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Gorgonian Sonnets |
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Blue as Blue With spring, the morels push their shy brains up through the grass and shadows of cottonwoods, up from the streams and riverbanks in rains so gentle the sky stays as blue as blue hoods of lupin where mountains rise above summer and open their meadows to paint brush and glacier lily. Cutthroat trout flash through the glimmer of water like air where orange slashes trace their slap at a gnat, fresh from bear scat near the bear where she rolls toward fall, her cubs snorting up ants from a log she's gutted then pausing to rear and cry back at an eagle so high he seems to be courting a new moon and winter. Cold water slows and spells its season in ice down valleys of future morels. |
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Off Color Remarks They don’t sell tackle and bait at the Kum and Go so we have to cross town to the Pump ‘n Pac where there’s a little brown fridge in the back with maggots in tubes and worms in styrofoam cups. The woman who works at the Pump ‘n Pac says do you want me to put that stuff in a sack. (The management doesn’t allow her to say bag because it might lead to off color remarks.) Gag me with a spoon. Do you guys really use these things for bait, she says, sacking up some maggots. Sure, you say, and so we don’t lose ‘em to the cold ice fishing we tuck ‘em inside our lip. She shakes her head, gives our us change and sack and says y’all come back to the Pump and Pac. |
 DoodyWhy are fish so pretty? Because they "go to the bathroom" through their scales. No shit, but some sort of fishy excretion makes them glow like a subtle Fourth of July, so quit being so high and mighty about what's pretty and what's not. Yeats said "Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement." The nitty gritty of it is, "Love stinks." We've bitched about the dirty world long enough. Christ knows we live in it and it makes us sing the blues up and down the rough scales like a rainbow on a storm. So beauty is truth and truth is, to be succinct, "doody." |
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Well Snorkel My Shorts Well burn my bush and call me Moses. Well snorkel my shorts and free my Willy. Well shower me with shuttle and call me Texas. Well test my tube and call me Lister. Well nail me up and crown me Jesus. Well ride my ass and call me Joseph. Well pack my chute and call me Airborne. Well climb my ladder and call me Jacob. Well Hoover my brain and call me Dubya. Well blind my Saul and call me Paul. Well count my silver and call me Judas. Well empty my sack and call me Santa. Well jump my candle and call me Jack. Well shoot my fruit and call me William Tell. |
Slop This is slop. Yes that's right, slop. You want some slop? Well, come and get it. It's going fast, this here slop. I guess it's true, everybody wants some slop. Bits of slop or great big vats of slop. Here have some more slop, but don't waste any. Everybody needs their fair share of slop. I mean, one taste of slop and you got to have some more. God, this is good slop. Cheap too. Good and cheap slop. I mean if you want more slop just nod. What! No more slop. Hey, this creep don't want no more slop. The slop crop might flop next year, so damn it, have some slop. |
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The Concept of
Nostalgia In the rainbows thrown by irrigation sprinklers across the broad fields, we saw a promise that kept breaking. We saw a nation reborn perpetually from rivers beyond law, beyond fauna cheated by a granite imagination. To guess how a snake might think a practical sophist must first swallow the planet whole. In the rainbows our lawns drink, we saw the concept of nostalgia draining from the carcass of a trout. We saw colors to match the flame of our burning trash. Naming our blindness Nature, we made a lake of dollars and went there to swim by a black wall we built from sleep to replace a waterfall. |
What's Left Righty tighty, lefty loosey--screws, politics, dexterity, you name it--there's meaning in direction. That southpaw who's pitching to that northpaw knows how pairs work to invert the world, at least as much as the swirl of an Australian toilet. Pole to pole, the iron filings spell doom with such certainty, salvation with such soul that wonder gets lost somewhere between the fern's curl and Newton's sinister prayers. For fear of being left behind, we make our turn and get right down to the business near at hand. Somewhere right of center the norm hides what's left of beauty--in the wrong form. |
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Mysterious Ways Hellgrammites knit their small empires from sand, weed and life smaller than they, and they in turn pass into a living plan much larger in trout, ouzel or cray fish. Such colors in this weave as orange, green, gray or blue matter too, as much as matter can, to stay or relieve the urgency with which death comes through a river's tiny doors. Refraction moves in mysterious ways to those of us above. The glamorous light webs its gaudy grooves on mud and pebble, giving sight a shove, as if to say "get it?" in a mirror to us who wouldn't if it bit us in the rear. |
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Some Art When I look at art, I sometimes feel like a big dead pig, not dead for long mind you but, having squealed my last squeal, big enough and dead enough to be wrong for the situation. When I think of art I almost always feel like bad cheese where the stink doesn’t quite take part in the proper stink of good cheese. When I try to make some art, I seldom feel like I’m making art, but more like I’m welding butterflies to their shadows or squeezing ice cubes from their tray. That’s not to say I don’t like art. When I don’t think, I’ll think it’s nice but as I said, when I think, I won’t. |
The Absent Mind To see a vee of geese in a tire track, the mind must be rested. I say must because I am weak and constantly look back at my own mistakes where flaws like trust took this random imagery for granted. The absent mind is never rested. I say never because--well, look at it now, stranded in abstraction, longing for those miracles of water, sky and light, even in the profanity of a puddle. If, right now, I could put a hand on each of your shoulders, get beyond these subtle inflections and say what I saw, even then one of us might question my intention to convey a peace that goes without mention. |
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Off Course You can walk from the outskirts to the heart of my town in minutes. Just follow the path by the stream under two bridges, past the store and the church, then down a hill of wild flowers. If you wander off course, you'll be here in the park. The tire swing is strong enough to hold an average adult or two children. You'll find that the higher someone pushes you above the hedge, the easier it is to see the brook trout darting from your shadow. I will be the old man sitting in the shade, sorting my flies on the picnic table among gold spots of light. Please wave but don't come near. A living voice might make me disappear. |
Water for Whisky Back to the rags and bones again. Back to the stones, hearts and diamonds. Back to the eyes mouths, roots and trees. Why does the fact of conversation always dwindle and die in these? Today it's "What's up" or "Know what I mean?" and tomorrow it's "Sorry, sorry, sorry." Water for whisky, water for tears, we grow the stagnant mind because we nurture its worry on the rapids of the heart. Does all of this sound familiar? Back to the rags and bones again. Back to the rise and fall of the lover's hips. Back to the snares and snags of a river gone wild. Back to a single bird born on the small wind of a child's first word. |
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Where the Power Goes We sit in the meeting. While others talk, we think of what we are going to say. When our turn comes we say it. Then we take a drink of water and wait to see where the power goes. But we all know that there is no power. Someone is doodling on their notes. Someone actually uses the word Ms. Someone is trying to get someone's goat, but his goat cannot be gotten because, though he appears deeply pensive, he is actually asleep. Finally someone calls for the question. We all raise our hands. We look for a clock but there is no clock, so we look at our watches but discretely so no one will know. |
In the Headlights
At night in the canyon something's running up the two lane. A man? No. An elk? No A moose in the headlights, the hollow clop of of her hooves on asphalt sounding so full of pity and terror, you know you'll keep her for the rest of your life: the cars pressing her from behind, your own headlights deep in her eyes, stunning and blinding her, impressing so many vast differences down the corridors of her instincts. She's still wet from the stream beside you. In your rearview, taillights shrink fast. Please, whatever turns the blue world gray, let her live beyond the boundaries of regret. |
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Whole Hog
So when we stop at the Co-op for a couple of Old Milwaukee tall-boys, the girl says Pabst pints are just a buck, so I say sure, we’re sold, and she says where you headed, and that reminds me we’ve got sixty miles to go, so I say better make it six of ‘em--that’s three apiece, one for every twenty miles. Why don’t we go whole hog and you and me get us a couple of Frito Big Grabs, you say as she sacks up the pints. You’ll get more for less, she says, if you buy a whole bag, and hey, you get two for the price of one. Well, sure you say, you better throw in a couple of those, but no more deals or I might have to propose. |
Ballad of the Dubious Angler
(Not A Sonnet OK OK OK) For those who think the trout is smart, here's a little hint. I have caught the wily trout on a piece of dryer lint. For those who think the trout survives high in a crystal vapor, I have caught the trout among flecks of toilet paper. For those who think a fresh caught trout is fit for haut cuisine, I have eaten some that taste like a soggy magazine. For those who think a brown trout's brain's substantial, here's a clue. A brown trout's brain is shaped much like a miniature kazoo. For those who ooh and ah about the patterns on a trout, to me they look much better when you turn them inside out. For those who chase the wily trout with esoteric gear, I'd just as soon pursue them with explosives or a spear. |
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Of Late There’s such a gap between here and the past sometimes I fall in and discover so much fear and hate that I have to settle for looking at the fish. Crimes of the heart pale next to a trout’s spots, a skate’s eye, a carp’s scales. They can’t ask what I’m doing down here because they’re in a constant state of shock. I’m nothing new. Instead of suing or bilking, they kill each other for food. Of late, I’ve felt a certain kinship. My pecs are sagging finwise. My legs grow caudal every time I meet ambition. At night I harbor a nagging suspicion that something’s out to eat me. I’m not saying that the past itself is wrong, but here it’s clear the past is always gone. |
This Rag Ordinarily, clocks aren’t made of pollen, but don’t tell this to the dream sweepers, the ones who kill birds for fun, eat the fallen fruit for its liquor and sleep it off till the sun’s pink death. Ordinarily, trout don’t swim inside of the moon, but don’t tell this to the virgins who dream there, counting clouds out loud, their prim lips blowing bubbles turned worlds out to the margins of dawn. Are you tired of time too? Would you single out a hawk on her crag- born thermals and invest her with all the love you and your conscience can’t allow? Is this rag you call a body an ordinary fact turned only by dream or miracle to act? |
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Livingston Lullaby Sometimes spring winds blow till you go nuts. You hope a faucet's on somewhere, or maybe a jet's passing, but no it's just the wind. Your guts start to hum at night. You watch the baby watch you. The baby thinks you can stop the wind. Someone's sink blows down the street. A blown out magpie is trying to peck the top out of another blown out magpie on a sheet of tin that's stopped in your front yard. You go outside. You're stupid so you wear a hat. You watch the hat get smaller and smaller then slow down when it hits the river. A screaming brat walks by with paper on two sticks. It might, in some previous life, have been a kite. |
Sonnet for Writers and Teachers
to Read to Those in More Practical Professions Who Come to Them for a Professional Favor No problem, I'd be happy to edit, read and comment on your manuscript. Since you're a carpenter, I know you'll be happy to follow my lead and build me a studio as a sort of barter. I'm sure you value my profession as much as I value yours. Of course, I'll read your novel and find you an agent. And since you're a plumber, why don't you install me a toilet while I grovel and straighten your syntax. Of course I'll peruse your poems and get you a reading. And since you're a doctor you'll gladly drain these cysts while I expound on your promise and importance to convince an assistant dean. Anyone can poke at a groin after all, but who can truly appreciate a poem? |
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At Every Turn I keep following the language so it can’t follow me, but it’s behind me at every turn, recording my desires at my weakest moments while I wallow in the mire of self, tracking my dreams, fording my convictions if only to reveal how shallow they are beneath their muddy surface. Sometimes I duck behind a song or into a book or a bar only to see this phantom rooster so struck by its image in a mirror it turns to water and drowns itself for fun. Sometimes I turn to confront it, and it laughs so hard words start running down its face and out its nose. To be perfectly blunt, it’s rather inordinately verbose. To be polite, it sticks in my craw and keeps me up half of the night. |
Muddy Wings Only the most sidelong of glances will catch the hue of this life so far beyond my own. Only the most subtle cocking of the head will do the trick. Have you heard the song the lonely girl sings to the shadow her lamp casts beyond her book of sorrows? It is about a woman lost in a blue rain. It is about the fond gestures of a man who tries in vain to summon the strength to find her. I might as well stare at the sun as try to live in another's yearning. When futile longing finally turns to prayer and prayer to the wind the world kicks up in its turning, I might be free of these muddy wings, I might learn to live in this body for at least another night. |
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Submarine Blues To investigate the paths of underwater light, one needs a mind of rock, a soul of Grecian guilt, for the glow of a fish, the slight phosphorescence, comes from that fish's excretions. To contrast the significance of life above water and under water, one needs a heart of mud and a conscience of mud. One must shove one's head into the world, and from the start, having transcended one's gills and breached the amniotic fluid, aim oneself toward death. Mud is no laughing matter. The idiotic religions based on fishermen and the blood they shed for kindness might as well be tax forms, for, down here, the blues turn to blacks. |
AWOL Co-opted by regulars in the militia of fools, I got my marching orders and set out for the kingdom of folly. Right off the bat, the tools of my trade started to rust, and I began to doubt my lack of purpose. Dogs started to follow me. Birds huddled in the trees around me as if they expected something. A hollow threat appeared on a yellow note I found taped to my back when I took off my shirt one night: KICK ME OR DIE! I took up juggling, but weeping women would throw their underwear at me. I might have quit and gotten a job more in keeping with my new found charisma, exept every time I went AWOL I was attacked by a mime. |
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Forever Home (A Fishmas
Tree Sonnet) When we planted the old Christmas tree in the lake, we hoped the loss would bloom in sunfish between the sunken branches. We imagined them as ornaments lighting the gloom: long ear with cheeks webbed in turquoise, bream with eyes flashing ruby, pumpkin seed with bellies glowing orange, lures to stir boys in their cane-pole dreams, beacons to lead them forever home. And perhaps at the top, a crappie might perch for a fat, bright star. And around the trunk below, huge bass might stop (as they frequently do where the sunfish are) and lurk, ultimate gifts in their bulk and girth, as substantial and promising as a savior's birth. |
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Timid Birds Following this long light down the canyons, the eye can lose itself in the necessary grief of the world. Timid birds skirt the high ledges among the circular flight of leaves. I once lived in a life where the walls were made of mathematical possibilities. Now rock has filled the windy brain that used to dream and fade into iodine down the dawn. Time has killed that part of me where hope and fear resided in perfect balance. Don't ask me to name the emotions fluttering in and out of this chided child. She died on the same day, in the same second the stars turned to dirt. Her death lives in the panic of this orphan's breath. |
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Ring The hiss of a line in a light evening breeze sends this ruse of feather, fur and steel out over a pool so clear shadows freeze where it drops. To be in this place, to feel the sad promise of the river turn to wishing then transformation in wing-scattered points of evening light, a woman learns fishing with her heart. For all the loss fall anoints with yellow and red under a painful blue, she watches her question drift in the last light and waits to see it dimple and vanish through a ring so subtle only a trout might know its value. And how eternity rings through the line! And how the falling river sings! |
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This
Risky Trip Are trout part of this river's song, sharp in the current and vague on the flats? Do trout dance for any reason but love, fanning a harp of water for the sheer gravity of a chance encounter with death, clearing the surface in time to stop a mind from shattering to distraction? Can trout know the purity of the pools they mime in the deep mirrors of their scales? Who began this risky trip into the howl of a broken river? The small streams mother us all back to a speck in our brains called home on a trail of token lusts. Can a haphazard heart land smack dab in the middle of luck? Is there any doubt? If so, never mind. Just go catch a trout |
Lost
Days 12/12/02 Lost in a dream of the past, bubbles hiss in concrete tanks and we bring our bucket with holes in our bucket without holes, and, in the mist and shadows, ask the man in over-alls for a couple dozen minnows. So he takes the broad, long-handled net and plunges it down and brings it up, sagging and boiling in flakes of water and light with its load of shiners. Then, he lays the net across the tank, the flashing curve of its belly submerged, fills your bucket with water and dips out two dozen and more, dashing and pinging against metal walls--these nuggets of fragile life, hidden in the shade of a summer haze, in the tackle shops of lost youth, lost days. |
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King Pong You like ping pong? Good, I like ping pong too. You serve. Ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong. Oh, too bad, your shot go long. I serve. Ping pong ping .Too bad, good thing you like ping pong 'cause you lose. I king of ping pong. While we play I sing ping pong song, o.k. You say you no like song? What wrong with ping pong song? O.k., I no sing ping pong song. We just play ping pong, o.k.? Ping pong ping . Oh you miss again. Maybe you big and clumsy is why you play that way, ha, ha, o.k. Just say so when you want quit, o.k. Hey, why you throw ping pong paddle. O.k., I got to go. |
Q and A What do you get when you cross a racist with a feminist? The thunder of hooves, white pointed hoods, a bra left burning in your yard? A Myth where Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice are appointed by Republicans to kill Moslems? What do you get When you cross a Post-Structuralist with a Marxist? A well-digger who doesn't know his wet, cold ass from a hole in the universe? A blacksmith who nails crosses to the feet of business men? What do you get when you cross an existentialist with a pragmatist? A dentist who's into Zen and pulls teeth from the jaws of Death? A fundamentalist who takes communion with his own excrement? A Poet who writes serious jokes, who's doomed to blow it? |
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Magpie Guy The magpies have been sent from another dimension to kill me. The small transmitters in their throats are powered by solar batteries. I drew their attention one day by laughing too loud near a dead goat. They mistook me for competition. These days I walk carefully through the suburbs, avoiding the sun that activates their transmitters. Magpies stalk the ghosts of the stillborn. Of these, I am one. Do you come to this lake often? That wand you wave over the water, does it also serve as an antenna to summon the fish from their grave of water? Ah, the sun meets the earth's curve! Soon they will cease their efforts to kill me. Wait! Come back. You must hear me before it's too late! |
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Thanks
a Lot Just bring me a great big ol' blubbery wallowing carp, and make it snappy. What, you say you don't have a carp? Then how about dead pigs? A sharp knife and a live pig will get you a dead pig quick. Won't you at least grant me that? O.K., O.K., no carp, no dead pig. I suppose that now you're gonna take my gutted duck away! Well, thanks a lot, no gutted duck! How the hell am I supposed get along without a carp or a dead pig, much less a gutted duck. But what the hell, when in doubt dig up a bug and call it God. What'd you think I was gonna call it? Bruce? Oh great! Now you've stomped God into juice! |
Lucky I noticed you was doin' pretty well down here. We wasn't catchin' squat up there on the bend, so me and Mel thought we'd sort of sidle up and see what we could catch here next to you, that is if you don't mind. What you usin' there? A Girdle Bug? Got another? I hate to quiz folks like this, but it just don't seem quite fair, what with you catchin' all them trout and us catchin' diddly. Don't talk much do ya. I'm a chatterbox myself. Damn, watch out where you’re castin', Mel! That hook went through ya good, didn't it? Lucky it's not your eye but just the lid. Sorry fella. Well, bye. |
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Piggy Boy's Lament
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Office Memo
Due to ramifications of our extended policy on modified guidelines, agendas will be adopted but not necessarily practiced until official reactions become obvious to intended recipients. When this fiscal period has ended, a proactive construct to assess intrinsic skill will be implemented. Continued efforts to bill our clients have in previous time frames depended on contingent programs, but specificity demands more adequate input from participants. When such newly acquired data is in our hands, agents will act accordingly. Until then unanticipated preverifications will require that the agenda not be allowed to expire. |
Golly!
I'm certainly relieved that the word fuck is not taboo any more. I guaranfuckingtee you won't be fucking having to hear me saying fuck a whole fucking lot longer than it's absofuckinglutely got to be said. I mean can't you fucking see why using fuck over and over might be, my friend, the fucking end of fuck. What the fuck would I want to fuck around with fuck for, unless some poor fucker at the end of his fucking luck needed to be fucked with? He'd be stuck with some lucky fucking sucker bucking the fucking system and sticking with the word, a fucking record stuck, sounding fucking absurd. |
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No?
Ah, I see you are shy. That is why you drum your little fingers on the table when I talk of love. Perhaps you will try to escape on those pretty little feet. Label me a fool if it will calm your heart and ease your delicate soul. Ah, I see you choose to direct your spit at my face. On my knees I make a better target, no? These clues you give are not lost on me. You play hard to get, no? Ah, now you kick me in the groin. I know it is your way of getting close. You wish me to lick, perhaps, your pointy little shoe. No? To hell? Ah yes, for you I'll gladly go. |
And Stuff So I'm like, I don't do married guys, and he starts like crying and shaking and stuff and his cell phone rings and he like knocks my fries off the dash 'cause there's like not enough room in his Lexus. So then his voice like gets all stiff and stuff when he answers 'cause it's like Tina, and she like needs a ride to the mall. I mean like let's get real! She's supposed to meet ME there. I mean a forty-year old guy who's like jonesing for his daughter's good friend and stuff! So I'm like, maybe if I like blow you or something, and after that you could like drop me off at the mall, and I'd like try on shoes and tops so you'd like have enough time to like go and pick up Tina and stuff. |
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Dance Hey boy, what the hell are you doing fishing here. Can't you read? Need me to spell it out for you. Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a kid? Do you doubt that Mister Twelve Gauge here is loaded? Let's try him out on that pretty little rod you've been waving around. Yup, he's loaded. You think you can dance in them waders? God, what's that smell? I said dance not shit for Christ's sake. Tell you what I'm gonna do. Since you seem to need some encouragement to quit sneaking onto private property, I'm gonna let you take this here can of Day-Glo and paint your ass orange. Then I'll show you how I trespass. |
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