154 Music poems

Just as he changes himself, in the end eternity changes him. —Mallarmé On the phonograph, the voice of a woman already dead for three decades, singing of a man who could make her do anything. On the table, two fragile glasses of black wine, a bottle wrapped in its towel. It is that room, the one we took in every city, it is as I remember: the bed, a block of moonlight and pillows. My fingernails, pecks of light on your thighs. The stink of the fire escape. The wet butts of cigarettes you crushed one after another. How I watched the morning come as you slept, more my son than a man ten years older. How my breasts feel, years later, the tongues swishing in my dress, some yours, some left by other men. Since then, I have always wakened first, I have learned to leave a bed without being seen and have stood at the washbasins, wiping oil and salt from my skin, staring at the cupped water in my two hands. I have kept everything you whispered to me then. I can remember it now as I see you again, how much tenderness we could wedge between a stairwell and a police lock, or as it was, as it still is, in the voice of a woman singing of a man who could make her do anything.

watchdog howling (all caved in beyond the pale — tis my home cold wind implacable driven unaccounted sooth shawl of sorrow unplanned unmapped swallow order blunt trees mended like man even our shadows belabored in light commonplace rumble — shaken alliterative portrait of a ploughman struck down cattle thief contraband — pig iron — intermediate between two states & cargo untold undetected huckster amended airs an untapped inventory — catholic in the tall grass — laughing — mask chimerical goods for summer sink in

I'm selling my old rock records, the reggae and the Dead, the Beatles and bands no one heard after the Amazing Kathy Dalton became less so and Airto—busted for possession, his album's face behind ten fingers blacked with stationhouse ink— deported. A Stone retired, Mick past fifty, Van Morrison— composer of the world's best Celtic fuck music—gone spiritual, while "Peaceful Easy Feeling" sells Prozac, and the trippy paisley vinyl of Dave Mason's "Alone Together," Big Brother's funky R. Crumb cover (fat nipply Janis dragging that ball and chain) are quaint collectibles, like Fiestaware or bottles from defunct breweries; useful things no one uses anymore, worth money.

there was a rude boy on my jean jacket. black suit, shades and hat, skanking where orange street met birmingham. two-tone ska a second skin, a way to believe, though unsure why. days on this island with wasted republican frat boys and sorority girls, pompous u.s citizens, northern americanos with trust funds. only white dudes in sight without reagan hair are in the front of the car, a sputtering nondescript, and later pugs, the skinhead in boots and leather below unfiltered sun, unsure if peyote caps or heat is source of glistening blister of a head. an equally overdressed chubby blonde woman at his side who he swears sounds just like janis. on cue, val fills the hotel courtyard where my misfit crew hope for a corner of a floor not coated in puke or recent sex rented by bobcat’s brother’s sigma hate niggas fraternity. her dense wail careens off ten stories like a friday night public address system. so close to another why not join the hollow migration? us, funboy three, avoiding the same people in a different country. tequila, laughter and respect. then border patrol. stinking agave as he checks licenses and cargo space. when he opens the back door, rudy rests beside skinny black sophomore with a flat top. one front pocket open, the other concealing skunk. i consider what dank brick lines the cells, how long i will drink sweat because it tastes better than juarez prison chow. he reaches in the open pocket, returns rude boy to the seat. welcome home, boys. enjoy yourself, he says. it’s later than you think.

This morning in Dingle, the clouds bellied down over the mountains and broke into grey, white, and blue. Winds flagged through the palm trees that the man from the "Big House" brought back to the bay long ago. Up Greene Street, the school kids in their dark uniforms gather on the sidewalk by the Spar store. Long ago, this was a Spanish town, east of the Blasket Islands and west of Connor Pass. The harbor is full of sails. The piper sits in his little shop on the rounding road, selling penny whistles, telling anyone who will listen how many ways there are to vary the sound, how much there is to think of all at once.

She stands by the riverbank, notes from her bagpipes lapping across to us as we wait for the traffic light to change. She does not know we hear— she is playing to the river, a song for the water, the flow of an unknown melody to the rocky bluffs beyond, for the mist that was this morning, shroud of past lives: fishermen and riverboat gamblers, tugboat captains and log raftsmen, pioneer and native slipping through the eddies of time. She plays for them all, both dirge and surging hymn, for what has passed and is passing as we slip into the currents of traffic, the changed light bearing us away.

For Julien Poirier Eke out a few more bars for the jewels behind doors. Lutes and harps lay up to bolster language out from underneath. More absentmindedly walking the room, swishing about beyond argument or caging names. Calling out over the whole wet season, commercial speculations (cycles). I love that edge the wall makes — casino game-board green — my love comes bursting out the center of the glass (foiled) I abandon my trap in fragments. The grand terrace band (it’s waning) finale of synchronized dives, straight to my deepest forest overnight, this unfinished, uproarious music for vacuum.

—for Patrick Rosal Because I must not get up to throw down in a café in the Midwest, I hold something like a clownfaced herd of bareback and winged elephants stomping in my chest, I hold a thousand kites in a field loosed from their tethers at once, I feel my skeleton losing track somewhat of the science I’ve made of tamp, feel it rising up shriek and groove, rising up a river guzzling a monsoon, not to mention the butterflies of the loins, the hummingbirds of the loins, the thousand dromedaries of the loins, oh body of sunburst, body of larkspur and honeysuckle and honeysuccor bloom, body of treetop holler, oh lightspeed body of gasp and systole, the mandible’s ramble, the clavicle swoon, the spine’s trillion teeth oh, drift of hip oh, trill of ribs, oh synaptic clamor and juggernaut swell oh gutracket blastoff and sugartongue syntax oh throb and pulse and rivulet swing and glottal thing and kick-start heart and heel-toe heart ooh ooh ooh a bullfight where the bull might take flight and win!

Don't let me down. Don't not let the day drown. Face your waste of time. This is all. This is all you are. This is all you are allowed.

Say you love the albums with the smoky riffs and downbeat rhythms. Here , they beg, fall in with us . Forget that book , have a whiskey . . . have another . Say you love the books, the words and the silences between the words— faded yellow dashes on a disused highway. Say you love the highway, the blacktop and the bullet-riddled sign that reads Primitive Road where the blacktop ends. Say you love the fields, the black of midnight, coyotes' yipped prayers, and their raw thirst for hens. Say you love the raw salt of powder when its ghost rises from the rifle's breech and settles, sweet with lead, in your lungs. Then breathe what's left back to the world— speak the coyote's tongue, sweat the nitro from your blood, say you love what you've become.