Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 32

2:12 am Dressed in Yesterday’s Shirt and Underwear

doing day work in the early morning

looking at paintings and poems

writing my philosophy

on classroom enrichment

5:05 am grits and sausage and toast

for everyone

no toast for S

brown bread for me

cheese in the grits for M

no grits for me

6:01 dishes cleared and rinsed for the dishwasher

I realize I don’t resent

William for the plums

and you can tell Frank

I won’t be buying a watchband today

poem written, no painting.

Dry White Toast

black coffee,

Tylenol,

shower,

headache,

nap,

more Tylenol,

Imodium

off to work.

 

Masks

gloves,

sanitizer,

is it enough?

is it too late,

already?

 

Every Time I Drive through Laurel

I turn to the eight-year-old

who is always with me,

as we make the big curve

I point and say

 

“There is the hospital

where they killed your grandpa.”

He looks silently and remembers:

 

The hospital bed

The funny smells

The old truck

bouncing over red dirt hills of a road

Greens store, before the killing fire

the cows, the barn.

 

Him and my daddy

talking about land

bouncing on his big round belly

and him laughing so hard

 

The tears of loss and rage

and my daddy saying,

“they killed him, you know.”

 

 

 

Late into the Long Summer Evening

after the mosquitoes

began to tire

and babies no longer cried,

 

You would sit in the heat

and tell me stories

of fishing on the White River

and the bears that lived there.

 

But the smoke

from your hand-rolled cigarettes

smoked down

close to your fingers

had nearly faded

from my memory

before I realized,

 

Your bears were

merely wild pigs

grown into monsters

for my entertainment.

This Isn’t Breakfast

it’s a baloney sandwich

two slices

with crunchies

it’s five am

white bread and mayo

 

Breakfast comes later

smoky sausage

grilled in a thin layer

of olive oil,

can of beans

added at the end.

 

This isn’t morning

only a hungry early start

late in life

I learned to start early.

Machete

for grass and coconuts,

tree limbs, watermelons,

severed, cleaved,

keep the blade sharp

… and clean

 

dangling from a hip,

leaned in the corner

simple tool:

forty dollars.

 

Long,

thin,

heavy,

the slightest curve,

tapered to the hilt.

 

Black,

only

the cutting edge

sharpened

to a shine.

 

Fingers, arms, severed,

an act of war,

a state of terror,

heads cleaved–

wipe the blade clean,

 

dangling from a hip,

leaned in the corner

basic weapon:

forty dollars.

Jerry Lee Cola

I drank a bottle

of jerry lee

it rattled my insides

and shook my brain.

 

It fizzed up

like a honky-tonky piano

in a Memphis bar.

 

In an old

glass bottle

with a brand-new shiny

crimped-up cap.

 

I think it was

half white lightning

and half cherry cola.

 

mama don’t want no cabbage

but she might take

a little boogie-woogie bubbly,

 

long as the Baptist preacher

don’t have to know.

My Way

 

again,

as a child of church

a returned adult,

drifted away,

but back in the pew,

Spring Sunday, not Easter,

No pageantry,

just the furnace’s stuffiness,

and coldness around my feet

 

almost like a catholic church

(I am not catholic)

one drops in to pray

only passing,

 

the card in pew pocket

I am not troubled by jumbled thoughts,

I have such jumbles.

 

failing to follow the preacher,

during sermon,

during announcements,

during longwinded prayer, involving

“the Sick and Shut-ins,

and those going through trials we do not understand,

but we know God’s grace is sufficient”

 

my soul glazes over:

I wander rabbit holes.

 

(my response to the incredible poem by Rae Armantrout: The Way)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51513/the-way-56d22f4c66438

Old Wounds to the Metal

Teenaged boys

with single shot squirrel rifles,

trying to recreate

Bonnie and Clyde’s car,

plinking away,

one twenty-two at a time.

 

Hard to know what

they were thinking

except I was one

of the would-be G-men.

 

Black sedans

hidden in a gully

under years of kudzu

windows gone,

headlights bashed,

fenders and doors

riddled with holes.

 

The rightful owners

dead nearly a century,

the shooters all old men

If I Find You Awake

at three am

I worry

 

if I am awake

I play spades

drink coffee

write poetry

and long

philosophical pieces

none will read

 

this is normal

do not worry

for me