| Jota Poetry I |
| Swiss Poem Account Collection |
| Poem Account Poets jota wylde Barry Fitton Joshua Griffin Craig Moore panta rhei Paul Kren Orphicgoblin judih |
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| Color My Skin Buddy the Wino Candy Cane Lane St. Jo The Easy Ballad of Arthur Burrows Estrus |
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| comments: judih@hotmail.com |
| Buddy the Wino We discovered Buddy the Wino deep in the Bowery Brought him along with us up to Allen's place Jack unrolled Mexico City Blues one long scroll of shelving paper Allen would read a poem and Buddy, who was drinking wine, would say "Yeah, that's pretty nice. I can dig that. That's nice. That's all right." Then, when Jack would read his poems Buddy, slapping his knees would scream with laughter wigged out, cracking up, rolling on the floor the misery, the suffering, the torture of it all drinking, trying to stay sober Buddy the Wino was bombed beatified and Jack knew it knew he was drinking himself to death but, still Jack was a ball except for all the Colonel Blimps in the world hating Jack and carping: "That shit isn't writing" "Where is that moron" "I want to meet that fuck" and that was Jack's trip Women wanted to fuck him Men wanted to fight him Me and Buddy, we just liked listening to him singing his Mexico City Blues on the floor man, I'm telling you, that roll of Jack's that fucker must have been thirty six feet long so here I am rolling along in the angelheaded dawn the evil angry city shining, softened under a new day sun the kind that only garbagemen and whiskey bums and guys like Buddy the Wino ever see and truly understand |
| Candy Cane Lane St. Jo My brother and I shivered in the dark In the back seat of a chevy parked The heater didn’t work Nixon beat humphrey The yellow radio voice said My old man was upstairs Talking to diane his ex-wife Some fishing trip We took in the backseat of that chevy white And dying and gunning around the block three hours later Up up in our unbeautiful ballon that prick He’s dead now, died fat unhappy owned a liqour store Doc said do not drink So he did, three beers a day nor more that fucking prick A nd died and when he died I cried a little but swiped a bottle Of royal crown and tied the purple bag in a knot And told the mortuary man yes he was my dad and Now he is dead my wife stole the plants from the sitting room Thank god or I’d have nothing else to prove He is mine and I am he ah fuck shit the fucking spic He died and every baseball dream in me died as he hit His head upon the toilet stem Him and elvis fat headed all the way to the end |
| The Easy Ballad of Arthur Burrows Where did you find it Arthur Burrows? Arthur he found it somewhere not too deep in Korea burrowed And buried in 1951 soaking wet in a mudded hole in the ground A shooting war not too hot they said and yet Spheres of fear and fire flew past his daily head He found nirvana, he did His ass parked six feet deep In chinese mud yankee blood Crouching there Deciphering clues from Dante Ovid Virgil Vico Books from home his mother shipped to his head spinning Straight to the line– with cookies and a note “Artie, be sure to keep your head down low” Clutching, clawing chewing up those books Tattered pages torn and tossed Words and visions and endless weeks of cold meals from a can Drinking snow for water Still Dante had his fingers pointing crooked in that place Arthur on bended knee would say his thank you prayers And burn those papers and stacks of joss and sticks no one there ever seemed to bother you Not even Stray bullets The NCO or the hungry Joes In this chinese korean space And there Where nothing ever happened There Arthur spied the atomic secret of his soul He prayed devotion to a world tossed His message lost Sticks burnt and tossed Until he crossed the decades and found me reading A book In longing shy he asked and told me in confession Those were the brightest moments in his life Sitting there reading in the grey dawn’s cold and angry light Shrouded from sight Halfway around the world Hiding his ass in a mudded hole in the ground Arthur he came home unsoiled Only missed by his mother’s hand unspoiled Arthur, he never married remained unchained No, surrendered, just stood still Never did I in my anger-trembling I watched him pass the parade of streaming teachers Hatless men and thickened ankles of my english teacher Mrs. Frazier A daily joust Battled and toiled Moving through the high school waves Teaching history’s endless fate to boys like me and Martin Nelson But let me tell you something: It wasn’t all those screaming yellow hordes Or Uncle Sam and all his bombs But us who Did him in It was me and The kids in my snot nose school We killed Arthur Burrows Tall and gangly, balding stooping Arthur Burrows An easy mark for torturing goofs and goons No one on his side Arthur still Trapped by korean spheres that split and then divide His ears stuck out like two hands waving at you from behind his head All five suits the same ochre color If you smelled his breath you’d smell the musty stench Of a desperate trench dug six feet deep down somewhere halfway across the world Korea Those kids to him like dodging bullets every day he made his way back to A place he dug out six feet in his head when he came back to duck And cover from the incoming screaming hordes America's youth in all their hope and glory They’d cut out paper ears three feet wide Tape them up to the schoolroom clock Slide shows upside down Tacks on his wooden, tilting chair Stacks of book their textbook pages glued Records played at hamster speeds Sing out April Fools! Rolled around would roll around His desk shoved out into the hall Arthur dying to sit down to read those books of his Dante and Vico and Virgil and all the rest Stay warm beside the fire and read some more After lunch he’d go home to Homer and retire Hunching his shoulders and trying to hide his ears behind his head and thinking of a hole in the ground Forget the frozen lake where Johnny fell I never knew until much later all about that place But even I couldn’t help but notice All those fucking liars Athur Burrows had come back and Douglas Macarthur returned A corn cob up his arse I spied him once in the teacher’s lounge They were just as bad as us Mostly asshole coaches more so than the rest Gary Dwyer and Joe LaFave, stretched versions of the dwarves that ran the school The years came and soon they went like too many April dramas teased and August wheezed and laughed its dharma drum beat roll Each season brought back the strings new On stage tossed off the battle lines from the high school play and the little ones No longer scared but all grown up The worst being hyper smart and insecure Arthur Burrows Lost across the ocean Kissed by Asia’s lips She laughs at him, murmurs Something soft and warm against his hips The smell of windsong in the air That blows his tousled hair One lone shot cracks an echo Past his ears whizzing past a bony White guy’s ass Into the hills and then comes back And drops a question on his lap His cheeks sunk deep six feet down In a muddy hole in the ground A week of beauty bliss Behind the battle lines Looking up now at then Munching on a chocolate bar Squinting up at the gun blue sky He shrugs and sighs sees Dante staring down from paradise Arthur Burrows born to wear a selfmade suit of ochre insults Lost in a country not his own Tired and stooped at twenty-three old and doubled over by forty-three Sometimes when the evening drops upon my lap I stare out and think about Arthur Burrows and my old school I stop and wonder What in the hell did history ever teach Arthur Burrows That I don’t know? Except that hell is a hole in the ground |
| Estrus Scream by day, wail by night Claws that scratch, jaws that bite My beans and I beat a hasty retreat Just in time To dodge a well-aimed plate Some call it love, I say it ain’t * Eris is the ancient Greek goddess Discord. ** Estrus is a female animal in heat. |
| Contact the poet: JayM@satmetrix.com |