Good Morning

Good Morning

We woke
early
evacuating
slots
on asphalt,
lined reflective
yellow,
each man
parked
for the night-
smothering
Arkansas summers.

Winters we slept
in doorways
and on landings,
storm and shelter,
that sort of thing.
When the first city
bus moved from
shop to depot,
when the first
stinking trucks
snatched and
dumped green dumpsters
we were already
gone- making way

for citizens
whose jobs were
downtown.

Buckshot and Tommy
would go to the Sally,
cold coffee and grits.
Tramp met a guy
at the corner and
hopped into his truck.
Three dollar hammer
and cloth nail bag in hand.
I walked each day
to Mom's Liquor on Main,
then spent 5th floor days
with Hank, and Beat kids
and Ray Carver poems.

And 2nd floor pecking
out words of my own.

This morning after
the song birds and breakfast-

fresh juice and prosciutto with cheese-

and all I could think was
I guess I should vacuum the pool.

then

things always change,
nothing lasts forever,
no matter how good or how bad.






Bedtime Story

Never resting,
in those days,
in those places
sleep was
a pretty girl
playing
at hard to get.

When you see
us chin on chest
in parks or
wobbly-necked
in air-conditioned
public spaces
it is hard not
to count us lazy.

We never rest
even if we sleep.

And each one
of us courts
the pretty girl.
We want her.
She offers us peace.

Some with brown
bottles, others
with black-bottomed
spoon and I as often
as anyone.

I told myself stories
and poems.

Bedtime stories.
I wrote another world.

I dreamed of relevance.

Interviews on art, poetry, romance.

I live my dreams now.

I saw Carlos
stretched out
on a pallet
behind the old
Veterans Center

yesterday

and I think
how lucky that
I am rested
and still have a shot
at being relevant.





Game

The guy drilling
Old E into my
chest lost his mama
and grandma
in one crazy
BANG
moment and he got
blamed.

He don't
give a fuck about
no outlaw.

And the Cheshire  girls
with their sexy lips
disappear just like
they're supposed to do.

The keyboards are
quieter now but
never still.
and still you fear it.

And guys like Knute Rockne
or Dan Gables or
Brian Robinson in my
own fight,
the greatest coaches say
envision the win.

I learn from the loss,
pick at the carnage
for arts sake,
I remember the jones,

but I picture the win,
keep pecking away,

because the only victory
in this game is relevance.



Move Slow

In the places
I have lived
lives, nine
times ninety,
the places and
the lives
numbers that
shame felines,

(The things
that I have done.
the same feelings,

shame.)

in these places
things move
slow.

Slow as steam
from a gut-pile
left hunter fresh
on November
mornings
in Arkansas woods.

Slow as crows
feast, for thanksgiving
until no evidence
remains.

At nineteen,
up North with
an uncle,
days spent
breaking back
and mopping
hot tar
I learned this
most valuable
lesson of all

in a bar called
Lost Acres
outside of Chicago,
on the Joliett side.

I met a guy
named Lucky
he had white hair,
a quick grin
and a small fleet
of trucks.
He rode a
Knucklehead Harley,
was clever,
and smooth with
ladies. He was
everything
I had always
pretended to be.

Lucky moved slow.

He took me
to Kings Shoeshines,
hooked me up
with dark ladies
whose tits
had cost more
than my car,
he drove me to
Cicero and showed
me where
to cop dope.

The first bag
on him.

The lesson
didn't stick though
until he asked
a pistol favor,
my debt weighing
heavy in hand.

In moments
like these
things move slow,
because you
don't just ask
a guy
to kill someone
all at once.

Still

Mom used to
step on
the chocolate
milk.

She would
every once
in a great while
buy a
half a gallon
of store brand
chocolate
milk-

no bunnies
or zany cowboy
logos at
extra cost-

then she'd
refill the gallon
of "white"
milk, pour
the sweet treat
over a half
gallon plain
making it
less rich.
No less tasty.

Mama had 6 kids,
watched nickels
and dimes.

She stepped on
the milk but
I never got
used to it
any other way.

I drink it
that way
still.





Anymore

I was in rehab
with this Bama
chick once,
not the one
I married.

She cried
great tears
while she prayed
I remember
believing she
could have
washed Christ's
feet.

Her old man
had shot her,
twelve gauge,
long time ago.

She remembered
that
he cried for her,
offered her
a smoke.

She killed him later.

Run off from rehab
with a dare devil guy,
rode motorcycles,
I heard he
beat her ass.

I don't believe
in as much
anymore.

"So you were his friend, the one from the stories."

Boots McCormac leaned back in his chair, and touched the sweating neck of the Bud Light bottle sitting centered on a coaster, on an uncluttered table next to his chair.

"Yeah, I was in the stories, some of the poem stuff too. That was his thing ... I liked some of them. The ones about me of course, and about Blue's kids. I was truck driver most of my life. That stuff wasn't my thing. He was just so paranoid. He never really believed that anybody liked him. He could be such a prick sometimes- he'd put all these little "fuck you " comments in that stuff. If he thought people liked somebody else, the poems anyway, he'd be all crappy to them in the story.  Everybody knew who they were in his stories even if he changed their names- my girl hated him. My Mom was Catholic ... he wrote this one about Jesus or something ... with whistling hands and I was like "what?" He just put his palm to his face and whistled like he was blowing through a hole in his hand like at a girl or to catch a cab or something.You know like from the nails. I remember thinking Jesus this son of a bitch is going to hell."

He picks up the bottle but stops before he takes a drink.

"Yeah - he was my friend."

                                                         

 ~~***The Death of Ethan Blue***~~

JOURNAL ENTRY - June 5, 2041

 I had met him when I was a kid, he actually lived with us for a while before we moved to Texas. Until the very last my mother would tell me- if she happened to see one of his books at a rummage sale or something else that reminded her. She'd tell me that she had been his big love, the love of his life. It was obvious to me that even though he'd only been around a year or so and that was at least thirty years ago, that she still loved him in some way. I suspected there were dozens of others who thought the same thing, that they had been "the one" -his books suggested it. For my part I remembered the pot-smoking drunken writer staying with us often all loud and to me hilariously funny but all the details about who he really was, were fuzzy, I had only been eleven years old then. I had followed him online for a while and before he died he had attained a sort of semi-celebrity, a kind of a cult following for his fictionalized autobiographical character that appeared in both poems and short stories, I read all of his stuff I could find. He was probably the reason I had started writing in the first place, that's what Mama always said, and I never really considered any other path than journalism when I started college.
 After she died I talked my bosses at the magazine into letting me write a story about him. I was going to try and find the others from his stories, the people that knew him. I knew that they were real, just like the stories about me and Mom. He lived like he was a walking- talking movie, outrageous and larger-than-life and then recorded it onto paper in an oddly sad southern voice. As a tribute to my mother's passing I wanted to find out who the real Ethan Blue was and how he managed to cast his spell on people in spite of his short comings. I started researching and tracking down the actual people he had used as characters, nearly all of them had been in some kind article or other that still floated the internet eternal, purgatory for poets and journalists alike. He seemed to have a way of writing about their flaws along with his own and in a weird twist of fate, making them love him for it. Just as my mother had until the day she died.
 I planned to do a sort of cross country trip, since the ones I had found were scattered across fifteen states, keeping a journal of my adventure like he had done. I would stop and do interviews with old girlfriends, family members, whoever I could convince to talk to me. My intended last stop would be Little Rock, Ar where he was buried. His grave a fitting last chapter for my diary.