Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 35

The Block

The Block

A poetry concept I just “invented”?

4 lines, 4 words, and as a construction block, each is to be a complete unit, but can be stacked to build a bigger something.

 

Ex. One block poem about my son’s kindergarten teacher

 

Mrs Payne’s desk sees

thirty-two children’s faces

starring back in amazement

not seeing the desk.

 

Ex. First block could be entire poem, and each block added makes a bigger and still complete poem.

 

Grass soggy on ankles

Like thick wet hair

Releases sweat and dirt

From leather and denim

 

Both pants and boots

Not clean but cleanish

Enough for field work

Sunrise brings drying heat.

 

The wood on the plow

is rougher than me

as I push it

against dry rocky soil.

 

My daddy would use

a mule for this

but I fear beasts

big, strong and dumb.

 

Once had a farmer

tell me mules aren’t

dumb, in fact they

are smart and stubborn.

 

 

 

 

Flesh Colored Money

burns in the night

on street corners

down by the bus station,

in the dens of

great stone houses

along the water

 

with brightness

of souls, decency,

first flames of honesty,

smell of sweat,

sex:

cheap, mistrusted.

 

brass

for bullet casings,

peach white bottles

prescribed dying

throbbing fuchsia,

the money

turns,

rises

drifting

upward, outward

 

This Machine (with apologies to Woody Guthrie)

doesn’t kill fascists

it saves poor children, not from traffic,

but obscurity

as it saves the old man in the dirty hat with dirtier broken fingernails.

 

It doesn’t build houses you can live in

but houses to live in your mind:

the white house with curving sloped stoop on seventeenth in East Hill,

the old farm house with a brick façade between Selma and Montgomery

where the racist man watched the marchers pass.

 

It builds the past now so future time travelers can enter the late 20th century

without wearing a space suit.

Cigar Soldier Woman

I want a revolutionary woman

With fire in her eyes

And fire in the bedroom

And a long bloody knife in her hand.

 

I want a revolutionary woman

Fighting to free her country,

A woman that drinks rum

For breakfast

And smokes big illegal cigars.

 

I want a revolutionary woman

Whose grandfather tells me

I’m cheating him in dominoes

While he trims his cigar

With a machete,

 

Cuban cigars that I’d be afraid

To put in my mouth.

I want to be her little man

She comes home to battered and bruised.

I will heal her wounds.

 

A woman who laughs at her bleeding

Takes off her bandolier,

And makes love to me.

 

Anthony Watkins

July 5, 1996

Wearing the Bowl

Reading meta poetry is easy

if often confusing, frustrating,

but sometimes exhilarating

 

Writing it is

sticking your head

in a large goldfish

bowl

watching your breath create blots

on the inside and wonder

how you are going to breathe?

how long can you do this?

why would anyone stick their head

in a goldfish bowl?

then casually wondering

if this goldfish bowl looks good on me?

And then, in a panic,

wondering if the bowl is too small?

can I ever get my head out?

I Wake, the Sound

of shimmering cymbals


and street vendors


hawking food I love,


but my wife will never eat,


bright colored curtains


shade the room,


but let what late


afternoon air that will,


move through the apartment.


 


I stir again and wake


on my suburban couch


in our gated community,


having never traveled


a mortal step up


the narrow stone path


from sparkling shore


to bright adobe walls


of this villa, yet,


I live here as often


as anywhere.

Blasting Away

in the dark,

dashing off responses

to sleeping recipients,

today it’s electronic,

a hundred years ago

I would be lighting a candle

and dipping my ink

in darkness,

scribbling

on flickering yellow pages.

 

Blasting away,

yet I don’t

I know where I am going

a hundred lines,

a hundred letters,

a hundred first class stamps,

this is my life.

 

When I’m gone

the stillness of morning

will belong to someone else

who will likely, more wisely than me,

stay sleeping

in a comfy bed.

Everyday We Paint the House

a different color

when we wake

we stir about the cans

in the shed,

 

until we find

what we are looking for

or mix two or more

to make anew

 

You and I

just painters

and our house

our only canvas

two colors,

 

the one we paint,

and the one

the paint makes

when it dries

 

twenty years

and seven thousand coats

and seven thousand more

we hope to paint

 

everyday, we clean the rollers

and put away the cans,

arising to a fresh start

on the morning

Cane Town

 

Two miles from the cane fires

across the junction

of Sugar House

and Ice Plant Roads

where the new cane breathes

the smoke of the old cane,

soon to be chopped down

and squeezed into sugar.

 

I sit at a red light on Fourth St

between the boot store

and We-Me Music,

it’s a sad piece of a town

where two African men

sit on milk crates

and smile to

the old white man.

 

I wonder if they

have kind thoughts.

 

The blue-green bridge

crosses the canal

running on an angle

cutting through the heart

of town but gators

on the banks hardly

never eat no one.

 

In the fields the trucks

and cutting machines

follow the fire so closely,

they take care to not get burned.

 

Conversely

The lines are down,

the fog rolls in like a noise

covering the brown deadness

in a creeping whiteness,

neither dead nor alive

 

and gone with the sun rise,

leaving the withered dead,

waiting on the erection

of green tips through

the death of the season

 

(inspired by some recent work of Joseph Massey)