows the piano’s path until it’s out of sight
and it’s only then that Matthew realizes
he’s not quite touching the ground

so he lifts his arms to the sky
and the clouds accept him as he rises
welcoming their returning son
as he breaks the tether of gravity

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POEM: darkness, whispering

Published 1 April 2010 by Jason Crane

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A memory of taking my older son to the bus when he was in first grade.

darkness, whispering

he seems too small
to withstand
the yellow
metal embrace

it gathers him in
and he disappears
lost behind the vinyl
seats tall as walls

I try to wave
but he doesn’t see me
so I walk back home
in the pre-dawn
darkness, whispering
softly, to no one,
that’s my little boy

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POEM: My Name Is Jaime Escalante

Published 31 March 2010 by Jason Crane

I wrote this poem today for Jaime Escalante, the math teacher who was made famous in the movie “Stand and Deliver.” He died March 30, 2010, at the age of 79.


Photo: George Rose/ Getty Images

My Name Is Jaime Escalante

I sing the body mathematical;
my children calculate
the warp and woof
of the universe.

They strain at their limits,
breaking through the
expectations of parentage,
economy, geography.

In an infinite series of small
achievements, the next generation
ascends to the summit,
surveys el barrio.

No fence can restrain them,
no cracked concrete
prevent their flowering.
They are transcendent,

a series of small stones
bridging the chasm
between now and
what could be.

Just another man from East L.A.,
a son of Bolivia and father
to the children of the function,
the integral, the derivative.

What equation can measure this sum?
What sign can equal these lives?
I sing the body mathematical.
My children calculate the answer.

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