Hold It By The Edges, Man!

Ten Records I Want On A Desert Island

There are no outlets for one thing, walls

if there were any, little more than gaps

between reeds, a fifty foot extension

cord useless except perhaps as an orange

SOS paid out across the beach, too

elegantly understated to draw

attention from the air, the phonograph

and other components I remembered

to pack curiosities for cargo

cults, rectilinear gods with dangling

cords sitting in silent judgment atop

stacked coconuts while I hold a gospel

record by its thin edge madly angling

toward the noonday sun.  Sacrificially

minded faithful nod politely to my  

best rendition of Pop Staples, closing

the ring a little tighter with every

verse, the most discriminating among

them barely stifling their laughter, passing

my nine other selections hand to hand. 

Out in the sticks

Stick

Clutching at straw is undignified

at best, madly snatching at phantom

butterflies on the wing, fatal 
at worst for a man headed over 
the shaggy eaves of a storied thatch 
roof house, a lazy stutter of chaff 
cross-hatching his lifeless, mangled form, 
cooling hands closed around the memory 
of stout sticks, exquisitely suited 
through natural selection to 
grip and hold, grab and wield. 

Draw a line in the sand with a sharp stick,
dare all those pencil neck chumps, hands 
shoved in their pockets to take a giant

step and join the rest of us beavering 
away in the batter’s box or carving 
a morning wake, stabbing paint on canvas 
or snaring themselves in the soft shoe 
brushwork of an old jazz standard.

Tell them they can find me if they follow

the trail left behind by Peter, the boy  

in Ezra Jack Keat’s The Snowy Day,  
an old guy leaning on a shovel 
with a worn handle, hands yearning 
with desire for a stick; oak but ash 
would do, with which to bar the door 
to the incessant tapping of time.  

Turn Up Your Radio

Radio Silence

Fewer people have used a gun purchased

legally to commit a crime in this

country than the number of people

named Lester, the man said in rebuttal

in a civil debate on NPR

while a deep chasm yawned on the left side

of the road, black ice and white knuckles

paving our way into the Kentucky morning.

Perhaps I could turn back the clock if I

drove in reverse at a high rate speed,

Tennessee in the rear view mirror

much closer than it appeared, scattering

semis, scanning the dial for another

station maybe twenty-four hour

all sports talk or The Morning Zoo Crew

out of Louisville, even some preacher

speaking in a cadence so grating old

Satan himself would vow to go straight

in exchange for some radio silence.    

Ohio rolls over and flattens out

the hills for us but what’s done is done

a good and decent name forever besmirched

with an outlaw taint but Michigan

offers absolution at the first

available rest stop where I fall to

my knees and plead for forgiveness from

Messrs. Maddox, Flat and Young

adding, as an afterthought, Willy

Tyler’s wisecracking wooden dummy.   

   

poem

Winter

On a beach last summer somewhere

between Munising and Grand Marais

some sort of glitch in the space-time

continuum, a clear case of Someone

dropping the ball, rent a rather nasty

tear in the firmament, a real doozy

I would have missed but for the high voltage

bite of a stable fly that wrenched me

into the letter Z, upending  

the blue horizon long enough to catch

a glimpse of winter, gunmetal grey

behind the drooping fabric of August. 

Only a fluke of nature like the platypus

like a knuckleballer or improvisational jazz

but I'll still pause in a warm April rain

or gold September leaves, while pressing

a beaded bottle of beer to the scar

on my neck hot August afternoons

to listen for the icy bite of my name

faint rhythm building to crescendo. 

Stop, Thief

Larceny 

Tell me who it was you stole them from, 
those brocade eyes hooding a smoky gaze

full sail of a smile reefed in a sly cant

that heels me over to the gunwales.
Thieves, we lift pursed lips left unattended

at the boarding gate, the fluid hand 
snatched midair and palmed by sleight to an
inside pocket only to reappear 
one evening punctuating a pilfered 

joke, punch line delivered with 
a flourish claimed as our very own.