Light in August (2)

Weird rondo of moments in the past 24 hours: first going about Saturday yard duties in the soaring heat of this current season, temps into the 90s by 10 a.m. as replaced a 10-foot length of fence pole damaged by a falling limb some weeks ago & then cutting up and trashing the remaining lengths of that limb (shoulder sore as hell, probably from whacking away at that limb with an ax when the frigging chainsaw wouldn't cut through it); then mowing and edging the lawn & blowing clean the walks. It was up around 100 when I retreated inside around 12:30, everything locked in a cloudless brilliance, frozen in that shear of light.

Have some lunch, trade gripes with my wife who was in a funk over the malaise of her business, & me failing to offer enough support, bitchy because of weariness & the nagging throb of my shoulder (have I really hurt the fucker? how long do I have to endure this? will I have to restrict more, everything? can I work out? can I keyboard? can I masturbate? -- whiny old-man worries, nothing substantial, just a rickety bitchiness amped by high heat and the general malaise of the season) ... She heads off to take things to market & I nap for an hour, go down hard & sleep deep, mindless blank harrows, a drowning of all equipage, then waking in a stupor to darker skies outside & distant thunders ...

Have a cup of coffee while I write at my computer, the kettledrums of storm working up from mezzo to adagio, and suddenly its raining in a sheeted pour and the cracks of lightning are just outside the window, the house shaking to booms of thunder which stroll away like Magog over primal Celtic landscapes. Power goes off twice before I figure I should stay away from the computer until the storm's done. Unplug the 'puter and the wife's sewing machine & computer & serger, then everything in the entertainment center: And then sit in the living room in while the storm thrashes away, obscuring all of the window and blowing brown palm fronts into the garden.

It's a mother of a storm, probably the worst I've seen all summer, the velocity of rainfall and ferocity of lightning of a menace perhaps cauled in the day's feral heat. I worry about my wife out there on the road, bitching her way home; wonder where the outside cats are cowering; and think ahead a few weeks to the coming malaise of hurricanes sure to blow our way.

The storm deranges and then rages and then pouts and then ebbs, taking a couple of hours to be done: probably 4 inches of rain. I've powered stuff back on and completed the draft of a brochure for my wife's business when she finally makes it back home, depressed and sullen. Nothing to do but cook up a rich vegetable-chicken soup, green beans asparagus turnips potatoes leeks onion carrot celery 'n' lots of fresh basil swarming the chunks of chicken. We watch "Ray" on video while the early evening emerges in a rich satch of soggy frog-croaking dark. All of the outdoor cats feed & loved, Violet down now and camping in the window behind me, breathing it all in.

Then came the full moon of August, washing over all of that drown with a rich blue lucency, tincturing the abysms of late summer with the sad light of a loss which seeps into transformation. When I got up at 2 a.m. to pee and then settled into the bed downstairs (I sleep better in it, its softer, easier on the shoulder), the dark house was lamped with the phosphor high in the sky outside, pre-pagan, uterally cold yet loving.

Sum those images -- heat and storm and moon -- into one day's passage. Tally them as some mythologem of late-summer transformation, most empty and thus latently ready again to fill.



Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there,
Userfuillness from what is not there.

-- Tao Te Ching #11, transl. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English


***
AUGUST IS
FOR TRANSFORMATION

from A Breviary of Guitars

(the poem narrates the time when I attempted to quit drinking the first time)

Summer 1986:
August is for
transformation:
Cloud banks massed
like covers kicked
back on a bed
abandoned by
love & the
drumrolls of
approaching
thunder now
enclosing a
different message
as yet
untranslatable:
Harrowed enough
by such storms
we dream of
inverse waters
drawing us deep
not to doom but
toward some
unfathomed draw:
I stopped drinking,
not in hope of
new life but for
lack any woman
or band to curse:
For a few nights
I slept badly
besieged by
frenetic &
inchoate dreams:
Moving back to
Spokane now a
necropolis &
kicked off a
bus for biting
myself: Digging
a snowski trail
on the beach at
Daytona: A
newborn handed
to my mother
like calf liver:
& fighting off
blackleather hoods
who threaten the
boys' father
who is a pimp:
Senseless stuff:
Meanwhile I
wake unhooded
& clear to the
wreckage of my
life, declaring it
time to clean my
apartment, washing
down walls,
baseboards, pulling
down cobwebs &
sweeping up old
dead roaches &
wiping down
shelves &
rearranging books
& journals &
order my desk
& file bills,
correspondence,
phone numbers
scrawled on
napkins &
business cards
& throwing
out dry pens &
putting pennies
back into a bowl
& arranging shell
and stone
momentos of
old loves on a
window ledge &
then attacking
the closet, hauling
out old boxes, dank
papers, moldy shoes,
rusted hangers,
sorting out the
odds & ends
I haul with me -
patch chords, old
pens, piano repair
tools, broken bits
of jewelry, stopped
watches, matchbooks,
rubber fingers,
several decks of
cards: Getting all
of that out of
the closet &
sweeping up the
floor, sorting clothes,
then on my knees
to pick up
pennies &
broken strings
& screws: Out
to buy brackets
to mount stereo
speakers, tacks to
hide speaker wire
& a 3-way
plug for stereo
TV, amp: Then
washing dishes &
wiping down the
counter, cabinets,
woodwork, bathroom
door, walls: Washing
sink & toilet &
shower, pulling an
ugly mess of rock
star hair from the
drain & pouring
Drano in after:
Sweeping all the
floors & then
scrubbing them
with a brush,
sponging up the
filthy black water
& then sit in
my chair in
my now clean
place just waiting
for whatever was
next: I feel it
has to be
music since
that's where I
have invested
but the notion
is strong to
"incise along
the song and
let the sunlight
in" If only
the sun wouldn't
set: After dark
my apartment
became a hunted
haunted place
as I watch
"Simon &
Simon" and
"Moonlighting"
on my tiny
b&w TV
wondering what
else there is to
do: Sure is a
lot of time to
fill sans band
sans love sans bar:
How I would have
loved going on
had I the least
notion where to
go: Storms in the
night ceaselessly
burdening my balls
with swart ions
& my hands with
absent aching
thunder: Nowhere to
go and nothing
to do:


endings

Aug 23 2001

(when I sobered up, hopefully, for the last time)

No air. It feels that way,
wedged here between
guilt and an impossible
debt. Can't wait to
leap from my skin
but all the accustomed
ways are bankrupt.

Let me breathe!

I'm a bug of my
own departures,
an inarticulate
roach. Now I call
on sweet Jesus
mommy and the Lotto.

Soon I can begin.


BLUES

Aug 22 2003

Blue spots on a drowned
person's body are a sign
that nixes caused the
drowning.
-- Lusatain folk tale

A sad woman at the well
-- a weeping child,
perhaps -- sorrows
down there, old as stone
pick-axe and bone
bowl: Usaries of
heart's heated reach
toward what is not,
cannot be: Guinea
pigs dead in their
box: girls, women who
turned away: Parents
who split the seams
of home: Miseries
of long suffering
nigh-shaded a blackish
blue. The rigor of
winter nights like a
sop of cold vinegar,
all daylight leeched
far west: A thousand
poems which began
and paled, unwrought,
their 12-bar ladders
come to naught
on shelves which
failed to bridge: The
water here a booze,
clear and relentlessly
sad, unleashing every
lament of a mind
turned sour in the
brine of letting losses
swirl down the drain of
a lost heart: Gone,
you weep, forever so:
Dead man walking
down the aisles of
a drowned cathedral:
The cross above the
altar plain and wooden,
the nails new and
gleaming & piled neatly
on the floor: Step up
from this well's
communion rail,
mount this descending
boat no therapy can
treat, no meds can
fully moat: Sack of
woes trudging wearily
to poem's edge at
that trembling blue shore
where the big waves
boom: Goth surfer
with the silver tongue
gliding on the curling
sprawl of that heaven
inside doom, playing
over and over the same
12-bar blues: Lord knows
the troubles I have seen
in the treble of
my monster spleen:




SOUTHBOUND

August 2004

Cold are the old gods'
pews at Callanish, cold
and fuckin' lonely,
comforted by a
hyperborean gale
which cracks these
granite plinths like
the balls of frozen mice.
Bitter the ancient liaison
between that wind
and the sea which produces
such a thunder that
you can feel it far
inland in the deep
stone reaches of your
sleep, grinding and
shaking, scrabbling
huge fingers from
far underground,
reaching for your heart.
Well I got the hell
on outta there. I
fled the temple
pitching my singing
robe into that
North Sea tide.
I caught the
ferry over to the
mainland & took a
train down to Glasgow.
Sold my gold torc
to an antiquities
black marketer and
with the loot I
bought a plane ticket
to New York City.
Midocean we were
tormented by Thor's
wind-orcs, the 757 lurching
and pitching as I were
right back in the old
Hebridean tumult. Outside
Newark I bought a used
Caddy convertible &
hit the highway South,
molting with the summer
down the Appalachian
spine into this blooming
molting arrow aimed
or shot at the frozen
heart of God, I don't know.
Highway traffic flowed
fast and free through the
mountain valleys, each
next town more rounded
with the heat than the last,
smells blowing in ripe with
the sweat of travel, the
funk of dark next towns.
The radio played Roy Orbison
and Elvis, Ray Charles and
Lynyrd Skynyrd and Pasty
Cline, sweet bourbons all,
mashing down the corn gods
with roadworn shoes. It
was as if that cruel surf
was dying at last, or maybe
simply receding having
been offered sufficient
coin In Jacksonville I drank
all night at a TGI Friday's
down the road from
my beachside motel, the
barmaid taking as much
of a shine to my Scot
brogue as I to her honeyed
twang. After she finished
closing up she met me
back in my room; came
in with this thrilling sweet
dark smile & undressed for
me as I lay on the bed,
the surf twenty yards away
labial in its soft wash and draw,
our kiss pure South.
When I woke the next morning
she was gone with the tide
and some greater part of
myself -- star and stone and
cold washed from me,
like placenta. When I
walked to my car everything
seemed off -- the hour too
late or too early, the light
not right for the season,
the motel looking too freshly
painted, weeds everywhere
in the cracked pavement, my
wings in bent tatters, a fin
newly hatched between
them like a ruddy blue sail.
The Caddy was bent
and wrinkled like a big ball
of paper, and when I
rolled out of the parking
lot, I noticed that the odometer
had turned 300,000 -- strange,
very strange. The day was
hotter, the road
a white sear down a breadth
of heat-flattened scrub
troubled occasionally by
trailer parks and billboards.
On the radio I switched
fruitlessly between Moby
Dick metal and hiphop
booty, crossover Country
and perky Christian
hits and the endless
talk of angry white men.
I'd driven a couple of
hours when I saw
rising in the haze
the tourist attractions
like a beloved's
crotch-rot -- and as
delight changed to
horror, my foot searched
in vain for the brake.
For by then there were
no wheels to slow
to a stop, there was
no road anymore but
this southbounding
stream, carrying its
next offering down
to that southernmost
end where a huge
sprinning hurricane
waited with arms
spread wide,
eager for the next
backslider from Infrann
in the tropic shirt
and the parrothead
hat. Every angel,
you know, is terrible.


DANNY BOY

August 2004

It's Monday morning and school
is back in already, compressing
this artery of traffic even
thicker the sleepy occludage,
everyone at the wheel
looking haggard and
hard-eyed, fraught somehow
deeper with the world's
ten thousand revolving
cares. I wait four lights
to get through Clarcona-
Ocoee Road trying not to
give Monday morning's
angel of despair any
more pissy script for
the big collection basket
being passed down the Trail,
though I sure as hell want
to as a migraine is
now leaking shrill dollops
of mercury through the
ill-cobbled landscape
of used tire dealerships and
Burger Kings and
half-empty strip malls.
I switch from NPR's
news of terror (which
is not news but merely
ghost-sightings and
channel-pratter,
the preter-reportage
of a man defending
his house against
his own nightmare) to
a Bill Evans CD
(Empathy, 1962) cooling
down to his quiet solo
rendition of "Danny Boy,"
that traditional Irish
drinking song. Yes, it
has been a long careworn
road to here, hasn't
it? The Trail stretches
a very long ways back,
and sadly there are
still so many miles
up ahead yet to travel
before getting home.
Accepting now my
day would also
have to freight
this sick migraine
now settled like a
black turkey buzzard
to raven my shoulders
neck and head, I
counted my day's
labors and wondered
how I'd manage
to pay every piper.
Ah well. An SUV
zoomed past on my
right, affording me a
fast glance of a small
face in the back seat
looking at me in
that blank curiosity
of passage, a young boy
with pale blue eyes
and then the car
swerved and
wedged in front of
me ahead. My foot
hit the gas pedal and
I zoomed up to let
the fucker know there
wasn't any room there
to start, but I was
too tired for that shit
and just let up &
resumed concourse as
a fellow weary traveller on
this road of travail
we drive daily for love
or money or
some fetish of both.
Up above through
my windshield I
see a broad span of
uncut blue sky, no sign
of traffic there, no
Burger Kings or
titty bars, no
boundary stones,
no jaded highways
to crease the brow.
Just God's blue heaven
and the margeless sea,
that big house where
Bill Evans plays "Danny Boy"
for everyone who
found their way at
last off this sad long
Trail. Play a song for the
rest of us too, Bill,
still stuck in traffic
down here on
Monday morning
so far from home
and so far yet to go
we can't hear the
music of either shore.