Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 14

Drawing Pictures of Hot Rod

And reading comic books

inside my calculus textbook,

you ask me how do we get a derivative

and I say lower every exponential

by one and drop the last whole number

You say, wel,l yes,

but its not that simple, and I add,

if you take every formula

to its extreme, it comes to zero,

the class let out a gasp

and you move on to the next student

but I didn’t stop:

how come we have to always

solve the equation the same way?

As an artist and a poet,

I find that both boring and simple

and you kept on talking,

because there is no good answer.

Today I don’t do derivatives

and I don’t always remember

the order to solve an equation

but I remember the days wasted

in your classroom.

I Once Was a Painter

and a stage hand

for a summer stock

I slept in the wings

on a broken down old couch,

and a nice lady brought

me food everyday.

They paid me a hundred a week,

and I got to see all the shows

I would probably still be there

painting sets and moving furniture

only on account of the show closing,

they sold the theater

and they built a Walmart there.

Now I move furniture

and stock the shelves

and watch the people

and eat when I can.

Elm Street, Hattiesburg, Mississippi

(and I never stopped, until this moment to wonder who Hattie was)*

Sweet strong black coffee

An old rambling city house

With a sunny upstairs guest room

And a gentle gas fireplace

Flickering as we played

Scrabble into the evening

A hiding place closet

In another upstairs bedroom

Forever tied in my mind to “Cecilia”

I got up to wash my face

And the world had changed

My aunt and uncle had gone

Moved to Indiana forever

But a summer on that tree shaded street

Has lasted longer than the move

Forty years, and I still dream

Of early morning strong hot sweet coffee

In the soft light of a white picket fence kitchen.

I looked it up, Hattie was the wife of a lumber baron who developed and logged the area.

In the High Traffic

Of New Orleans

or the Quarter

to be more exact

Ubers, work trucks,

idiot tourists drive

the walkable streets

full of other tourists

like me, looking

for a beignet

or a cocktail

or something good to eat

or simply

a photo opportunity

horse drawn carts

and painters

along the fence

of Jax square

but fools

clog the streets

while we eat

our powdered dough

and think of po-boys.

When Jesus Walked Across the Mississippi

It was early June
and the black folks
were steady chopping
with heavy hoes

and the heat rolled
down out of the heavens
like a plague from Egyptland
calluses and sweat

When Jesus walked again
September was getting late
and the children pulled
the heavy white bags

but long ago
the white roman soldiers
had laid his brown body down
and nailed him to a tree

and raised him back up
a white man’s Jesus
but one little boy
who doubted he would live

to see his seventh birthday
raised his eyes up
upon the river
and saw a Black Jesus
shining in the sun

and found his strength
to reach the end of the row
to reach the end of the day
to reach the end of life

when a bullet cut down
his freedom and he laid
like a brown bodied Jesus
in the delta mud

And Jesus walked across
that big muddy river
and took the boy home.

August is the Cruelest Month

Though I love it so,

for without it, there would be

no me, no father, grandmother,

oldest son, or my beloved,

without it there would be no Light,

And yet with equinox

over a month away,

and long into summer

past its glory like the blossoms

of a gardenia, so sweet

and beautiful but now

rotting blobs on the sidewalk,

so is the summer in August,

With false promises of autumn

the never seem to come

until November, when the surprise

of the end of endlessness is so welcome

And yet, in that tired too long days

of August is the sweetest silence

of bugs in the trees and mosquitoes 

a noise one feels more than hears.

Tired deep green foliage,

reminds me of the end of fertility

past the rage of spring,

and before the dying of the light

not even a breeze to ruffle them in

but even August will pass.

Past Mobil

The early morning sky is misty

beneath the low turgid clouds

and the sound of what

I’m not sure of draws my eyes

Out of that primeval haze

twin pterodactyls glide menacingly

towards where I stand transfixed

until they pull up short and settle

Long legs like ballerinas or gymnasts

landing after a much practiced move

and I see them to be sandhill cranes

content on the clearing past Mobil.

I Never really Spoke Spanish

I Never really Spoke Spanish

When I was a kid,

because of the line of work I was in,

I learned to say “boug-an-vi-ya”,

and “es-pan-u-ate.”

I was taught these words

by a man who said “chimley” and “liberry”

I still cant say “borrow,”

somehow it comes out “bar-ee”

I don’t think that is correct,

but it is as close as I can get

At age fourteen,

I went with a church group

To Mexico. I love Mexico. I love Mexicans.

I learned enough Spanish

to buy a coke

and to flirt with

Fourteen-year-old Mexicans,

which wasn’t hard.

Then, at twenty-three,

I married the first Puerto Rican

I ever met.

She spoke perfect English,

thanks to a private

school in San Juan

But she thought

and counted in Spanish.

A few years later,

we had a beautiful baby boy

And we thought it would be

a good idea for him to learn Spanish

His mother taught him

songs with Spanish words,

which I learned.      

I learned “abaho” for down,

and “vente a key” for come here

And “vaca” for cow

and “Got toe” for cat and “pet row” for dog,

and then there were two words that meant gentleman and horse

and two words that meant kitchen and sea shell

and I was always mixing them up.

Just recently, the Puerto Rican has been an ex for twenty years, it occurs to me,

I never really spoke Spanish,

I learned code words for

things I knew in English

And some of my code was close enough

People who speak Spanish could make it out.

A couple of years ago, we went

To Paris. I love Paris. I love Parisians.

We decided we wanted to go back

And this time we were going to learn French.

Drive Time French is a series of CDs

that offer the following:

Little is “pe tea”, unless it is

masculine, like a truck,

Truck is “cam-i-on”, and blue is “blu”

as in the sound you make when you throw up,

and new is “nu-vay”, so if you want to say

new blue little truck it is like this

“nuvay blu payteat camion.”

(try not to gag, it ruins the beauty of French)

of course, very few Frenchmen know this code

so on the off chance I need

to tell a lovely Parisian

about a new small blue truck,

I doubt I could, but then, in truth,

I never really spoke English, either.

Sunday Morning (me and Jesus)

you were waiting 

on the bus, 

it was Sunday morning 

and I was waiting 

on Jesus come.

I was dreaming 

of cornbread, 

you were dreaming 

of New York City.

Sunday morning 

and you were waiting 

on the bus

Boy selling newspapers

Jesus selling cornbread

On the street corner

at least so the headline said

It was Sunday morning,

you eating cornbread,

we’re on the bus,

me and Jesus

On my birthday, I am taking the liberty

to write not my favorite president (that will ALWAYS be Barack Obama [Happy birthday to you, Mr. President, and thank you for saving my life!]), but instead to the greatest president of my lifetime (1959-today), President Biden.

Thank you, first for all the wonderful things you have done for America, for the things you continue to do, and hopefully for all the great things you will do over the next 5 years. Know that I approve of 90+% of all your actions, which higher than any other.

Having said that, there ar at least two issues that you have disappointed me on.

1) The border: lets let the decent desperate hardworking people who believe in America in a way most Americans don’t even believe in it, come in make them welcome. Sure, we need to be making sure we are not contributing to the horrors that forced them to flee the countries of their birth, their, the land they love, but in the meantime, lets let them in. Study after study has shown immigrants create much more wealth than they cost. Don’t listen to the hatemongers, the racists, the evil people, who are so well represented already by the other party.

2) Energy: While I am excited about the green and sustainable polices you are promoting, can we not offer aid and comfort to the oil industry for fear of high energy prices costing you political ground? Lets instead, let energy prices go where they will, make sure we have a strong windfall tax to capture most of the ill gotten gains of the oil industry and create a subsidy for poor and working families to offset the energy costs in the tank and at the furnace.

I believe in you, Mr. President. I believe you have the courage and leadership to do these things. Lets make ALL of America as proud of ALL of our actions and policies, not just most.