The dream of the whole world and how we came here
We grow guitars and watch rocks.
The storm is windy, but talks meaner
than it knows to deliver. In the rising and dying
of rain and clouds, thousands
of people throw seeds in the yard.
The young man reads his poem to the height of the sky
and leaves fulfilled.
The wind blew the windows
out of the tree, and the mirror was left frustrated
face down on the floor.The ashtrays soaked
in beer all night, but the cat recovered
in a box of old sponges.
She is fine now - look, she has a pink tongue.
As the sun dodges clouds to lay in shots
through the trees, we pick up cans and eat beans.
I think of needing a guitar
because I found one this morning.
I think of finding a new mirror,
but now the old one has become eccentric.
It multiplies your vision
of the corners of dreams.
Now the sun is mostly winning,
and in what's left of the storm, I watch rocks
and hum songs to myself and the guitar.
I sing we're rich here this morning,
richer than lawyers. I glance at the mirror,
where dozens of you smile.
Rosetta the Work of the Artist
You move lightly on the porch,
stretching canvas and stapling.
It is the nervous work of the artist
who's seen something there,
something more than white.
It looks odd when you finish,
a blank piece of Rosetta
waiting to be found out.
You stare at it,
I stare at it,
the cats stare at it mundanely.
What is it? Why doesn't it move yet?
Why does it look at you like that?
You tend your cigarette, then look at it again
like you know secrets in there,
all yours for a little while longer.
When it's tight you tap it,
and when it jumps and breathes
for a second, you smile,
like you saw something
and it looked right back at you.
Rosetta's beginning to talk, I think.
I even heard something, too.
Zippos have their moments
You look at my Zippo a while
and click it. You smell it.
Something Grandpa had, you say -
a Zippo, like hats and real Chryslers.
That hat you have could have been
Grandpa's hat. It clicks
like a Zippo when you pull the brim down,
just as the top of the car folds away.
We walk out across
the world's longest manmade beach.
I look back at the Chrysler,
big as a duplex,
an aquamarine duplex,
the color the water here should be.
We get to where the water is
and watch it move in one piece
and work. I pull the Chrysler
down on the beach and pick you up.
As you click the Zippo rhythymically,
we drive out into the water,
past the islands, out to the ocean,
top down, arms out the windows,
sailing to India in a Chrysler.
The sun goes and the headlights
rise up and fall with the waves.
Then we turn off the engine,
drifting, waiting for tomorrow,
to drive up the Ganges and honk
the horn as we pass the crowds,
to give your hat to some kid
who'll remember, and to show them all
our Zippo, which clicks
and has its moments.
This poem was inspired by Frida Kahlo's portrait of Luther Burbank.
Luther
I have been Luther bound in dirt
becoming dirt. The dirt
is my arms, my eyes, my center.
The dirt is all I can see.
I have been Luther washed in dirt
becoming dirt. Breaking in the dirt,
I raise and never leave it.
My feet are one with the dirt.
I have been Luther dried in dirt
becoming dirt. I roll in the dirt
making dirt. The sun smiles
and kills me forever.
Frida, the neighbors, me, and my skinhead friends
They walk loudly to my door
through the yard at midnight.
The neighbors ignore TV
while they do. On the couch, inside,
one mentions impending marriage.
Both of them are joining the Marines.
As I play music we like,
Frida starts her show.
Slowly, her paintings waltz
around the room, pausing
to hang briefly on my two closet doors.
At each third beat, they step
and change precisely.
As the last of the circle
moves into the room,
so too does Frida
in a black dress with red trim.
Wearing Mexican earrings,
for a moment she watches.
She leaves. The waltz ends.
My skinhead friends walk back out
through the yard. The sun
goes around the world.
At my grandmother's death in the hospital
Here is a poem about my grandmother, Nora Bullock Barlow.
She was born on November 25, 1901, and was a gift
from her mother, Nora Dunigan Bullock, who died
six days later on December 1.
She looks up
nearly empty
and we stare
through the window
at the wall
full of windows outside.
At home,
we have planted.
We have corn, beans,
fruits, and melons,
which are bigger
than they were before.
It should rain
she says and points
at the sky.
The sun does nothing
but shine,
only more.
Introductions
I have had two things
happen to me this weekend.
Last night, crossing the Bouie Street bridge
where the ebony sludge of Petal
meets the bronze sludge of Hattiesburg
and the two lock hearts
and become sludge everlasting
to the Gulf of Mexico,
I watched a star
fall to its death
somewhere over Jones County -
Moselle, perhaps.
This afternoon, getting out of my car
in the combination backyard/parking lot
behind Charlie's apartment,
I attracted the attention
of a small boy and his confused dog.
As they approached,
I recognized them both
as used car salesmen I once knew,
and there was no way out of this,
so I waited and listened,
and was acquainted with Weiner, the dog,
who was new to the area and being introduced
to customers by the used car salesboy
who wanted Weiner to know everyone
in the hope that Weiner
would not see fit to run away.
It was an old boy/dog game.
I play games with a spider
who has retired to my bathroom
and lives near the beach
surrounding my toilet bowl.
Tragedy once struck us both
when I had to use the plunger
he had built on,
and twice I have saved him
from certain death.
Once, when he was in the throes
of starvation, I brought him
a half-squashed insect,
and once again, when he was being terrorized
by a larger, obviously evil spider,
I arrived in the nick of time.
Hell hath no fury like a man
in the bathroom. I crushed the intruder,
and the old man resumed his lounging.
He is undoubtedly religious
to have such luck, and still lives
on the beach where he thinks
I am God.
I feel entitled to joust with him,
and sometimes, sitting on the beach,
I wiggle the plunger,
but he has begun to ignore me.
Yes, I am his God, and he is my Job.
Still I like living here.
For Jesus Christ is coming again
on Southern Railways from Atlanta,
and I want to be here
when his train stops to pick up
the propane cars north of Petal.
For it is here that he will step down
from a boxcar, look at all the gas plants,
and set up a used car lot.
And the Holy Ghost will go into real estate
and build subdivisions around me,
the spider, and all of Green's Creek,
and we will be neighbors,
and I will meet Jesus
and his wife and little boy,
and we will sit in the evenings
on his patio
with the Holy Ghost and Weiner,
and watch stars fall to their deaths
somewhere over Jones County -
over Moselle, perhaps.
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