Outside the Knight Library, Brain-
Storming For History


I. A Record of Western Civilization

A Shushing Tree whispers at a gust of wind.
Together, they rush into dark as if  two charging
crusaders, aimless as infidel-knights toward the holy
jihad evening, which murdered day's one begotten sun.

Breezes stage-whisper to the other pliant trees,
joining wind's campaign to stoke the fire in their leaves.
Choruses line up single file on both sides, voices rumbling
the hollow body of the sleeping city, a wheezing resurrection

through victory horns, an ancient breath still blowing,
eeking out from a universal diaphragm, a last push of air,
time dragging by its fingernails, lungs closing on the final burst,
when ribcage sides cymbal-crash together, arms twitching at the cold.

II. The Warped Version of the Record

skinny sticks drag      like-the
record needle              leaves-on
those little lines        small-grooves
brushed into the       con-crete                           
twirling, through the      fog-sweat
beads chilled in the        lime-light
all them peeling        clothes-ON

                                                                                                             & OFF--
                                                                                                     scratching
                                                                                     a  cross
                                                                          into
                                                      our  ears,
                                  the  lesser
                  known
melodies
of  death

Ma Interrupts
A Pacific Cradlesong

 
The moose makes the first way,
then Indians follow the moose—

is it ‘moose’ or ‘meese,’ honey?
Always wondered. Anyway...

Pioneers and wagons come.     
The trappers trail Indians.

And you can bet your balls they danced
on the corner of their rhombus lives!

Then came the deep scarring             
of these old roads with asphalt.    
But, oh! Look how them yellows                

nodding, slipping soft     
nuzzling into velvet,
lullabied into finite edges

of the Great Pacific Ocean waves!    

Lost Angeles, CA

Mustard-colored curtains dance L.A. summer breezes.
An antique phonograph scats Scott Davis and the Village
Vanguard. Seventies shag carpet—beige, mint. Sea foam
walls droop with thrift store treasure. Cushion-covers, quilted,
each square an ancient photograph, faces, haunts, old
rivering echoes.
She’s tall, thin. A skinny Snow White,
black-eyes and red-hair.
Wears a shirt the color of the sky
before it weeps.
This smell. This room. Tack one wallside and
run. Stretch it over sangre highways and desert cities,
fly it in the bake-and-broil blue, over dreamed-up fields
and gravestones. Stretch it round a million miles,
galaxies away from the huffing, puffing mouths
yelling, Blow the house down!Looks twenty-three at me. California studio. Kitten.
Charity work/ Loans, alarm clocks, credit cards.
She’s fishing for an absent Charming, so I open wide
and drag her down deep as hook will take us.
We met five hundred years ago, in sequin
Masks, in an Inquisition prison cell.
Tired souls bending, swaying infinite,
twisted and twirling.
Her heaven is dark chocolate and Romantic
poetry, angsty Love. Trashway alley rants.
Quaking whispers echoed down her Russian
novel hallways. Shattered glass, stuff like that.
A painting three feet tall, more long,
Seculuded forest pond at dusk. Autumn. Flameshot
leaves screaming off from oaks. Shadows dark against
the soil. Lilies float across the murky water.
A gurgling fall smiles at us from the far side.
The Horror, she calls it. She’s right: it is this dated
decor’s northern star, straight on till morning.
“Beautiful place to live,” she says, but
“A pleasant place to fade away,” is all I have for her.

Double-Decker Train

A one-level Starlight coasts

by—so quiet. I guzzle jaggedly

back to its older, chug-chugging           

doppleganger double. Spend a

moment, wonder if the early black

and white film movie stars

have displaced memory,    

fogged actual events… No, by

god, because—yes!—we did

stick our heads out windows

yelling “Bye mommas!” “Smell

ya laters!” and “Woooooo-hooooos!”

as the thing broke our standstill

to chuttle North into the open

arms of our Seattle Aunt

awaiting us. Charred stink breezing

through an open smoking car,

indoor-outdoor convenience,

an anachronistic contrivance

with no place in our world evolving

out of the smoke.

Out of the coal

shovel chafing black dust

we glide into the electric humming

of a freon century packed in

with nutritional bars,

vitamin shots whizzing down

the veins to the senseless

hearts of our yogi bourgeoise.

We love that smoke, the dirt,

grime, the throated roars

my brother and I cannon

to parents standing

on the track, with half our

bodies—yes half!—hung

out the open windows,

dangling downside up,

                  all   smiles       a s       o u r       w o r l d          p  u  l  l  s                a     w     a     y...

Shotgun Stars

After

    I slam the hungry

trunk hard against the last load of our things,

    I walk the hollow

halflight of my steps, the sound bouncing off       

    the walls and through our

attic. The street outside growls a thousand

    cars. House fills with light,

bulbs burn, smiling their reflections against

    the lemoned wood. They smile                             10

like lost arguments. Like her, hands holstered

    on her hips. Like our

cat cannot help but smile no matter what

    the circumstances,

lips ever up-curved in his side profile.

Then

I hold my friend in the quiet of her

    empty room, rolling

up in carpet-vacuumed emptiness, that

    houses us. She sits                                                 20

on the floor. She makes a ninety-degree

    angle, trying to

become drywall, bark herself into the

    aging Oak, spread her

body’s paint across the primer-plastered

    walls. We, lying down,

stare up the ceiling. “The Stars stay,” she says.

    “God! That fucking piece

of shit, that sonnuva bitch! that fucking—

Later,                                                                                       30

she snores against my lap, crumpled, fetal,

    a penny falls from

her pocket. I chuck the worthless Lincoln,

    listen to its plucked

echo. “We’ll find other Stars,” I whisper,

    petting her red hair

the way she likes, then switchflip into dark.

    Under green star glow

I gawp at a letter from our rental

    company, frowning                                               40

down at paper—Cracks. Renovate. Vacate.

    Sincerely, Apologies.  

An ozone kind of problem, The fracture

    growing below us

now—

    fast, nebulous thing.

It starts slow, as all things do. She loses

    a few bobby pins,

some gum—I lose the change jar. But it grows.

    A thirsty black hole                                              50

would drink us up if we decided stay.

    Huddled together

inside, pregnant gulf beneath expanding,

    the music of chairs

clattering our bodies away, into

    each other, the hole

stealing us one day through open threshold.

    Down there, waiting, we

shiver, skin against skin, clutching lean hopes

    that our universe                                                 60

will fall its own way down and follow us.

Another YoPro

I was jealous of her time up North, at

Oberlin, which is the first college to

offer a Bachelor's degree to women.

She left me for Oberlin and I remain

a bachelor myself. She did condescend

a time or two to talk with me about

some things. She said she had to leave

because I'm wholly married to my class

and seem to have no interest in her

and don't look like a divorce. That was it.

Married though I am, to my class, I told

her that I would immortalize her in

lines of poetry if I could find time

to scribble down a word or two about

her swan's hair, her Aryan complexion--

maybe write them on the mission's bathroom wall.

Who knows? Life is unstable, and singular

stability is what she wished for. So,

she went to Oberlin and now, I hear,

she scooped up a vanilla man with locks

and keys to every box and all the houses

that she hopes to open or else to live

inside. He's a nice man, I hear. I'm sure

he is, and means no harm and thinks nothing

of the psychopathic urge to speak to

no one after midnight when the doorknob

stops squeaking out of its turn. Sabotaged,

a bachelor, I'll live on Northwestern

berries, in caves and forests, foraging

meals as I can, canning my dried fruits with

mason jars I've stored in the cabin a

great-grandfather built, bare-handed, hundreds

of dead Indians ago, while I live

black, shadowed by the bloody edge of his

axe. She'll finish her time at Oberlin,

I hope, keep on tasting every cookbook

recipe and shopping cart holiday

treat. Taste the mayonnaise spread on biscuits

for her buttermilk children, and think no

more on me and this adolescent gripe.