Blue Grammar

I SUPPOSE

James Laughlin

the rhetoricians might call this
a variety of the pathetic fallacy
but when we talk on the telephone
I imagine I hear cunt in your voice
the soft slish of honey on silk as
Henry Miller used to describe it.

***

SHAMAN SONG

2003

Every shaman has his song that
takes him away. There have been
descriptions of how a person first
hears his or her song, walking
along a seashore or being in a
forest. There’s this experience and
from then on he’s overtaken.
-- Joseph Campbell

Gaelic oran,
A song; this is for auran, from the
correct and still existing form
amhran, Middle
Irish ambrán, Manx arrane; from
amb, i.e. mu, about, and rann?
Irish amhar, Early Irish amor,
music. Cf. Irish amhra, eulogy,
especially in verse. Cf. amra
Cholumcille), panegyric.

-- MacAllister’s Gaelic Dictionary

I first recall the song on
Jacksonville Beach when I
was three years old, sitting
between the sea and my mother
& rapt in a strange middle
music between her voice and
the surf’s, a soft drone warm
and moist and smiling overhead
with miles of blue beyond
and below. The birthmark was
still visible then, that heart
with an arrow through it red
above my left nipple: that
beach day was his altar, as
he played in his mother’s lap
and rode the waves on a
tunny’s back and sang of salt
immersions on a brilliant
plashing bed. David -- the name
I use to grasp the day --
means “son of love,” and I
was fathered by that water-boy,
at least in part. The full moon
was in my father’s eyes as
he spread my mother on some
night in ‘56: Their marriage
was brittle and doomed, but
useful to that old progenitor
throned in the sea who came
back to claim me on that
summer beach in 1960.
Actually, his (her?) song was
on my lips when I was born
-- so my parents say -- a smiling
humming tune: water music,
the sound a fountain makes
spilling depths in the merriment
of the sun. The Well I found
beneath my ear and behind
the facts of history is His:
The lover who went under
to sing of chasms and
bright scree between our
isle and eternity’s. Such
music cannot pay my
mortgage nor help a drunk
nor mint a better husbandry
of this home: But like a
breeze, it courses through
all the topside motions
of a life in 2003, a song
whose words are just out
of reach, lost in the sea’s
collapse behind my mother
on a summer’s day so
long ago. I’ll name them
yet, or their strange wet
fossils of salt revelry.
Forget all calls to poetry,
that warped & silly career.
This is ball-soak, day-shit,
everything lost to all
we now can’t help but see.
A well’s deep plumage
is this song’s old voyage
a birthmark’s long throat
doing brine homage.




NOTHIN BUT A LOVER

from A Breviary of Guitars, 1999

1.

I’ve always been
drawn to women,
fascinated
by their bodies,
their curves
my heart’s
round welcome,
their soft voices
like cat’s fur
or the surf’s
susurration:
I’ve hummed
their tune since
birth: When I was
three or so
the maid in
our Pittsburgh
home would
yell to me
Pretty girls
passing by!
and I would
scamper to the
window to catch
the faintest curve
of departing
wonder: The
maid would say
to my mother,
He ain’t gonna
be nothin’ but
a lover, and
it’s true,
no matter how
many words I
throw into
the smoke,
no matter how
many times
I lose my
way to her:
I have always
been finding then
losing then finding
them again:
Like Paula
who I played
with when
I was three.
Paula was 4
and lived across
the street,
a jolly Jill
who refused to
wear a top
when it got
hot: One day
she led me
far away from
home to search
for worms in
the park: We
ambled on
and on until
I had to
go to the
bathroom: We
crossed a
highway overpass
& knocked
on some row
house door: A
woman whose
knee I faced
let us in &
led me to
the bathroom
& then fed
us cookies &
called the cops:
My parents were
frantic when
we drove up
in the police
care — sure
we had been
lost — But
all their squabble
just faded when
When Paula’s
mom hauled her
home away
from me: O
watch her
walk down the
street taking
with her all
song: When we
moved away
to Illinois
all I had of her
was a wallet
photo that I
carried everywhere
until my brother
ripped it up
in a rage at
me: Somewhere
I’m still
inconsolable,
searching and
searching through
the oldest plumes
of memory
for her in
her wading
pool, smiling
at me:
I am fascinated
with how a
female draws
me to her
on some
current toward
the sweet
prong between
her legs like
a widdershin
dowse: In first
grade Alan Fausel
and I hiked
into the woods
at recess
in search of girls
who walked alone
or in pairs:
We’d spring
up at them
and propose
I’ll Show You
Mine if You Show
Me Yours:
O it was
perilous business:
There were these
two who always
ripped us off,
gettin us to
hike down
our pants
and underwear
and stand there
aflop in the
breeze: They’d
flash their skirts
up then down
& shriek happily
away: But I also
remember this one
Susie cute as a
button with dark
brown eyes and
short brown hair
who would lower
her undies gently
down to her
Buster Browns
& lift her skirt,
& close her eyes
and smile, smile,
smile: At home
I drew a house
to store my
visual coups:
One room stacked
high with large
crossed O’s
for bottoms &
another room
filled with smaller
crossed O’s for
vaginas: I
understand
this now as
the basic song
of male worship
for a female’s
body: It’s not
something that
women reciporcate:
They don’t stare
at men the way
we do at them,
gape-jawed, stunned
into mute
reverence for
nature’s fertile
fuckable founts:
My wife never
ceases to wow
me when she
emerges from
the bathroom
at night dressed
for bed in her
white Calvin Klein
gown: How it
clings to her,
so sinuously
sweet, so richly
awarble: I know
I make her
nervous staring
so at her, but I
can’t help it:
She’s voluptuous
in every way I
have ever dreamed
women could be:
I never tire of
running my hand
gently oh so
gently down her arms,
her legs, her back
and bottom,
her breasts -- softly,
so softly, the
way she loves
being touched:
Then cupping
and squeezing her
breast as if to
fill some
undrenchable
cup: It never ends:
The vault is
never full:
And it’s more
than mere
horniness,
that urge which
stiffens sates
and drains: Rather
my love of
women is a bath
from uterus
to grave:
An eternal river
the dolphin sports
in where the
music of Ariel
drifts like smoke,
my dream of
her heaven between
the waking and
the wake:


A GUITAR IS NOT A WOMAN

From A Breviary of Guitars

1.

The present (1999)

A guitar is not
a woman
but it’s awful
damned close:
It’s curves are
stolen from the
lucent pool of
Artemis & blown
huge with every
boyman’s ache
for vavavoom:
My heart reels
of a guitar solo
exactly the way
my fingers tremble
when I touch
a woman for the
first time: All
the songs I’ve
ever written
are inked from
the well she
departs down:
chords mortared
in the doors
and deeps of
desire: But it
is stupid and
perilous to
confuse a guitar
with a woman:
I’ve known a
million players
who went to bed
with a woman
and none of ‘em
took their axe
along for the
ride. A woman is
about something
becoming inside
you and a guitar
the difficult amazing
distance you must
travel to
prevent that from
happening: Oh how
long, how difficult,
how important
it is to finally
bloodily accept
this truth:


2.

Spring 1978

I typed my poems
and papers on
an electric
typewriter using
erasable bond
paper, each draft
supremely more
precious than
the today’s flash
of printouts
so easily erased:
I made far
fewer scribbles
in my journals
too, still unfamiliar
with living long
on the page:
A few lines now
and then
before whoever
I was resumed
whatever I did.
Just think: six
lines of verse
in time
cashing out to
this Breviary:

first cigarette
the haunting music
adrenaline mauls the stomach
why won’t the eyes open
I will not die
until I’ve touched another face.

I read back
over those lines
as if probing
my heart’s DNA:
The pages of
that journal
that captured
the Spring of ‘78
is worn now from
my many returns
to it, in my
many attempts
to learn and write
my story in
so many forms:
A faithful
pilgrim to that nova
that flared soon
after the night
in March when
I went to a party
put on by
some girl at work
and met this
girl named Becky,
a pretty blonde
browneyed doe
who was leaving
for LA in a
week. She was up
from Florida
and didn’t
like winter a bit:
I told her I
was a guitar player
and poet sans
band or book:
that impressed
her nada:
I could have told
her I played
on the Whitworth
College basketball
team or dug
worms in the
park: Becky
preferred her
stuff simple,
not much to
say about it:
simple stuff.
I, who had
walked for years
deep inside and
apart from the
women I yearned for,
was bug-eyed
startled to find
myself so calmly there
beside her simply
chatting, the party
eddying about
us almost
unnoticed: A
A virgin dreams
of what sex
is like so
deeply that
the first time
passes almost
unnoticed: That
was meeting
Becky: She got
to me before I
knew she’d gotten
in: We talked
till one or so
in the morning
until my ride
yawned and said
we had to go:
I don’t remember
if I slept much
that night --
so much happened
so fast in one
week that
I wrote almost
nothing in the
thick of it,
a couple pages
of tortured verse,
hot jots of
amazement
at what erupted:
I think I
got her number
from her friend
and called
her the next day
to make a date:
She said yes,
oh she said yes:
We met downtown
for lunch on a
raw waking wet
spring day,
temps in the
mid-50s, the Spokane
river muscling
into a roar
with melted
snowpack carried
a dozen miles
down from the
western Spokane
mountains: I
remember Becky’s
brown eyes,
her easy smile,
her southern
voice, and
red-brown shoes
that fastened
with a buckle:
We ate a
restaurant
by the river &
drank a bottle
of wine & told
our life stories
as we could
tell them then,
our heads filling
with a sort
of boozy drowse
that nestled
in the boom
and hiss of
the nearby river:
Where that river
ended and
we began is
the utter mystery
to this day:
We ambled on
through that day
into the the night,
kissing in some
cold wet shelter
in the park where
spring’s raw fuse
burned weirdly
in the cold:
bought more
wine and munchies
and headed back
to my house
to smoke dope
& drink wine
& listen to my
Genesis (sounding
so distant: do
you have any
Journey? she
asked) & on
carrots and peanut
butter: She climbed
on my lap
facing me and
we began to kiss,
my heart pounding
with surprise
and surrender:
After a while
I asked weakly
(almost apologetically)
if she would like
to spend the night
and she just smiled
and led me to
my room by the
hand: We climbed
beneath the covers
n the cold cold
dark of that room,
finding heat
quickly between us
as we wrestled
from our clothes:
I tried to make
love to her
but fear kept
if from happening
at first: We fell
asleep for a
couple hours
and I woke on
her fucking slow
and languid,
the bedsprings
creaking and
squawking
with each dreamy
thrust which
she welcomed,
welcomed:
I came and
drifted off
still in her &
then dreamed
of an incredibly
clear blue space
like a morning
in early summer
by the ocean
in Florida:
Woke with crystalline
waters stretching
miles around that
bed and Becky
sleeping curled
into me like some
blessing I did not
deserve: You
never do: She
woke and we
began it all
again: I kissed
her all over
down to her
cunt which smelled
ripe like armpit
& she was
embarrassed
tried to push
me away but
I butted my
face past her
hand and bathed
my mouth and
face in deep
womanhood which
a day or so ago
was the faintest
constellation
at the furthers
corner of the night:
When she went
home that day
in her yellow
Fiat I wrote
of my surrender
to my birthmark:

O pulse of blood quickened by light
O heart reborn and squinting at the sun
O core bled clean and drying by the pool:
I have held her face beneath my eyes
O love o damnable love. (3/6/78)




CHILDREN OF WATER

From The Collected Works of Fiona McLeod, Vol. 4
London: William Heinemann, 1912

"O hide the bitter gifts of our lord Poseidon"
—Archolochus of Paros

… Long ago, when Manannan, the god of wind and sea, offspring of Lir, the Ocearius of the Gael, lay once by weedy shores, he heard a man and a woman talking. The woman was a woman of the sea, and some say that she was a seal: but that is no matter, for it was in the time when the divine race and the human race and the soulless race and the dumb races that are near to man were all one race. And Manannan heard the man say: "I will give you love and home and peace." The sea-woman listened to that, and said: "And I will bring you the homelessness of the sea, and the peace of the restless wave, and love like the wandering wind." At that the man chided her and said she could be no woman, though she had his love. She laughed, and slid into green water. Then Manannan took the shape of a youth, and appeared to the man. "You are a strange love for a seawoman," he said: "and why do you go putting your earth-heart to her sea-heart?" The man said he did not know, but that he had no pleasure in looking at women who were all the same. At that Manannan laughed a low laugh. "Go back," he said, and take one you'll meet singing on the heather. She's white and fair. But because of your lost love in the water, I'll give you a gift." And with that Manannan took a wave of the sea and threw it into the man's heart. He went back, and wedded, and, when his hour came, he died. But he, and the children he had, and all the unnumbered clan that came of them, knew by day and by night a love that was tameless and changeable as the wandering wind, and a longing that was unquiet as the restless wave, and the homelessness of the sea. And that is why they are called the Sliochd-na-mara, the clan of the waters, or the Treud-na-thonn, the tribe of the sea-wave.

And of that clan are some who have turned their longing after the wind and wave of the mind--the wind that would overtake the waves of thought and dream, and gather them and lift them into clouds of beauty drifting in the blue glens of the sky.

How are these ever to be satisfied, children of water?



BLUE GRAMMAR

2003

The most ancient witness to
grammatical teaching in Ireland
is to be found in the little manual
called Ars Asporii
... (this book), in stark contrast
to the wholly secular tone of its
model (the Ars Minor of Donatus)),
derives from the ascetic world
of sixth-century Irish monasticism.
- Daibhi O Croinin,
Early Irish Monasticism

While I sat in classrooms
pickling in the drone
of American grammar
-- the official Latin of
verb-subject agreements
and modifiers rescued
from their dangling
precipices -- She was
writing it down in my
ear some other way,
a brogue inside my
writing’s new arches and
tenons, turning nouns
into nipples jazzing motions
I couldn’t master, only
ride. Before me all the
fixtures of learning
were composed and steady --
my book opened wide,
a #2 pencil in my hand
copying down the forms
on lined paper in a rough
miniscule, the late-
morning hush striated
with boredom and
hunger and a free-floating
toothed angst. On one
level it was all a
cultural Latin the way
it must be learned,
line after line, correct
and succinct, either
to be admired or strafed
with red ink: Yet further
down I wrote in Vulgate
about the places I
dreamed or sought
or would but dare not go:
My hands round the back
of the girl sitting in front
of me cupping new breasts,
fighting the evil one in
his lab far at sea,
swaggering nude
in the locker room
with a cock twice as
big as my own, three
times, no, four, shaming
all they boys with my
hammerlike stylus.
She was re-writing
the story the world
bid me learn
in a grammar which
shattered those schoolhouse
walls. There, in the midst
of such strict schooling
(if strict it ever was)
an infernal ars was
copied on the ass
of truer love -- forms I’ll
never quite learn,
swimming away on
every sweet wave, a
language always just
out of reach, laughing,
cajoling, calling me home.
Of it I here write
in rooms far below
the cathedral which
pays for everything else.



POEMS OVER THE PHONE

1994

for Kelle

These oblique passes of spirit
are all that words can muster:
my love of poetry courting yours
in the poems we read each night

to each other over the telephone.
These shared soliloquies seem
more in need of a warm tub
than any cold pedestal of truth.

Perhaps lovers can never share
one room of a poem, gender scoring
my yes with your resonant no.
The opiate cusp is only a door.

And surely love assigns her craziest
child to us, the one who whispers in
our poems that love is too important
to mention the bitter thorns which are

its tower and sword. But I suspect
it is that unvowled goad that keeps
us reading poems to each other
across the night through the cold

plastic conch of a phone; that my sigh
which ends your poem is so marbled
with honey and gall that love can
only be poetry's most brutal talion,

returning us here night after night
and poem after poem to try once again
to find adequate words for a tidal hymn
sighing ever on the wires of a distant wind

long after you and I long came to our end.




GHOST VOICE

1995

for Traci

When my thoughts
wander over to you
as they frequently
do these days,
the image that appears
begins with warm
details of a face:
blue eyes, red hair,
freckles, a mouth
wide enough for all
you have to say --

And then I hear
a voice that is
yours but also
is another's
a girlfriend
I left long ago
to move to Florida.
I thought back then
that I could leave
the heart's winter
behind and erase
my emptiness
in blue waters
and blonde ambition.

The voice is husky
and strong and lifted
that small woman
to a pugnacious
height, making
her fragility
somehow fierce.
She was such
a sucker for
the calamity of
drugs and boys
like me
and yet she
always found
a way around defeat.

She once called me
in the middle
of the night
some months after
I moved here.
Her voice
and the dark
were an echo
of the void
I left her to
on another,
distant night.

I wanted to
let you know
I just killed
your daughter,
that last word
spit like venom
from a snake bite.
Her voice rasped
over three thousand
miles of wire
into the milky
shadows of the room
like a claw
and then clicked
into nothing.

I had long forgotten
the sound of that
voice, and then
a dozen years later
it creeps into
my affection for you.


Now I don't think
a poem can make
sufficient amends
to a ghost,
but I do think
these lines
help me open
the door to you
with more care
and respect than
I had when I was
so brutally young,
so viciously free,
so convinced
that love
was an exit
with no door.

hello?

2000


"Hello?" She said when I dialed
our number, surprising me
because I thought she was
at work and had only meant
to leave a message. Her voice
in the word a blue bell
which rang with all the
resonance of the life I
had left behind, musical
and lively inside a home
we had made and earned:
I had to hang up on her,
not knowing what to say,
sitting in my other woman's
lviing room, hungover,
sexed to a rich weak glow,
a cool rain falling &
boding more cold.
Her voice repeating that
one word throughout my day
like a hammer that finds
its nail or a swan
diving repeatedly on a lake
never to be seen again.


sad girl

2001

There’s a sad girl
inside me—my sister,
my wife, my mother’s
blue history, perhaps
her hurt mother too:
A well of sad girls
crying deep in me
or all they lost,
for the little
yet to be taken
—just so sad.

Each day in this
long Florida summer
is symphonic with
heat and cloud,
an early humid
brilliance freighting
in storms by
midafternoon,
armadas and
colossi booming,
unburdening
their long arias.
Somehow that too
is sad, equivalent
to what now
reveals within.

Sometimes at night
I wake to a
woman’s quiet voice
speaking my name
once. Who is it?
Is my wife in trouble?
Is my mother calling
me from the next
room? What can I
do? Sleep wrestles
me back down just
as I reach for
her hand, the mirror
now water covering
us all. OK, begin from
here, let this sadness
be the key to the
door that opens home.


SURFSIDE SOLUTIONS

2002

Long ago my mother set me
like a shell upon the strand.
Her voice tides in my ear—
warm milk for worried brow,
pink rooms which soft resound
the drench of drain and draw.
I love to mound my words
inside that nautilus of surf
—a useless carpentry,
you say, to castle heart
in walls of hammered grain—
No matter. Sonorous physic,
wave-songs I curl my mornings
to, you are a cat’s solution,
the sweeter nous. Like the
town that solved its water
shortage by showering in twos.
That’s what you’ll find here,
a vault of curved additions
which fall too fast to count,
shapes which fail in every way
except to greet those great rooms
she carved with her salt voice,
bright mansions left on wet sand
for her blue hands to hoist.