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Salmon

In Memoriam: Dennis O’Brien 1944-1980

As early as seven
I knew Salmon
would crawl between bark and trunk
in Spring
and become Willow
become
wild.

They were young then
their slim shadows gliding
under my perch
easing out on the fast water
going away.
But I could call their kind as they passed
SALMON

By nine
I’d learned ten precious stones
to cook with the women
number pigeons in flight.

At twelve
I could run down rabbits
dig in the ground
as deep as the rest
sweat with the men.

August ended hot
the water high.
Salmon traps
were set again
wherever the river

bent around.
Sentries
were posted.
That night
I returned
to sleep
with The Willows.
At first light
was already
miles away.

My mouth toughened to a beak.
My skin was resplendent with long silver scales.
Behind me
for miles
their now
heavy bodies
slowly
turning
the hot fish
ready to merge
SALMON.

I counted the nets and traps
counted the waiting
hands and eyes
signaled the first leap.

We slammed against the wood
dove into the nets
tearing them down
tearing it all
til the river was free
and we could stroke
unsheathed
our gills

applauding
each breath
our song
resounding
boulder to boulder
its special chord
reverberating
through the tangled roots
The Willows
as we passed.

I leapt the last trap
past the eyes of the older men
gently nudging
the spent bodies,
my brothers and sisters already
fused to the dense spore.

I came to rest then
in my own time
willingly
on the slick round stones
in that mouth
where our first journey had begun.

As early as seven
I knew Salmon
would crawl between bark and trunk
in Spring
and become Willow
become
wild.

They were young then
their slim shadows gliding
under my perch
easing out on the fast water
going away.
But I could call their kind as they passed
SALMON

By nine
I’d learned ten precious stones
to cook with the women
number pigeons in flight.

At twelve
I could run down rabbits
dig in the ground
as deep as the rest
sweat with the men.

August ended hot
the water high.
Salmon traps
were set again
wherever the river

bent around.
Sentries
were posted.
That night
I returned
to sleep
with The Willows.
At first light
was already
miles away.

My mouth toughened to a beak.
My skin was resplendent with long silver scales.
Behind me
for miles
their now
heavy bodies
slowly
turning
the hot fish
ready to merge
SALMON.

I counted the nets and traps
counted the waiting
hands and eyes
signaled the first leap.

We slammed against the wood
dove into the nets
tearing them down
tearing it all
til the river was free
and we could stroke
unsheathed
our gills

applauding
each breath
our song
resounding
boulder to boulder
its special chord
reverberating
through the tangled roots
The Willows
as we passed.

I leapt the last trap
past the eyes of the older men
gently nudging
the spent bodies,
my brothers and sisters already
fused to the dense spore.

I came to rest then
in my own time
willingly
on the slick round stones
in that mouth
where our first journey had begun.

The Arsonist

So, that October night
I burned the lot. Harry
roasted ribs over your underwear,
squeezed sterno through your pale blue peignoir.
The silver brooch with the fucking horses
scorched sea-green, books by Potter
toasted brown as bees. I saved
the bindle of Caine
and an ounce of Thai weed
(smoked it with the crew from engine 5). Stoned
and waving a hose around the edge,
I thought I saw your face
giggling in the bubbling tar,
your arms
stuffed with pillows and fake amber beads.
If you’re ever back in town,
Germaine’s got your jade earrings
and the locket with cuttings of our pubic hair, be sure
to look me up
I’m generally listed.

Rasslin

for Neil Lehrman

Jus in case I didn mention
I’m from Florida
home a the Seminole-mostly
bullshit
an gators…

You drive the swamp-see big boards advertisin
the prime bouts
it’s the fack
celbrates these parts-
Rasslin Gators

a one time thrill-no shit
got dudes in town
walkin roun
in half their skin
beats cockfights n bullfights all t’hell…

Well, I’m gonna do this tune bout rasslin gators-cep
that alays minds me of another story bout
bein back home fur the cure
drugs n all that shit-I’m
in this center see
where this dude
jacks off every mornin bout 5 am
wakes the whole damn place
humpin and hollerin
like he’s possessed
I swear t’Christ
he never even used his hands
jus humped the goddamn bed
rubbin right through the sheets
like none a us was even there –

I don put down jackin off, fack
I wish we’s all that free-no
it’s that noise, all that thrashin round-almost like he’s
pained ur scared-yeah-like-you got it-like rasslin
like rasslin gators

(After a performance by Sandy Bull 5/20/76)

October 9, 1967

for Che Guervara

The toads sing at sundown
long, rhythmic chants
like the clapping of shoes.

Hoot owls light the sky.
Roosters molt in the jack-pine
turning blue.

I camp in the snail’s track. Small
veiled girls seranade my night,
their soft bones turned
fodder for the goats.

The mountains are hardest
trails like polished eyes.

I slake my thirst on the lips of tigers,
rest in the throats of hummingbirds.

                                                        In La Paz
I sell my teeth for beetle’s wings, trade
radios for gunpowder,
assemble bombs.
I visit Beirut.
400 Moslems shit and belch-up fisheyes;
in Terre Haute they crush my hands,
castrate the horse,
flog my mole til his asshole pops;
Dallas buries my tongue,
hangs my skull in dormitory windows.
I keep to the backroads.
My eyes leave a slick trail on your bedroom doors.
Your plumbing’s jammed with my clenched fist.
I’m under your collar
burrowing along your spine.

 

Trailing The Army

There are armies
crossing Nebraska.
Armies that fatten on leftover cows
armies so silent and sure
they lumber over the day
unmindful of sweat
forgetting rivers
crossed and recrossed.
I am trailing the army
gouging huge holes in their water bags
clipping the sharp eyes of their bayonets
exhausting their mothers with stories
of past atrocities.
Someone has to follow.
Someone must nip at the wide black haunch.
They are well organized and have learned
the rewards of cutting
everything down.
Everything that grows on its own
is suspect.
No one has survived the wave on wave
of their perfect form.
Even the frogs fall game.
The nights are filled with their music;
They mimic the chords and pipes of human throats.
In Kansas City there are people
already overcome.
In St. Louis there are people of knowledge
catching planes.
In Detroit
no one has even begun to care.

After The War

hustlers stalk the streets
hawk their mother’s pearls
their sister’s virginity
over and over
their daughter’s succulent
tipped up teats…

After the war, we’ll ignore our father’s failed vision
picnic at midnight
pose in purple robes
ride a stallion
eat fire.

On these nights, Shelia will cake her eyelids blue
dance on her back
wrap her legs around my waist
arch up
muscles tense
lick my belly
sweat.

After the war, old men will tear their wives
from trailer parks in Galveston or Peoria
rev-up engines long left to rust
and hit the road.

Kids with one foot in the gutter will step to the plate, plant their
weight and hit a big one for mom and dad or step off the curb or run
into a cab or climb off the top rung or sail out
into another night
unmasked
tattooed
gone.

After the war, the thunder you’ll hear from the hills will be just that
thunder from the hills and rain.

No More

“When I went back, I found I was the enemy”
Philip Levine: Introducing his poem, They Feed They Lion

Not love but celebration
sexual and luscious
our tongues winding round
our wet bodies
yours black mine white
our smiles bright
that August afternoon
across the bridge in Windsor
before the night Detroit went down.

________

One month before
at home
in Chicago
my friend Felton boarded up his bottle club on South Michigan Avenue
a club where we’d spent many a Friday night
cracking set-ups for the crowd and downing Johnny Black
while DJ’s spun 78’s and 45’s from the fifties.

Phil Levine found he was the enemy and so had I.

No more dropping by McKee’s to hear Horace
Laverne’s where Howlin Wolf held court
The Stage, Robert’s, The Crown
without an escort.
No more goofing off on 63rd drinking outta paper bags and eating Bar-B-Q
at 4 AM with friends
No more just walking around Marquette park with Connie on my arm
No more cruising the old neighborhood
No more.

________

As if in sepia and in slow motion:
5’10” Paxton Lumpkin dribbles past the entire Dunbar High defense
for a light-fingered lay-up;
Big Ben Smith, 6’5 and 250 if he’s a pound, lumbers-jabs-lurches lunges
10 yards for the score against South Shore;
Antoinette George whose skin was only slightly darker then mine and got burnt
in summer
leaves for PreMed at Johns Hopkins
and never looks back
long before
Connie moved to Canada.

________

When the fires started on west Madison and west Washington and
west Monroe and west…you could read your daily paper by the
light from a million TV’s engulfed in flames from end to end
the country
from end to end and top to bottom
the country
from where we came
to where we went
from Danville and Portsmouth and St Pete and Boone and Newport
the country
uprooted and cut
dissected, severed, split.

________

I’ve never been back to Windsor and Connie never came home.
I heard she married a Manitoba Lawyer who stole her money and the MGA
she’d treasured since college.
Her sister left Chicago too and lives in San Diego where she teaches Karate
to teenage prostitutes.
The country? Ah, the country.
The country slides in the mist shrouding the end of the century
as divided as ever and as blind.

I Carry The Dead

I carry the dead child in my pack
with dried fish my canteen
& a sealed tin of plums.
I carry his bloody shirt in my belt
his favorite toy
a pup he’d had since birth
over my shoulder
its eyes jiggle and snap
its stuffing leaks
it knocks against my ribs with every step.

I raised this child
from his mother’s arms
washed his puckered skin
combed dust from his hair
picked crusted tears from under his eyes
pearls of shit that clung in strands to his stubby legs.

I bear this boy with a hunter’s grace
careful to measure my stride
conserving breath
past men eating fire
past manicured lawns
past peddlers of teeth.

I take this stiff corpse
no more than one year old
to dig his grave beyond the trees
where his people grazed sheep
honed tools
married
under bows of flowers
where a stream may
at any moment
break through polished stone.

Letter To Sophia

Even before the wind had shifted
and the stench of flesh on fire peeled sweat from walls,
I should have known

from the whistling in my ears
the resonant whack of cracking spines
bodies rotting in the road.

I should have hocked my gun, torched my fatigues,
joined your neighbors for the long march.
Instead, and I tell you this with chalk in my mouth,

I drank with the rest, took my turn in the teenage girls,
forced the sons to do dog to their mothers, yes
all this I did and more.

I should have known, when my beard turned white,
when men were forced to bite the balls from their brothers
when I prayed for rain to wash semen, shit and tears to the sea,

you would never take me as I was, never kiss my eyelids with your
tongue as you did, never slip your cool hands under my shirt, press
your cheek against my naked back, never again trust me to be clean.