Travel Advisory

 

In Denver, poems stay up in the Rockies at night

only rolling down Colfax Avenue in bright afternoon,

hanging out in the vanished record store with

Allen Ginsburg, waiting for night to howl at the moon.

In Toronto, you can catch a touristy rickshaw

or hustle some change at night on Yonge street

depending where on the grayscale you fall,

and the poems there wear boots and are desperate/sweet.

In Manila you can take your poem to a fine hotel

or share Italian in a restaurant where they let you write on the wall,

then get starry/holy at one of the cathedrals

and set out before dawn to hunt up some warm pan de sal.

But in London there are no poems, they've all

fallen into the gap, been run over by trains,

gotten rat-tired of curry and black-coat robots.

Nerves fried, orphan-empty, they sick in the streets, 

cut out their tongues, and die whenever it rains.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

Music: Leo Kottke Eight Miles High

Love Story

Down in the mines, Mordecai Centennial Brown finds Cerberus
guarding the gates of Hell.
He's alone. Spirits call to him. "Ah well," he says. "Ah well..."

Taking a triple headed dog by the jaw is a recipe for loss.
Any chippie at the lunch counter could have told Mordecai that,
but he never took advice about a dog, from a cat.

"Look at this blood, all this damage," said the doctor, shaking his head.
"Lucky you ain't going to lose the whole hand, young man.
Lucky you ain't dead."

Mordecai Centennial "Miner" Brown went on, with his acquired deformity,
to fashion a curveball that broke so sharply, so unhittably,
that it made him a star in the early days of the century.

Imagine the unlikelihood that he would wrestle Cerberus again,
get loose and come back, curving himself around your dreams
from underneath your bed.

He's in love with you, girl, or what's left of him is;
you with that Cubs cap hung on the bed post and your long smooth restless legs.
Hear him, how he cajoles. How he begs.

You don't look so good, showing up for work an hour late,
circles like coal dust under your eyes, too much for concealer,
and the witches in the break room whisper, "What's the deal with her?"

On October 8th, 1908, Miner Brown pitched his greatest game.
You weren't born yet, and he wasn't dead.
Now, all night, you see it, in dreams, in the rain, in your head.

He had that devastating pitch, and great command.
Being dead isn't his fault, being alone isn't yours--
Go on, fluttering bird, stop fighting. Let him love you. Swallow hard. Hold his hand.
_______

for both Karin's "remains" challenge, and my BFF Joy Jones' "poetry to the third power" challenge, both at Real Toads.