Sweet Betsy

Dark Corral, by Craig Johnson

co-written with Fey Witt

Never did I intend
To pull away
It is just
what my people do
Inconstant, unsettled
Unpredictably
I
move toward what is easiest
fool’s gold
Someone else’s dream
A tintype of mountain stream
It isn’t easy
this worry of losing
and getting lost
I should be used to it all
by now
Piker that I am
Fists in my pockets
fists around my heart
Crumbling, crumbling
past dust to powder
I sift, I scatter
I offer you the wind

2011

Reading You

Write all
you sense

upon clear
strips, line

by line.
Lay each

one upon
the next,

hold this
stack up

to sky—
try to

read it.
Give up.

Be read
by sky.

2011

The Tomato Sutra

Driven from the growing shape of morning on the red stone patio,
called by the mulched path between woman-sized tomato plants,
I took my seat to breathe in early August shade.

To the left of the path, three plants. One: an heirloom Cherokee Purple
whose child nearly bursts out of its name next to a smaller green twin.
My fingers thrill against the give of its plump readiness, but I must wait
one more day for Sage, my own purpling daughter, to return. I want to see
what this strange fruit does to the shape of her eyes and face.

And of two Romas, only one of their sons approaches red in a sea
of green brothers. But what a sea! I dream of thawing winter salsa.

And then, because there is left, there is always right, on the right side
of this path is a family of Caspian Pinks. Queens of mazed branches full and broad,
blossoms promised high in lofty reach. Down low, no blooms or tiny fruits!
Midway, a few shriveled flowers inside inner architectures of green.
Of four plants only two diminutive green globes! But what generous shade!

I tell myself they must be late bloomers, like my own slow breasts
(how I prayed!), my own slow living, finally tall, full figured alphabet
putting out prayers above the cage, empty with promise, while others—
look at you dazzling beings!—already heavy with purple and red! I wait.

This is the Sutra of Cherokees Purples, Romas and Caspian Pinks!
May every summer’s last blast of heat bring the least of these awake into the world.
Everything empty staggers toward a steady ripening, a delicious fleeting fall.
On all sides, may the perfect wisdom of this mantra be proclaimed:

tadyatha, mato mato, to om mato, to om om mato, bodhi svaha!

So, noble poets, gardeners, sons and daughters,
we should train in the profound perfection
of wisdom in this way, and rejoice!

2011

Who Shows Up Next

in answer to Rosemerry's question

When Defensiveness meets Pain crouching
behind you, shining red, bare skinned, seared
by expectation, her shield falls in a clamor

at his feet. She pulls off gloves finger by finger,
lifts the shapeless burlap, leaden over head,
exposes chafed arms and breasts, a heart

beating through invisible flesh. A sacred heart.
Pain shifts to get a closer look. She wants to fold
her arms across her chest but lets them fall,

wedges steel toes against each heel, and
with great effort, births her blistered feet.
The mask is last to go, and Pain jolts

in surprise. There is a hidden eye in her
forehead no mask is built for.
She says, My name is really Honesty.

Even though she is sadly smiling
in her own red skin, Pain cannot
embrace her right away. He blinks.

Tears sting the places they fall.
She waits for salt to do its work.
Sometimes it’s the only salve we have.

2011

Coatlicue's Garden

              

The Machinery of Desire

1
Everything is calling, clicking
an intricate clockwork of longing.
Crickets rub their toothy wings,
cars race hungrily along black ribbons,
airy arms tingle for breakfast,
pigeons ever gurgle on the wire,
dogs whine to be let in—pity them,
and me, I chase my stories round
my head looking for the end.

2
My words are never content with silence,
that great engine turning poems.
And why not? Silence has everything to say,
everywhere to go. Words are its wings
rubbing together, singing come here, love me,
leave me alone, no—stay, yes—go, listen, don’t
look too hard for me. I’m under the pile
of dirty jeans, I’m tucked in the crotch
of the mulberry tree, I’m up here
in the mouth of the great horned owl, waiting.

2011

The Toy

The boy holds up the toy he built
of colored slotted discs
from a Taco Bell kid’s meal
and explains softly to his mother:

His neck is made of earth.
His chest is air.
His arms and belly are also earth.
His spear is a shaft of air tipped with fire.
What is this?

The pelvis, his mother says.

His pelvis is water.
His thighs are air.
His calves are also water.
His feet are fire.
His head is a shield.

I like him, he concludes.
He’s the Friendly Earth Guardian.

The boy has built himself.
She turns the toy over in her hands,
his elements rushing through,
and recognizes the man.

2011

Rant of the 21st Century Blog Poet

Forgive me for not wanting to be more
properly, postmodernly, publishably
obscure, but, enough already,
proud, paper poets, clutching your journals
and precious books, peddling bitter art syrup
and sorrow for next to nothing! for tree killers!

Words are free!

Forgive me, I am weak. Living is maze and flame
enough without our random word strings. Yes,
there is chaos. There are black holes
in train station eyes. Even mine.
But there is also pattern and, unfortunately, rhyme.

Go ahead, call me trite, or better yet: Poetaster.
The art of posing isn’t hard to master.

How do I want to see?
I want to glue all the broken cups
together and offer them,
leaking, to you. Drink!

Take it from a bumper sticker:
Don’t believe everything you think.

This place is not so fractured
as our blinking rootless lines.
We all hold our own things
in a certain fractal order. Just because
our order shrinks doesn’t mean
expansion doesn’t sing!

And I’m going to say it: I can’t pretend
postmodern poetry doesn’t stink,
even if we like to sniff our own reeking pits!

It’s ok to get clean once in a while, kids,
wash off the crowded street.

Say something sweet, for gods’ sake,
for Nietzsche’s! Do you really want
only pale academe to read you, Übermenschen?
Pile you dusty on their shelves next to Keats?

Bright stars, admit it! That is our wet dream.
But let’s get with it, Marxist wannabes:
words aren’t some commodity!
Anyway, they pay us beans.
Whose whore are we?

Haven’t you noticed? Words are finally free!

(for a modest monthly wireless fee, of course,
or a quick trip to the library.)

Even if no one remembers me
after the Mother of All Solar Flare Catastrophes
licks my words right off this screen,
that’s fine. I’ll either be dead, or still writing.

Maybe then I’ll more readily seek
your perfect bound postmodern ranks.
Like Stanley and Blanche, we could bury
the hatchet and make it a loving cup.

At least until the network
is back up.

2011

Watching Swimming Pool

Charlotte Rampling, once ravishing boyish bombshell, playing
Sarah Morton, crime detective novelist, nearly sixty.
A young writer shakes her hand with a cocky smirk,
“My mother loves your work.” His grin says it all. She seethes.

Her English publisher waning lover sends her to his French home to write.
His blond nubile daughter arrives unexpectedly.
Sarah watches, we watch, the girl bare breasted with still, hooded gaze
at the pool, or eating cereal, or writing in a journal, everything topless,
breasts bobbing over the mundane moments of living.
What she does when no one is watching. But the girl moves
as though she is being watched, as we learn to do, moving for men.

Later, Sarah listens, we listen, to the girl moaning with oafish older men.
Cut to bedroom: we watch her, not him, and she knows we are watching.
Charlotte plays reserved Sarah, but Charlotte has had her share of sex on film.
We know she knows this writhing for the best theatrical angle, yet, still,
Sarah reaches for earplugs. We see men notice her despite the girl, despite her years.
French cinema, you know. Tres complex.

We notice her. How can we not. She is Charlotte Rampling. Lying near the pool,
the camera pans her rigid angled length the way it panned the curvy smooth girl earlier.
We see Sarah’s veined sinewy feet, the boyish thin hips, the breasts flattened by gravity
in a modest swimming suit. Perhaps we are meant to be saddened by this juxtaposition,
the way age dries and robs the most beautiful women of water and luster. She steals it back
by writing, stiff faced, a rough wall, eyelids crumbling. The publisher avoids her calls.

These are the kept scenes, the ones we see, expect to see: an older woman,
leatherly, alone, stuck in her wordy mind robbing the lives of the young,
unable to land Franck, the interested sexy waiter, before he is killed by the girl.
She even helps the girl bury him. Oh, how we had hoped victory for her!
Let the old woman have the young man for once! We know what gives us worth.

We are surprised when she bares her old and surprisingly lovely breasts on the balcony
to the murder-suspecting gardener. As a ruse, a distraction, she seduces him:
short, unshaven, white whiskered, pear bellied, sweaty old man, to save
the young girl’s neck. She writes the girl’s story, becomes like a mother to her,
of course, and publishes the book behind her publisher lover’s back.
She has won, but it is the winning of a jealous crone getting back her own.
This is when she finally, truly smiles. The end.

But you know how DVD’s are. There is always more. What was cut. Click it.

Sarah wandering the French village alone, lean, self-contained, ordering at the café,
served by the sexy French Franck she barely notices. Clicking down stone streets
on stick legs in loose beige slacks, peering into dark rubbled windows,
touching rough walls of the fallen castle of de Sade, stiff limbed, tall,
upright, heavy lidded, self-bridled, always almost grinning. She is Sarah Morton,
writer, yet she is Charlotte. We know she is both, though it is cold
how she moves, selecting round fruits in the market and tubs of yogurt,
cool foods that need no cooking. And wine. So quiet. Days without words.

She eagerly plops perpendicular into a green slatted patio chair at a green slatted table,
straight backed, to type. Her mouth moves with her fluttering fingers. Later, cigarette
hanging from lips, curled into a cushioned, high backed, wooden legged chair,
scribbling quickly on typed manuscripts, revising. Her face registering peace,
sometimes laughter, tickled, obviously, with her own genius.
When the publisher asks on the phone what she is writing, she won’t say.
Alone, she belongs only to herself, breast-stroking
across the empty pool wearing a floppy hat, dry faced, slightly smiling.

Still the camera pans, but in these scenes, the gardener is not watching.
Neither is the sexy waiter or publisher. Only we are. We can see
Charlotte is happy being watched as Sarah not being watched. She moves that way,
in awkward womanly angles, the aesthetic of utility, moving from here to there.
And I am happy watching her unwatched and happy: the deleted scenes,
the ones that make us not-women in the world, objects only to ourselves,
the ones the director knows are lovely on a screen, but won’t sell.

2009/2011

Mourning Mojo

This morning I was going to paint
a red and yellow mindscape
but wake to a puppy’s hungry yips
and my old black dog on three legs
licking death’s huge ear. I hunch
to become her fourth leg and limp alongside.
My mind travels over her silken spine,
recently narrowed slow hips, deep
into unfathomable canine bones,
seeking some light or dark thing
over which to rest or wring my hands.
First she lies in the shallow hole she dug,
always digs, in the flower bed between violets
and lavender in early summer, serious
with dignity, facing foundation wall,
averting her gaze.  The lanky puppy sniffs
the patient face he normally playfully nips.
Wondering what he knows, I know.
Next, she is missing. Not behind the woodbox
or lilacs. I wonder did she translate to light.
I peer down the flight of basement stairs,
enter the unlikely place.  There, she fills
the farthest shadow, a leaning sphinx
looking at the crumbling wall. I crawl to her,
join my dark to hers, wait in her wet fur.

13 July 2011