this is what i go to school for... and other shit... but this
UNDER THE MOQUAT TREE
There is a tree where 42nd meets boulevard,
and if you head north out of there on James
you’ll meet the water.
Past the water is the horizon, and
past the horizon is paradise as far as I know.
At the end of winter,
before spring time even comes round,
the tree blooms pretty little blossoms,
and from them comes a fruit.
Moquats, they call em.
Kind of like cumquats but,
kind of not.
I lay there,
under the moquat tree,
to catch my breath,
or just to catch a glimpse of
all the life round me. The tree doin
its seduction dance, and the bees
swingin their little bodies
in and out of the blossoms.
Sometimes when I am sleepin,
long legged black women
will scurry over to the tree,
reach up with their long arms,
and like giraffes,
snatch a fruit or two.
Then they give me a look as if to say
“well it aint your tree no way”
and I guess I can’t argue with that.
The Company aint so bad.
Frank from Biloxi is good to have around,
when he isn’t in a hurry.
He’ll stand up mid-sentence,
a determined grin peeled out on his face,
and with a quick look around,
he’ll head out into oncoming traffic
as if he had a death wish.
At the shelter he can go as he please
and the going is easy
when you aint got no place to go.
I enjoy time with myself though.
Maybe not as much as Frances,
who sometimes goes by:
Dolores, an old Southern Belle,
May, a workout coach.
Gertrude, a German schoolgirl.
or Bea, my mother.
Of which I like Dolores the best
and Bea the least.
I just can’t stand having my mother around.
Larry is a poet,
and an alcoholic escapist
I like him.
He sees the world in a different light,
like a magician or something,
then he’ll scribble it down
onto McDonalds napkins
and sell it outside of ABC liquor
for a quick turn around.
Sometimes late at night,
with his knees all cut up from tripping over
himself, and his shirt soiled with vomit,
he’ll come rest.
Under the moquat tree.
and his dreams get caught in the branches.
I don’t beg much.
I did for a while,
but one young man emptied
out his entire change tray
into the palm of my hands,
and along with a couple of quarters, dimes, and pennies
there was a crucifix,
with crimson beads.
I kept it in my pocket for a while.
I don’t take much stock in Christ,
but on a rainy night,
I stumbled my way into
Our Lady of the Gulf
for an evening service.
I’ve never seen so many white people
in such a fluster my entire life.
Catholics, I figured, had to be the most fit
of all the Christians,
with all their stand up, sit down, stand up,
and then their fashion show walk up to
eat the crappy little cracker.
“The body of Christ”
this old woman said to me and held one up in
front of my face.
And her eyebrows turned down along with her lips
when I asked,
“Can I at least have a couple more?”
They didn’t like it much either,
when I drank all the wine,
and I am sure they wouldn’t be happy
if they knew I took a little for myself
from the St. Vincent DePaul fund for
the sister parish in Haiti.
I am starving right down the road.
Why the hell are they sending money to Africa?
I don’t need none of that anyways.
I got good people, and I got
warm ground, and I got
my sanity,
and love, and hope, and dreams.
I got all this and more,
here under the moquat tree,
where the going is always so easy,
especially when you aint got no place to go.
NORTH
I crossed the Savannah in the dark.
Couldn't see it,
but felt its flow,
swift and heavy beneath me,
hard up into my soul.
Through my skin, and out my ribs,
a fish jumped 'tween them.
I watched three winter sunsets from rear-view mirrors.
Couldn't turn round to them,
but felt their glow,
cascading velvet over me,
hard up into my soul.
They melted my eyes,
and turned my hair to gold.
I held hands with the Appalachians.
Couldn't walk with them,
but they with me,
running noble through my veins,
hard up into my soul.
They ripped up from my spine,
and I breathed out the foothills.
PHOTO VICTIM
With a perplexed look on his face
the chubby little Asian man
pulled down his camera
and let out an “ohhh.”
“Sorry,” I said,
“I didn’t know you were…”
“Is hokay,” he said to me
with a smile, and he lifted his camera
back up to his thin eyes and snapped another shot
minus its accidental subject.
As I walked away
the more I felt
he should have apologized to me.
After all,
I would become a tribute to
the ever-weakening Asian-American relations.
“My furs trip to Merica,”
Wang would say to his family
huddled around their ankle high table
with their shoes off,
or maybe their shoes on
so as to keep their feet small,
and their awe of Wang’s trip,
would resound,
in laughter out through paper walls,
and make flames tremble
behind paper lanterns.
Every day after school his children would
look at the album
in utter delight.
That is until,
they would come across the picture
of my fat head,
which probably should have been,
but even with me in it,
was too pretty to throw away.
“Woot haf been goot shot too.”
and the children’s smiles would
fade down across their little silk
kimonos and to the floor.
“If wasn’t fo stoopeed Merican.”
ALL THE FUZZIES ROUND MY HOUSE
Fox,
pokin in da snow,
big ole ears,
listenin fo a mouse,
or mebbe a rabbit.
I know dis un.
Got paws dat leave tracks, thin
little banters cross da snow.
Aint gunna be no jacket.
Aint gunna be no scarf neither,
dis fox got smarts.
Steals up chilren,
and gobbles em up in one gulp.
Aint gunna be in no pettin zoo.
This fox got smarts,
and he too fast to catch.
Fish,
swimmin in da water,
dat’s a brim fish,
mebbe a bass,
I caint tell.
Water too dirty anyway.
Wish I cuh cetch em,
put em in a skillet,
wit sum buttah
an a lemon.
Good eatin dat brim
bass guppy fish is.
Squrill,
struttin troo da tree,
mebbe it jus arestin
its bushy tail.
Got nuts in is paw dat
he steal up from da ground.
He never share.
Never give me
no damn nuts.
Selfish rat,
jus leave me da shells.
Mean ole bushy tail.
Bird!
Damnit bird!
On de outside
uh my window.
Mebbe you could be quiet
Fo jus a little.
Wakin me up
when I aint ready
to be waked.
I trowed my shoe at em,
But da bird still der,
And my foot is cold.
SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF MOM
Aunt Jeanie has been eaten by the Bible belt.
Somewhere between Louisville and Augusta
her soul sits and waits forever.
Her children are little reflections of her.
They pull on their clothes.
The want to watch TV
They get to watch Veggie Tales.
Bible study at five, bed time at six.
At family get-togethers she argues with everyone
because we are Catholic and she is Southern Baptist,
and she just hates Catholics.
In Ireland people will kill over it,
but she just spits spaghetti all over the table in her soapbox fervor.
People said her second baby was retarded because she left the church.
God punished her good.
He is dead now, her retarded son, and she has more time
to argue at the Catholics.
My dad used to be good at arguing with her.
But he doesn’t like doing that anymore.
Daddy wasn’t always the happiest man,
and it isn’t the pills that have made him sweet,
life has done it to him,
worn him down like a tired stone under the Savannah.
He still kisses my mama,
and she still loves him,
like she loves me,
with tired eyes and tired hands.
CONFESSIONS TO A BOTTLE AND A BOWL OF PEANUTS
Stick em, up mother fucker!
I would say to em,
with my head and my pistol
cocked sideways.
Don’t mother fuckin move bitches,
I will paint this room with your blood!
and they would scream and I would laugh,
as I walked out the door.
Maybe I’ll get the balls to do it someday.
I wouldn’t make obituaries,
I’d save lives. Every single one in the place.
Their happy meals would taste like fuckin’ filet mignon,
their sex, the best ever,
and they would play ball with their kids.
I don’t want to die knowing that
I never held anything up, or didn’t get into
any gun fights, or didn’t steal nothin’, or that I
didn’t sleep with anyone’s wife. Or made other’s lives
better. Yeah, better.
Everyone is in such a fuckin’ hurry.
They stress me out with all that shit,
the speed limit is 70 and everyone
just has to do 80.
You have way too much trust in my driving skills man,
I’ve had seven beers, a joint, and a hit of cocaine,
and I feel like ramming my piece of shit
right into your piece of shit,
and getting trippy off the explosion.
Thoreau and Emerson would agree with me.
You just need to slow the fuck down.
and stop taking your life for granted.
NO SEE SEA SHELL
We walked down the beach,
where the water meets the land,
as is common on such vacations,
Michael Thum and I,
(Mee-shi-ahl Toom, he would pronounce it, but I just called him Mike.)
He had never been to the Gulf Coast before,
never been to Alabama for that matter.
We called it L.A.
Lower Alabama,
The Redneck Rivera.
He called it “so ah-sum.”
“When do I see tee tees?”
Mike asked,
because apparently American
MTV spring break is broadcast
on its German affiliate,
and according to him all American “weemon”
are American sluts.
Just as three such sluts passed
Mike let out a “Yeow! Sheister!
Damnit! No see sea shell.”
and the sand was turned
a star-spangled red,
like the beaches of Normandy.
And the sluts laughed and pointed.
OH MY DAMN
The allure of a drunken sorority girl
has evaded me. As well, the drunken
testimony. So, I don't dance,
with you at least, although to
wine-drenched eyes you are a feast.
You'll follow me down the hall I pray,
that together we might welcome the
day, and perchance we would see again the
night, though you'll resist with quite some
might, how I love it when you put up a fight.
We catch eyes, and you are mine,
My chinos, firmly pressed, and oh so
fine mental pictures of your
dress up over my head,
with your legs propped up
on the side of the
bed, and what more could you ask for
happily than to die right there in
ecstasy, I will make it happen,
even if you don’t let me.
So I reel you in with a wink,
or a kiss to the air an inch in front of your
lips, curl your dark hair in my fingertips,
and lead you away to your silken casket,
where I’ll pull the shades and fasten the straps
until the room is all pitch black,
I've never kissed lips that have kissed back,
oh my damn, oh my damned Madame.
FOLLOWING THE EULOGY
If I could have I would have
Jumped in there with you,
Picked you up,
And breathed life back into your lips,
Screamed curses at God,
And cried blue tears.
Then the flowers,
Then the dirt,
Then the darkness.
I would keep you company,
Until the worms came,
Hold you tight in my arms,
Until just an empty shell of you was left.
I’d make friends with the night,
And you and I, hand in hand,
Would dance to its sweet melodies.
The in and out rhythm of nothingness and black.
Its salsa and waltz. Its heavy horns and squeaky strings.
And you could hoist me up on your shoulders
Like you did when I was a little boy.
We’d walk towards the sun,
And breathe in unison,
And never cry.
And never cry.
PARLAY VOO? COMO ESTAS? ACK DOO LEEBER?
I’ve never been to Europe,
But I’ll be damned if I don’t make it there soon.
I hear European women are just
melting for American guys.
They wear velvet panties
and call out from street corners:
“Hey gringo!”or “Mi Amor!”
Or sometimes they suck on lollipops
with the fires of heated love under
the marble arches
in their eyes.
Most Europeans are chain-smoking nymphos.
I guess I can understand.
The transition from the mark or whatever currency
to the Euro
must be really stressful.
I hear Italian women love the backseat
of little red cars and
they will sit between your legs
and speak to you even though
you don’t understand
while you sip on a heavy wine
whose grapes were aged on straw mats,
in big nosed old women’s attics
to make them extra potent, of course.
Swedish women are all blonde,
well, most of them.
They work at sweaty
swizzle stick factories,
high up in the alps.
They pretty much are all twins too
and they are partial to having their
sisters around in bed with them,
inseparable twins.
They got this museum in France where all the French women
hang around and look at paintings
of other French women
but the painted ladies are naked
with nothing covering their chests
and the art connoisseurs are so moved
by the pictures,
that they rip off their shirts,
and bras,
and their breasts flail in the air.
It is all too fucking romantic to me.
These French women wear polka dotted skirts,
and those silly painter hats
and they never shave
or wear panties.
They go commando year round,
even in the winter.
There is a tree where 42nd meets boulevard,
and if you head north out of there on James
you’ll meet the water.
Past the water is the horizon, and
past the horizon is paradise as far as I know.
At the end of winter,
before spring time even comes round,
the tree blooms pretty little blossoms,
and from them comes a fruit.
Moquats, they call em.
Kind of like cumquats but,
kind of not.
I lay there,
under the moquat tree,
to catch my breath,
or just to catch a glimpse of
all the life round me. The tree doin
its seduction dance, and the bees
swingin their little bodies
in and out of the blossoms.
Sometimes when I am sleepin,
long legged black women
will scurry over to the tree,
reach up with their long arms,
and like giraffes,
snatch a fruit or two.
Then they give me a look as if to say
“well it aint your tree no way”
and I guess I can’t argue with that.
The Company aint so bad.
Frank from Biloxi is good to have around,
when he isn’t in a hurry.
He’ll stand up mid-sentence,
a determined grin peeled out on his face,
and with a quick look around,
he’ll head out into oncoming traffic
as if he had a death wish.
At the shelter he can go as he please
and the going is easy
when you aint got no place to go.
I enjoy time with myself though.
Maybe not as much as Frances,
who sometimes goes by:
Dolores, an old Southern Belle,
May, a workout coach.
Gertrude, a German schoolgirl.
or Bea, my mother.
Of which I like Dolores the best
and Bea the least.
I just can’t stand having my mother around.
Larry is a poet,
and an alcoholic escapist
I like him.
He sees the world in a different light,
like a magician or something,
then he’ll scribble it down
onto McDonalds napkins
and sell it outside of ABC liquor
for a quick turn around.
Sometimes late at night,
with his knees all cut up from tripping over
himself, and his shirt soiled with vomit,
he’ll come rest.
Under the moquat tree.
and his dreams get caught in the branches.
I don’t beg much.
I did for a while,
but one young man emptied
out his entire change tray
into the palm of my hands,
and along with a couple of quarters, dimes, and pennies
there was a crucifix,
with crimson beads.
I kept it in my pocket for a while.
I don’t take much stock in Christ,
but on a rainy night,
I stumbled my way into
Our Lady of the Gulf
for an evening service.
I’ve never seen so many white people
in such a fluster my entire life.
Catholics, I figured, had to be the most fit
of all the Christians,
with all their stand up, sit down, stand up,
and then their fashion show walk up to
eat the crappy little cracker.
“The body of Christ”
this old woman said to me and held one up in
front of my face.
And her eyebrows turned down along with her lips
when I asked,
“Can I at least have a couple more?”
They didn’t like it much either,
when I drank all the wine,
and I am sure they wouldn’t be happy
if they knew I took a little for myself
from the St. Vincent DePaul fund for
the sister parish in Haiti.
I am starving right down the road.
Why the hell are they sending money to Africa?
I don’t need none of that anyways.
I got good people, and I got
warm ground, and I got
my sanity,
and love, and hope, and dreams.
I got all this and more,
here under the moquat tree,
where the going is always so easy,
especially when you aint got no place to go.
NORTH
I crossed the Savannah in the dark.
Couldn't see it,
but felt its flow,
swift and heavy beneath me,
hard up into my soul.
Through my skin, and out my ribs,
a fish jumped 'tween them.
I watched three winter sunsets from rear-view mirrors.
Couldn't turn round to them,
but felt their glow,
cascading velvet over me,
hard up into my soul.
They melted my eyes,
and turned my hair to gold.
I held hands with the Appalachians.
Couldn't walk with them,
but they with me,
running noble through my veins,
hard up into my soul.
They ripped up from my spine,
and I breathed out the foothills.
PHOTO VICTIM
With a perplexed look on his face
the chubby little Asian man
pulled down his camera
and let out an “ohhh.”
“Sorry,” I said,
“I didn’t know you were…”
“Is hokay,” he said to me
with a smile, and he lifted his camera
back up to his thin eyes and snapped another shot
minus its accidental subject.
As I walked away
the more I felt
he should have apologized to me.
After all,
I would become a tribute to
the ever-weakening Asian-American relations.
“My furs trip to Merica,”
Wang would say to his family
huddled around their ankle high table
with their shoes off,
or maybe their shoes on
so as to keep their feet small,
and their awe of Wang’s trip,
would resound,
in laughter out through paper walls,
and make flames tremble
behind paper lanterns.
Every day after school his children would
look at the album
in utter delight.
That is until,
they would come across the picture
of my fat head,
which probably should have been,
but even with me in it,
was too pretty to throw away.
“Woot haf been goot shot too.”
and the children’s smiles would
fade down across their little silk
kimonos and to the floor.
“If wasn’t fo stoopeed Merican.”
ALL THE FUZZIES ROUND MY HOUSE
Fox,
pokin in da snow,
big ole ears,
listenin fo a mouse,
or mebbe a rabbit.
I know dis un.
Got paws dat leave tracks, thin
little banters cross da snow.
Aint gunna be no jacket.
Aint gunna be no scarf neither,
dis fox got smarts.
Steals up chilren,
and gobbles em up in one gulp.
Aint gunna be in no pettin zoo.
This fox got smarts,
and he too fast to catch.
Fish,
swimmin in da water,
dat’s a brim fish,
mebbe a bass,
I caint tell.
Water too dirty anyway.
Wish I cuh cetch em,
put em in a skillet,
wit sum buttah
an a lemon.
Good eatin dat brim
bass guppy fish is.
Squrill,
struttin troo da tree,
mebbe it jus arestin
its bushy tail.
Got nuts in is paw dat
he steal up from da ground.
He never share.
Never give me
no damn nuts.
Selfish rat,
jus leave me da shells.
Mean ole bushy tail.
Bird!
Damnit bird!
On de outside
uh my window.
Mebbe you could be quiet
Fo jus a little.
Wakin me up
when I aint ready
to be waked.
I trowed my shoe at em,
But da bird still der,
And my foot is cold.
SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF MOM
Aunt Jeanie has been eaten by the Bible belt.
Somewhere between Louisville and Augusta
her soul sits and waits forever.
Her children are little reflections of her.
They pull on their clothes.
The want to watch TV
They get to watch Veggie Tales.
Bible study at five, bed time at six.
At family get-togethers she argues with everyone
because we are Catholic and she is Southern Baptist,
and she just hates Catholics.
In Ireland people will kill over it,
but she just spits spaghetti all over the table in her soapbox fervor.
People said her second baby was retarded because she left the church.
God punished her good.
He is dead now, her retarded son, and she has more time
to argue at the Catholics.
My dad used to be good at arguing with her.
But he doesn’t like doing that anymore.
Daddy wasn’t always the happiest man,
and it isn’t the pills that have made him sweet,
life has done it to him,
worn him down like a tired stone under the Savannah.
He still kisses my mama,
and she still loves him,
like she loves me,
with tired eyes and tired hands.
CONFESSIONS TO A BOTTLE AND A BOWL OF PEANUTS
Stick em, up mother fucker!
I would say to em,
with my head and my pistol
cocked sideways.
Don’t mother fuckin move bitches,
I will paint this room with your blood!
and they would scream and I would laugh,
as I walked out the door.
Maybe I’ll get the balls to do it someday.
I wouldn’t make obituaries,
I’d save lives. Every single one in the place.
Their happy meals would taste like fuckin’ filet mignon,
their sex, the best ever,
and they would play ball with their kids.
I don’t want to die knowing that
I never held anything up, or didn’t get into
any gun fights, or didn’t steal nothin’, or that I
didn’t sleep with anyone’s wife. Or made other’s lives
better. Yeah, better.
Everyone is in such a fuckin’ hurry.
They stress me out with all that shit,
the speed limit is 70 and everyone
just has to do 80.
You have way too much trust in my driving skills man,
I’ve had seven beers, a joint, and a hit of cocaine,
and I feel like ramming my piece of shit
right into your piece of shit,
and getting trippy off the explosion.
Thoreau and Emerson would agree with me.
You just need to slow the fuck down.
and stop taking your life for granted.
NO SEE SEA SHELL
We walked down the beach,
where the water meets the land,
as is common on such vacations,
Michael Thum and I,
(Mee-shi-ahl Toom, he would pronounce it, but I just called him Mike.)
He had never been to the Gulf Coast before,
never been to Alabama for that matter.
We called it L.A.
Lower Alabama,
The Redneck Rivera.
He called it “so ah-sum.”
“When do I see tee tees?”
Mike asked,
because apparently American
MTV spring break is broadcast
on its German affiliate,
and according to him all American “weemon”
are American sluts.
Just as three such sluts passed
Mike let out a “Yeow! Sheister!
Damnit! No see sea shell.”
and the sand was turned
a star-spangled red,
like the beaches of Normandy.
And the sluts laughed and pointed.
OH MY DAMN
The allure of a drunken sorority girl
has evaded me. As well, the drunken
testimony. So, I don't dance,
with you at least, although to
wine-drenched eyes you are a feast.
You'll follow me down the hall I pray,
that together we might welcome the
day, and perchance we would see again the
night, though you'll resist with quite some
might, how I love it when you put up a fight.
We catch eyes, and you are mine,
My chinos, firmly pressed, and oh so
fine mental pictures of your
dress up over my head,
with your legs propped up
on the side of the
bed, and what more could you ask for
happily than to die right there in
ecstasy, I will make it happen,
even if you don’t let me.
So I reel you in with a wink,
or a kiss to the air an inch in front of your
lips, curl your dark hair in my fingertips,
and lead you away to your silken casket,
where I’ll pull the shades and fasten the straps
until the room is all pitch black,
I've never kissed lips that have kissed back,
oh my damn, oh my damned Madame.
FOLLOWING THE EULOGY
If I could have I would have
Jumped in there with you,
Picked you up,
And breathed life back into your lips,
Screamed curses at God,
And cried blue tears.
Then the flowers,
Then the dirt,
Then the darkness.
I would keep you company,
Until the worms came,
Hold you tight in my arms,
Until just an empty shell of you was left.
I’d make friends with the night,
And you and I, hand in hand,
Would dance to its sweet melodies.
The in and out rhythm of nothingness and black.
Its salsa and waltz. Its heavy horns and squeaky strings.
And you could hoist me up on your shoulders
Like you did when I was a little boy.
We’d walk towards the sun,
And breathe in unison,
And never cry.
And never cry.
PARLAY VOO? COMO ESTAS? ACK DOO LEEBER?
I’ve never been to Europe,
But I’ll be damned if I don’t make it there soon.
I hear European women are just
melting for American guys.
They wear velvet panties
and call out from street corners:
“Hey gringo!”or “Mi Amor!”
Or sometimes they suck on lollipops
with the fires of heated love under
the marble arches
in their eyes.
Most Europeans are chain-smoking nymphos.
I guess I can understand.
The transition from the mark or whatever currency
to the Euro
must be really stressful.
I hear Italian women love the backseat
of little red cars and
they will sit between your legs
and speak to you even though
you don’t understand
while you sip on a heavy wine
whose grapes were aged on straw mats,
in big nosed old women’s attics
to make them extra potent, of course.
Swedish women are all blonde,
well, most of them.
They work at sweaty
swizzle stick factories,
high up in the alps.
They pretty much are all twins too
and they are partial to having their
sisters around in bed with them,
inseparable twins.
They got this museum in France where all the French women
hang around and look at paintings
of other French women
but the painted ladies are naked
with nothing covering their chests
and the art connoisseurs are so moved
by the pictures,
that they rip off their shirts,
and bras,
and their breasts flail in the air.
It is all too fucking romantic to me.
These French women wear polka dotted skirts,
and those silly painter hats
and they never shave
or wear panties.
They go commando year round,
even in the winter.