Cigar Box Banjo

Blind Willie Johnson could coax
music from a single string. God plucked a rib
and found a woman. Concert aria
in the gypsy song, long groan
of orgasm in the first kiss, plastic bag
of heroin ripening in the poppy fields.
Right now, in a deep pocket of a politician’s brain,
a bad idea is traveling along an axon
to make sure the future resembles a cobra
rather than an ocarina.
Still there’s hope in every cartoon bib
above which a tiny unfinished skull in
its beneficence dispenses a drooling grin.
The heart may be a trashy organ,
but when it plucks its shiny banjo
I see blue wings in the rain.


From My Black Angel: Blues Poems & Portraits (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014)

Heraclitean

In goes the cafeteria worker in her hairnet.
In goes the philosophy teacher
explaining the theory of eternal
return, and Anton Stadler with his clarinet,
still owing money to Mozart. In
goes Mozart. Everyone flopped into the creel
of the happy fisherman, everyone eaten.
Every river is Lethean,
so why should we care
if it’s not the same river? I hate
how everything changes, tree
to failing term paper, chatelaine
to beheaded plotter, drug dealer to narc.
The heart softening faster than cereal
but then hardening to a relic
which turns into another line
of depressed poetry to recite
to the next eager trainee
anxious to be more than lint.
Going up, you’re also going down, so either
way, as your mother said, Be nice.
When she went in, she was very thin.
Earth, air, fire, water, mother.
Fish pulse slowly under the river ice.


From My Black Angel: Blues Poems & Portraits (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014)

Creased Map of the Underworld

Nothing is so beautiful as death,
thinks Death: stilled lark on the lawn,
its twiggy legs drawn up, squashed blossoms
of skunks and opossums on the freeway,
dog that drags itself trembling down
the front porch step, and stops
in a black-gummed grimace
before toppling into the poppies.
The ugly poppies. In Afghanistan
they are again made beautiful
by a mysterious blight. Ugly
are the arriving American soldiers, newly shorn
and checking their email,
but beautiful when face-up in the road
or their parts scattered
like bullet- or sprinkler-spray
or stellar remains. Lovely
is the nearly expired star
casting its mass into outer space,
lovelier the supernova
tearing itself apart
or collapsing like Lana Turner
in Frank O’Hara’s poem.
Nothing is so beautiful as a poem
except maybe a nightingale,
thinks the poet writing about death,
sinking Lethe-wards. Lovely river
in which the names are carefully entered.
In this quadrant are the rivers of grief and fire.
Grid north. Black azimuth.
Down rivers of Fuck yous and orchids
steer lit hearts in little boats
gamely making their way,
spinning and flaming, flaming
and spiraling, always down--
down, the most beautiful of the directions.


From My Black Angel: Blues Poems & Portraits (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014)

Grace

Let go & let God is my guard dog Beware
the ragged shithole hordes & bless
my Chrome Moly Bushmaster .223 rest

your asses nowhere near my rod & staff
I raise my beacon-hand &
torch anyone who doesn’t believe Jesus

was calved from a virgin & then ascended
to his penthouse & will raptor down
to smite Jews abortionists niggers

Muslims fags Obama the AntiChrist SATAN
WAS THE FIRST TO DEMAND EQUAL RIGHTS
outside the Knoxville Baptist Tabernacle

while a boy puts his tongue in another boy’s mouth
& they lie down together shy & barely breathing


From Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W.W. Norton, 2020)

Art of Poetry

Between coffee & fentanyl, between Love Me and Go Fuck Yourself
there’s so much life to be gotten through
So many mirrors to challenge in your ragged robe & collagen essence Korean facial mask

Eventually you have to go out & walk around in the world like you belong there
You have to smile at work, & buy things
when you just want to crawl into a closet & live in an old cowboy boot & write witty
   unhinged verses

which sometime before the death of the sun
an advanced civilization will discover, etched into the ancient leather, preserved in a rock
   formation
& display in a luminous floating interdimensional sphere

Q: Ever notice how many writers write about writing?

A few centuries ago Horace wrote approvingly of a poet
He intends not smoke from flame, but light from smoke
which I think is good advice if you can follow it
but he also said that to paint a dolphin in the trees or a boar in the waves

is an unnatural distortion & I thought about how much I’d like to see that
& how unrealistic it is to expect things to stay in their places
Why not someone’s grieving widow consoled by a nebula
A suicide vomiting flowers

In the 20th century Pablo Neruda wrote his own “Arte Poetica”
lamenting all the things that called to him without being answered
& reading it, I thought about that time in a tiny fishing village in Mexico,
a third mangorita waterfalling through my liver
the waitress coming toward me in a white T-shirt with black lettering that said
I HAVE NO TITS

which was clearly a lie although her stomach was kind of big which had the effect
of making them appear to recede
like the single taillights of two antique Model A Fords sputtering together toward obsolescence

Q: Does she even know what it says?

I HAVE NO TITS
What is the message, is this perhaps a code, could it be from the future
Is it a “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” situation like in that painting of a pipe
or a new far-reaching campaign from the US Ministry of Enlightenment & Propaganda
The thieving president wearing a golfing shirt that says I HAVE NO CLOTHES

Q: Who killed poetry again & who cares?

Between false flags and homeless laundry lines
Between long-lasting eyebrow gel & little-known destinations profiled in the New York Times
I don’t know where anyone is going or where there is to get to
The days & nights keep drunkenly arriving, the guests are all dying
& I’m starting to feel pretty sick


From Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W.W. Norton, 2020)