M E N T O R S

in celebration of two decades in the supermarket trade

My job is to orient the labels
on catfood and shitpaper: Lush aisles
sell. In second-language English Shido
asks, "So actually what does your father do?"
Hell. Here it come and nothing for it.
"A professor, boss. Business."
Confusion, as forecast,
surprise, and finally pity.
He doesn't ask actually why I never learned any,
how I missed the lessons.
Which is fine. I have no information.
    It rhymes but its not pretty.

Tsering - Chinese prison, six months,
"Student resistance movement," laughing,
"Not very bad. Just talking talking talking." -
was another man who knew his business.
He and a buddy took a truck from India
loaded with generators
after some disaster (a flood?) in China
and sold them to his jailors.

They spent it all in a week
in Hong Kong. Girls and drink.

He worked my shift for years. Bought a house.
He offered one of us a last advice:
"Work eat sleep work eat die"
He threw himself from a bridge to end his sentence.

I've told these stories before,
and they are all true.
But they don't get to you.
Spicer said it
and he's fucking right -
"No one listens".  And I still work there.
   I can't make it pretty, I can just make it rhyme.

Handgame singsong

Mr. Jack tapped his head

   with a ball peen hammer.

Miss Marie fixed it up

  in half an hour.

Some spin round in circle bound

  some go straight.

Which one is the carnival train

  and which one freight?

from Parade Music

A beetle then a bruise then a bride then...

Shiny beetle

Black and blue

On my knee

Begging please

Before the judge

God above

Dark below

The lifted stone
Shiny beetle

Harvest

Cut melon's fieldhot seed
and wet sweetness leak
from the bright tenderness
of the gash

No inspiration
Can last five minutes without
Its own needful things

sa voix ce fut celle la

 Mais cett'autre histoire de la pie, de laquelle nous avons Plutarque mesme pour respondant, est estrange. Elle estoit en la boutique d'un barbier à  Rome, et faisoit merveilles de contre-faire avec la voix tout ce qu'elle oyoit; un jour, il advint que certaines trompetes s'arrestarent à sonner long temps devant cette boutique; dépuis cela et tout le lendemain, voylà cette pie pensive, muete et melancholique, dequoy tout le monde estoit esmerveillé; et pensoit on que le son des trompetes l'eut ainsin estourdie et estonnée, et qu'avec l'ouye la voix se fut quant et quant esteinte; mais on trouva en fin que c'estoit une estude profonde et une retraicte en soy-mesmes, son esprit s'exercitant et preparant sa voix à representer le son de ces trompetes: de maniere que sa premiere voix ce fut celle là, de exprimer perfectement leurs reprinses, leurs poses et leurs nuances, ayant quicté par ce nouvel aprentissage et pris à desdain tout ce qu'elle sçavoit dire auparavant.  - Montaigne

In an Italian story from some time ago

there was a parrot that could talk in a cage at a bar.

Goofy stuff like "Polly wanna cracker!"

Now one day the barkeep turns on the radio...

Incredible! Miles and Coltrane on Flamenco

Sketches is the first thing they hear.

Everyone is silent while those horns blow.

For a week the parrot wouldn't say a word.

Like it was deaf, and in silence couldn't speak.

But no; deaf and devoted look alike, 

and it hadn't been hurt. It had been moved.

Then the bird sang: a great, vivid

triumph of trumpets. And now that music

was all it would ever say. Bright. Loud.

Swimming Back

In darker water we are parted

every time. This water is cold

in August. Along the beach the sunblond

stretch and oil every delicious inch

of nakedness. We part. I crawl ashore.

As as a boy I stood every day

on the black wreck of an asphalt pier

and peered at the dark behind it – that water

I could not swim nor mother watch.

Without a word for what it was

I came to see. To keep my eye on.

The pier was awash with pulling waves.

Ashore, bright children castle sand.

Men and women show themselves.

Couples walk. We coupled here -

dark hair darker in the water,

cold skin, cold lips, her heat

inside and mine spilt there.

The criminal trembling that came with.

What we showed ourselves and parted.

As as young men we stood at the end

of a pier in winter and stared at ice.

I cupped a cigarette's hot coal

and dismissed the readings of dreams he offered.

We had both begun to fail and failed. Drawn

to the water, driven home by the cold

from the edge my daughter and I would fish from -

casting into the August evening.

Heavy with her my wife

had me hauled from the low combers

that patiently pushed me back under

as as doomed men we swam out

too far for me. He saved himself

that time. His ashes were scattered here.

I crawled and failed and she hauled me.

Now the son and daughters we have are blond.

They love the surf fearlessly. Shout

and play in it. Their castles mount and fail.

Always I am eyeing the dark water

and swim out to it every time.

Roll and float and breathe on the swell

of its breast. Dive. Taste it.

Crawl back to her through push and pull.

I save myself now. Every time.

Sugar on snow

Forty damn gallons

of sap for one gallon sweet.

Cold spring's industry

works dilute joy from bare trees.

In Florida: oranges.

This tanka is also on display as part of Montpelier's PoemCity project.  Over 200 Vermont poets have their work shown on the shopwindows downtown during April- anyone who can get there should.

In Babylon After Ezra

My brothers' people have gone away.

They loaded their truck with conviction yesterday

and left our street for some Godawful

dirt town where their kids will play

with sticks. They said they want it simple:

work and church and babies. All

the noise (They mean others lives

and skins and money and how our sons fall

in with their sons and with their daughters.)

was too much. To them it was noise,

the street music. There was one

uncle lingering with dark, full eyes

who said (hand on heart), “ I must find in

here something as big as Babylon.”

He should have stayed. Should have kept living

with destitute men collecting littered tin

into shopping carts on Saturday morning

and the noise the neighbors are always making

and the helicopters and the mummers.

With the smell of injira cooking

just there, eight feet across

the alley. It is street music. Downstairs

the mulatta angel and the Polish boy

hopscotch and wait for our girls

to join them. The neighbors begin to play

the theme from Bolero loudly, repeatedly.

I make coffee to carry down

to the stoop. I look up and see

a naked girl put her hair in a bun

through a far, open window. She's gone

just as suddenly. I laugh, gather

up our mugs. We sit on the steps in the sun.

At Market Street I watched my daughter,

age five, trying to piece together

the meaning of “Girls! Girls! Girls!”

in blinking neon. She asks. I tell her,

then take her hand and walk down Babylon's

mainstreet. Every night there are gunshots.

Hasidim mix with hipsters at the fishmarket

in Chinatown where they will sell you eels

born in the Euphrates. Too much here that

is real for laws in books to keep straight

however often they recite what is written.

My pale, bookish brothers blink their exhausted

eyes and find their Scripture too thin

a veil to conceal the lovely body of everyone:

the world. You can see from here where God

made the tower we made together fall down.

We're at it again. Did you hear that Spanish kid?

I can understand most of what he said.

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

The movie ends when they marry.

The sequel, backstory more ornate - contrary

and regular motions together grow

complicated, confused, fascinating. Wedding bells

harmonize with the sea heard in shells.

Their days mob and mingle. Nothing tidy. No rows.

The drone of bees (of drones?) and drivers

rolling along asphalt on rubber

talking on phones to one another, the theater

of the world's doings at my doorstep,

seems today some serialized soap,

a story that spirals a drain or orbits

a weighty center without winning it.

A songbird sings from the wire

then quits it, the line it plucked

playing some low tone it's deaf to.

A Little Winter Sutra

Winter empties this

valley completely. Two miles

of hollow silence.

Just four ounces of songbird

will fill it. A bell, ringing.

"Rut with me and eat!"

Music sells the animal

moment while it lasts.

Not even breathless, this thing

returned alive from Brazil.

There is still still air

after. Snow wants nothing.

Is without question.

He considers it. Adjusts

his wings. Makes note. Takes the air.