new poem : "sour milk"
sour milk
I read today in the newspaper
of a laid-off construction worker
playing the part of the ”wolf-man”
at a second-rate tourist attraction.
we have, it seems, a bona fide carny by need,
a man hit by hard times now at the funfair :
and I am listening to Curtis Mayfield’s
”Pusherman” and not thinking exactly Depression
great or small but of Savannah’s lesson, of blank
stares, rusted rails, and untended houseplants.
I am thinking of miles of open land, Colorado
near Pueblo, stray cats on the side of the road,
Pasty Cline on the radio like a ghost upturning
her tombstone and bringing back days of no AC
in the summer, of aunts without telephones,
of scant rainwater in the cistern and not having very
much.
near Pueblo, the Army built a weapons depot
for horrible chemicals should we have ever needed such
and they were not availible by accident or chance, we
would have a field of bunkers of misery at ready.
we spent countless dollars to make evil and then
spend dollars more to destroy our agents of destruction.
and in this dusty grassland with night-time silence I think
of ranchers making a hardscramble life and not having very
much
of anything, now and here’s everything:
there is a wind mean and poor that howls everywhere
and it casts souls about, yes, but it’s no
new thing. it’s old as time itself. governments
themselves even fail, fall, and whole cities are
lost to huge storms or unfortunate missions
in their lives: not Kantubek nor New Orleans,
not large nor small are really immune to this thing
we’ll call it, as we drag it home, we’ll call it
life.
when last in Savannah, I listen to hushed
sounds, moving like smoke, sounds of china
clinking in a café, of pens to paper or coin
to palm. by the far side of the park, the sound
of kids playing, of two fat women talking loudly
and the soundless sight of a small red kite. milk
sour in a bottle in the window of a house empty
since that old fellow lost his job, moved back to
Brooklet with his daughter and now he sits and
just reads the Bible every day.
when last in Savannah, it was rich and poor, it
was hours of the day, it was the dry-rot porch
and posh salon within blocks of each other :
a stone’s throw you know, and a stone’s throw it will moreover
be, as we enter times hard enough they speak like lions of their
discontent, their taste of unplanned travel and longing for home.
as we become a nation of wealth beside the wayside,
of never-ness next door to blueprints for business, great plans
for the future I am certain . . . but see, blueprints, I found
one windy day in San Francisco, blown out a window, over
a rusted fence, landing in a street by the flyer for a rave thrown
two weeks prior and an empty milk jug : they were old, yellowing,
and when I read them like a comic book it became clear:
they had been for a battle ship. WWII. and imagine, now,
how much that must have cost to build.
I read today in the newspaper
of a laid-off construction worker
playing the part of the ”wolf-man”
at a second-rate tourist attraction.
we have, it seems, a bona fide carny by need,
a man hit by hard times now at the funfair :
and I am listening to Curtis Mayfield’s
”Pusherman” and not thinking exactly Depression
great or small but of Savannah’s lesson, of blank
stares, rusted rails, and untended houseplants.
I am thinking of miles of open land, Colorado
near Pueblo, stray cats on the side of the road,
Pasty Cline on the radio like a ghost upturning
her tombstone and bringing back days of no AC
in the summer, of aunts without telephones,
of scant rainwater in the cistern and not having very
much.
near Pueblo, the Army built a weapons depot
for horrible chemicals should we have ever needed such
and they were not availible by accident or chance, we
would have a field of bunkers of misery at ready.
we spent countless dollars to make evil and then
spend dollars more to destroy our agents of destruction.
and in this dusty grassland with night-time silence I think
of ranchers making a hardscramble life and not having very
much
of anything, now and here’s everything:
there is a wind mean and poor that howls everywhere
and it casts souls about, yes, but it’s no
new thing. it’s old as time itself. governments
themselves even fail, fall, and whole cities are
lost to huge storms or unfortunate missions
in their lives: not Kantubek nor New Orleans,
not large nor small are really immune to this thing
we’ll call it, as we drag it home, we’ll call it
life.
when last in Savannah, I listen to hushed
sounds, moving like smoke, sounds of china
clinking in a café, of pens to paper or coin
to palm. by the far side of the park, the sound
of kids playing, of two fat women talking loudly
and the soundless sight of a small red kite. milk
sour in a bottle in the window of a house empty
since that old fellow lost his job, moved back to
Brooklet with his daughter and now he sits and
just reads the Bible every day.
when last in Savannah, it was rich and poor, it
was hours of the day, it was the dry-rot porch
and posh salon within blocks of each other :
a stone’s throw you know, and a stone’s throw it will moreover
be, as we enter times hard enough they speak like lions of their
discontent, their taste of unplanned travel and longing for home.
as we become a nation of wealth beside the wayside,
of never-ness next door to blueprints for business, great plans
for the future I am certain . . . but see, blueprints, I found
one windy day in San Francisco, blown out a window, over
a rusted fence, landing in a street by the flyer for a rave thrown
two weeks prior and an empty milk jug : they were old, yellowing,
and when I read them like a comic book it became clear:
they had been for a battle ship. WWII. and imagine, now,
how much that must have cost to build.