RUTLEDGE YOUNGBLOOD REFUSES TO LIE UNDER THE BANYAN TREE ANYMORE

Rutledge has made up his mind
this is the last day he will lie
at length in his glinting hair
his eye fixed on a fig
his toes alive in the permissive mud.

Out beyond these roots in a pool
clear by day dark by night
purple eels jiggle:
that is another universe of course
but that is not where Rutledge lives
and neither is this.

Though the air is thick with bells
bizarre with flutes
Rutledge lies on his belly now
billowing like a child’s balloon
and it means nothing to him
that ultimates and ultimates buoy him up.

He will leave in the morning
by the ordinary door
and walk in the shrill gray streets
in the old soot and sunshine.
He has learned all he needed to know,
what he already knew, that he is happy.

DRINKING GLASS

for Charles Simic

Pick it up and hold it
to the light –
a repository of dust,
hair and lipstick.

An old cigar butt’s
capsized in the bottom.

Nonetheless, the glass
retains its shape,
like a stately matron.

Dump it out
(salvaging the butt),
rinse it, twirl it
once on a cloth,
and look! how Clarity
Rides Again.

Raise it now in a toast
to Friendship,
and observe,
deep in the amber booze,
the old bright planets
winking.

The Picture

The cream stucco
of my ex-wife’s dentist’s office
across the street

Light green budding liveoaks

A sky-blue Volvo backing up
on this side from

behind the red white and blue
Cinzano umbrellas

Dark figures in the front
of the dark bar
faces edged in TV baseball light
from Busch Stadium

And down at this end me

If I should die now

Oh if this moment
should indeed prove
to be the corner
I’ve spent thirty-five years
painting myself into

think only this of me

That one more cheap camera
has shattered
against the world’s beauty.

Welcome Home

I understand:
for years, perhaps, you have lived
underground Handling only
darkness, you you have not become
accustomed to it. You want to get out.
One day you find an object which
may be a chair; at any rate,
a surface. Standing on
this dark thing, you reach up.
Here at the top the smell is
oppressive, sweet. You almost
fall. But you push, and the top begins
to crack. Plaster, or something, falls
around you. Emerging, you know
the smell: cake. Noise, lights:
you are outside, standing giddily on the top,
swathed in ribbons. And thee
are all your friends,
dressed up, half drunk. The applause
is enormous. It is a party
for you. One of the crowd, the drunkest
and happiest, shrilling through a megaphone
“Welcome home,”
is me.

swathed in ribbons.

Just Normal

JUST NORMAL
for Bob Woolf

Now I don’t care about hum-drum
order any more than
you do. I sympathize
with Huck Finn’s taste for
the mixed up. This is no
tight ship. I wouldn’t
want my moments run off on an
assembly line like toy ducks. That’s
not the point: it’s been
raining possums for a month. And now,
when I’m absolutely up to my neck in
a whole bathtub of concerns, you
walk in unannounced, wearing
an ETERNITY sweat-shirt and leading some
kind of out-of-date dog on a leash, and
shake my slippery hand and tell me
“Just normal, thanks.” Well, no
thanks. I’ve had enough. I’m going to
pull myself up over the side, and get
all the way out of my mind.

No New Tabs

“NO NEW TABS”

(Sign in the Chukker October 25, 1971)
When the stranger swung into this dark butt-littered bar,
draped his white weird toga, or whatever, over a stool,
and ordered Miller’s Malt, no one was perturbed
(it being late, and most of us dead drunk).
But when he said “No bread,” a hush fell like a flatiron.
“No new tabs,” Mark said, and gestured.
The stranger scratched his beard,
his blue eyes slow and casual as swimming pools.
“Lookee here,” said the stranger,
“I don’t know how long it takes you necks to get the papers,
but I’m the son of God,
and I could turn this Miller into wine;
but I’m inclined to turn you and your buddies into Ovaltine.
What do you say? I’m kind of in a hurry.”
One skinny arm reached out of Mark’s white shirt,
shaking, and tore the sign down.
A row of white teeth chattered and chattered,
and said, “Here at the Chukker, if nothing else, we believe.
More to the point, you gotta make exceptions.
What about another?”
Brushing the sticky halo from his hair, he went to fetch it.

Anonymous

ANONYMOUS

I sent my Shell card back with a small check to show my good faith
then i sent my Bank Americard back with the minimum monthly payment
then i cancelled my life insurance sent the Dallas lawyer all i had declared myself bankrupt
then i sent back my driver’s license social security card birth certificate
then i sent my old wallet flopping into the brown river
now when I lift my hand the sunlight pours right through it
now there is no one left for you not to love

New Orleans

New Orleans

for Ralph Adamo

From the air it’s all puddles:
a blue-green frog town
on lily pads. More canals
than Amsterdam. You don’t
land — you sink. When
we met, you, the Native, shook
your head. Sweat dropped
on the bar. You said:
“You’re sunk. You won’t
write a line. You won’t make
a nickel. You won’t hit
a lick at a snake in this
antebellum sauna-bath. You
won’t shit in the morning if
you don’t wake up with
your pants down.” And you
were right: Three years later
I’m in it up to my eyebrows,
stalled like a streetcar.
My life is under the bed
with the beer bottles.
I’ll never write another line
for anything but love
in this city where steam
rises off the street after
a rain like bosoms heaving.