Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 10

Lying to Get into Gettysburg

They say only the dead

can stay, though we are all

allowed to visit, to reimagine

the great speech, the great battle,

the great folly of men against men

killing to settle an argument

about freedom and race and humanity.

A failed discussion with canon

and bullets and bayonets,

the blue were buried here

the terrorists were carted away.

Like faraway Vicksburg,

soft quiet rolling green

where children run and play

and pretend to shoot great

weapons into the tree line.

The dead do not remember,

nor did their deaths have value

or even meaning only death

and loss and those who lost them,

now dead, even their memory

and the memory of the memory

has faded, like you and I, too

will fade and the pointlessness

of our lives will be forgotten.

Not the Emperor

(not a Wallace Stevens poem)

I see the dead man’s feet

protruding from underneath

the clean-ish white sheet.

His widow sits beside him in grief,

not her first loss, maybe her last,

as tomorrow may kill her, too.

Forty thousand dead for nothing,

and my mind plays tricks on me,

reminding first of the Stevens poem,

The Emperor of Ice Cream

and then I wonder how they find

thousands of clean sheets to cover

all the dead in a war zone.

Anything to not think about

the evil of killing innocents,

to not think about the babies

and old men and mothers and fathers.

My mother is dead on this Mothers Day,

but that is normal, she would be ninety-five

if she was here, the babies, and children,

the bombs, the close range rifle shots,

the starvation, I must not think or speak of these,

only of a man’s feet protruding, of ice cream,

of thousands of clean sheets,

these I am allowed to contemplate.

The Night Game

In the fifties all games were day games,

then the great lights meant an afternoon

at the ballpark became rarer and rarer,

today, almost all games are night games,

but in my yard there is a bird feeder.

It is called a bird feeder, though squirrels

tread there, too, over my objections

and efforts, and the objections of a few blue jays

now and then, squawking and screaming,

dive bombing and generally terrorizing the rodents.

But after night fall, the game changes.

The birds are roosting somewhere

I cannot see, soon they grow quiet

and all is still until the squirrels,

the chipmunks, mice, and various other rodents,

come for the fallen seeds

from the rambunctious day game.

And even quieter than the big-eyed mammals,

are the stealthy snakes who slide up

and swallow the unsuspecting critters,

for nature always feeds upon nature.

In Another Drawer

Of my bedside table

lie a broken fish, and the dinosaur

worm my child made me, now in two halves,

my father’s old iPhone, he’s been dead

since two thousand sixteen,

a tiny Lego of the Sydney Opera house.

What to do with these things?

Nothing, I suppose, like the small tin

in another drawer, in the top of an old dresser

filled with concert ticket stubs

from the seventies and eighties.

Who cares?

What are they good for?

Do I only have the memories

of the Doobie Brothers or Jimmy or Hank Jr.,

because of them? Surely not.

Will my children throw them away

when I am gone? I suppose.

Is my life a collection of old torn

paper and broken ceramics?

Could it be anything else?

Maybe a poem or two, maybe

they will go in the garbage

with the broken fish, but for today,

I have all my treasures

hoarded like a greedy king of junk.

All the Poets

Writing with mindless courage,

winning awards,

collecting rejections,

saying what they mean,

at least I think,

it’s what they mean, anyway.

Rivers flowing,

overflowing,

bridges and dams washed away

then the bed is dry

the sun bakes on

the cancers grow,

and we all die,

we all die,

but maybe not today.

If you have ever been to

San Antonio or Santa Fe

in summer when the heat

is everywhere and creeps in between the cracks

and dying doesn’t seem so far away,

but then its lovely there

as well and you live down

by the river and spend your money

too freely, but we all die,

we all die,

but maybe not today.

To Sit in a Lounge

not a disco, and not the kind of “lounge”

that is really a roadside bar,

or one filled with ferns

from the nineteen eighties,

but a real, not-on-the-Vegas-strip

where some slightly overweight guy

sits at an old fashioned electric organ

and plays music somewhere

between background and theme.

Nobody sings, and some people probably

sip martinis and Manhattans, I never did,

I overpay for a glass of wine, or diet and rum,

til I tire of alcohol and switch to coffee,

and they have pretty good coffee.

The organ music was the thing,

that and the lighting, not dark,

like a dive bar, but subdued,

and the colors ivory and black

with gold accents, not bright gold,

more old rubbed gold and if I am lucky

the booths are upholstered in the shade

of olive green my dad’s Naugahyde recliner

was in nineteen-sixty-five.

We would sit and talk

when the music wasn’t too loud,

and then just relax when he decided

the whole bar needed to focus

on this verse or that, still no singing,

as words would ruin the moment.

There were places,

where someone would sing,

but it was never the same.

I am Writing an Opera

not a libretto, nor an aria

every word, every sound,

every stage direction

first written in simple English

then transformed into

eighteenth century Italian

shapes and sounds

with intricate curlicues

long pauses and high escapes

into words sung as to be untranslatable

how the knife enters the heart

and love like blood drains

on to the stage with the mistaken

murder, the misdirected rage ,

the moment of self-loss,

and when I am done,

I will sing all the parts

and plunge the knife

into my heart for the finale.

I Watch the Swallows Dive

With my eyes closed

through windows that are not

there on the low cinderblock building

and I think of when my time

for leaving comes and wonder

about a villa overlooking the Spanish coast,

where the rocks look like Greek islands

but the food is better,

near the French Riviera,

but still far enough away a million

dollars can buy a view like this.

The swallows cast shadows

on the trees reflected

on the far wall until I open

my eyes to the darkness,

and see they were birds

of prey all along.

Bonus Army (Not about Palestine)

Nineteen-thirty-two, nineteen-sixty-eight,

two-thousand-twenty-four,

there are barricades and big burly policemen

all around the encampments

full of women and children,

full of those who care about justice.

The policemen are there to keep the peace

safely locked inside the camp.

while those who chant

for violence and oppression

are free to roam the great world.

Barricades and big burly policemen

are pleased to be in the service

of the powers that be, in the service

of the little men behind the curtains,

in the service of death and destruction,

for those who love peace

will always be the terrorists.

Stick like Pancho

Rides on a stick figure donkey

both black against an orange background

with Don Quixote stumbling

along on brave Rocinante,

truly as horse with no name

and yet one can imagine Pancho

wishing for a good meal at the inn

instead of a sound beating.

All this on the wall, on a great canvas

in a dinner in Meridian, Mississippi

a favorite layover and lunch

of veal cutlet and French fries.

Lucy’s Red Ball Dinner,

attached to a motel,

closed before my time,

but there was still an empty concrete

swimming pool and a pretty but rusty

young girl on a sign, prepared to dive

in with her close fitting bathing cap.

I remember the painting and the sign,

but I don’t remember much of the veal cutlet,

 though I know I ordered it

everywhere too fancy

to order a fish sandwich.