The whiskey on your
breath
Could make a small boy
dizzy;
But I hung on like
death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the
pans
Slid from the kitchen
shelf;
My mother’s
countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my
wrist
Was battered on one
knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my
head
With a palm caked hard by
dirt,
Then waltzed me off to
bed
Still clinging to your
shirt.
kitchen
battered
scraped
palm
shirt
4 comments:
OUR SUNDAY MADNESS
they say Theodore Roethke
went down with the moods
scrambling in the kitchen
disaster bound
hidden
I knew two men
both gone
who studied with him
or sat in
both fathers in a way
here then gone today
there was Steven Foster
the wilderness guide
and Jack Gilbert
the poet
what do we say when
the moods come in
we can give way
battered, scraped,
bogged down
like a palm wine drunkard
another book or tale of woe maybe
or we can go on
carrying our own baggage
our own fate
our Sunday madness
resistance interlude songs
our holding on to the earth talks
my shirt is tucked in today
I woke early
nothing to say
Roethke lived
in the far northwest woods
where the rain is all
where the rain comes in
here is the sound of madness
Sunday truths again and again
Kitchen view: palm tree silhouettes against Santa Monica sunset
Summers always too hot…she: halter top…he: shirt worn open…still
At night…when the breeze comes up...embracing harder edges…
They dance to vinyl sounds battered by time… long-carried
Music…first listened to when they dreamed/dream…still
With everything that happened between scraped for impossibility.
ROETHKE'S DREAM / DYLAN'S SONGBOOK
out past the kitchen
was the greenhouse
where my grandmother
sold antiques
I scraped my palm
fighting this guy
down near the water's edge
again
it's like that Dylan song
and maybe everybody's got a line
from Dylan
like there's your tagline
your wisdom notion
out of Dylan's songbook
mine would likely be
"burned out by exhaustion"
at least this morning
it's summer and the work goes on
battered by the winds of fate
needing a new shirt, new ways,
new meaning, I was going
for milk and half and half yesterday
not out of my driveway when
the woman next door
came towards me crying
I'm counseling without leaving home
it's six thirty in the morning
her marriage is over with a shock
insomnia and numbness-
I feel scraped up
from
Some surface-
A cold table and
anesthetized,
The scalpel of sleep
Sliced thoroughly open.
a heart beating only.
I imagine it to be
Some outward force-
Perhaps the supermoon
Tonight.
How battered the moon looks
Mouth agape- you can tell
She has heard too many
Lies about her power
too wise to believe
All the poets who praise
Her mystery without payment.
The ones like me
Awake without a shirt
and typing now at 4 am
While the rest of the family
Is lost in dream sheets,
Asleep, calm, profound and safe.
This kitchen is cold in the dark
And in my lined palm is a
Grain of salt --a tiny world
That gives me hope
When no one else is awake.
i put my tongue to it in the lonely kitchen.
Even the cars that pass on the
Road are being driven by
Ghosts or battered moonlight.
Im sure of it.
noone will remember their dreams.
and i will be sitting here
feeling somewhat vacant.
sleepless in the premorning dark.
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