Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 38

When

You can’t tell people

how easy it is,

how hard it is,

and they quote Hemingway

nobody ever quotes his books,

just his comments:

about bleeding.

 

And because it is easy

and it’s supposed to be hard

when they say wonderful things,

you think it is sympathy.

 

Because even though it is easy

or maybe because it is,

you think it is pointless,

worthless,

that it doesn’t matter,

as they say,

“it’s only words…”

 

The nagging question remains:

If I am this good

How come I’m not famous?

I am NOT famous, right?

How would I know?

If the whole world thought I was great,

would I think it was sympathy?

Does anyone, does everyone care

that much to lie to tell me I am great when I’m not?

If I was famous, wouldn’t I be rich?

and of that I am sure I am not.

 

Am I just one of thousands, maybe millions of old men, who write poetry and people say, “oh, that’s nice.” And then snicker to each other about the silly old man who has spent his life writing down words and thinking he is writing poetry, the fool can’t even spell….

Does it matter? Probably not, but I will be dead soon and I wish I knew, but don’t answer, please don’t answer, if you do, I will think you are feeling sorry for me and I hate pity, unless its self-pity. I like self-pity, its feels like a worn blanket over my bare knees on a cold morning, like the gentle ache of a missing tooth. I do not wish to trade my self-pity for the guilt and doubt of your pity. Thank you

 

The Ritual of the Bath

(sometimes, in a quest for the “art of the mundane”, one misses the art and is left with the mundane, I hope I have not done so here)

 

I open the shower door

and turn on the water,

then step back while it warms

and remove the fluffy white towel from its hook.

 

I add paste to my toothbrush,

its little motor whirring against my teeth as I reenter the water.

Always in order,

as if I might forget and in fact, I have.

 

I rinse my mouth, in one motion,

set the toothbrush next to the large Suave shampoo

and flip the cap open and the bottle over to squeeze enough and set the bottle back,

thumbing the cap closed as I massage my hair into a froth of soapiness,

all this while facing the shower,

now turn and rinse,

face downturned as the shampoo rolls down my head until the water is clear,

observe the drain, still no hair, thankfully,

now the soap, front to back, top to bottom,

as if I might forget a shoulder or lower back,

with a half squat I soap my thighs front and back then I lift first my left foot,

then right, soapy hands on the soles and calves,

re-soap the fingers for the toes,

interlocking toes and fingers

like mishappened praying hands,

then the razor,

or more the can of lather rubbed thickly on my face,

and the plastic razor,

dabbed gently into my palm still full of cream,

first under my nose downward and then downward around from right ear to left,

then up,

every inch of face and neck at last sloping crossways

to follow the chin line and below,

still sideways on the neck,

and rinse,

and rinse the razor and my hand full of cream,

 

 

water off, out the steamy glass door

to the fluffy towel and the cold bathroom air.

 

When I was young we lived up north,

the bathroom would be warm and muggy,

but this is Florida, so the air is always on,

cold and wet I dry, in the same pattern I washed,

looking in the room-wide mirror at the fat naked man.

I observe he looks the same as the day before

and raise one arm high,

rub Old Spice on the armpits that used to be young

but are no longer, then the other arm.

 

I clean my ears with cotton swabs in a manner

strictly forbidden on the package,

and wonder if others do or do not follow

the directions for safe ear care

and wonder if I am old enough

to need my ear hair trimmed,

then I brush back my still mostly brown,

still mostly full head of hair

and wonder if my wife will tell me

when I get a bald spot,

on with clean dry shirt and underwear,

I wonder through the bedroom and out to the kitchen

to refill my coffee and the bath is over until tomorrow.

Not Like Itself

A Thing is not

LIKE itself,

it IS itself,

but not

LIKE itself,

one cannot be

LIKE what one IS.

 

(maybe I only

wrote like  I

was writing a poem)

The Sonnets of Pork and Cheese

Mrs. Browning

 

my first love, as a poet, at least

a small bookstore editon

with black-shaped block-printed images

a gift to my teenaged self

from a now dead mother

who neither knew or understood

but only feared my words

Elizabeth charmed me

and made me dream of being

being a poet, being a romantic

but most of all,

she made me dream:

of simply being,

as she had been.

 

 

There Must Be Two

 

If they are to be called The Sonnets

and what of the pork, not pig

and cheese, a derivative of

barbarism yet the height

of both the culture of milk

and the culture of food?

My-Dearest-Elizabeth I fear

you would not find me

to be the kind of poet

who compared your eyes to roses

your mouth to the ocean

your hair to the golden clouds

I write of pork and cheese

And trucks and tomatoes

 

If I Shopped

 

 

Today

for hair color

and silencers

both in gun

metal brown

 

Would that

disguise me

In the rusty

urban air

or only

make me

smell of grease?

Hair Salon of Death

Drove past the hair salon,

one of the last places

had my life was threatened

 

on my way to an inspection:

old widower 1990s boom box

on counter by sink for company,

outside I start to unscrew

the spark guard on

electric panel box

the moment before

I put the screwdriver to the box

I always think:

could be last moment of my life.

 

The Tri-Rail blows the crossing

fifty feet away.

I put the cover back on,

neighbor starts a chainsaw.

 

The train takes me to my youngest son

when we shared a love of trains

chainsaw brings back father, dead

a year ago, tomorrow,

 

when I was 11 or so,

he pulled me out of school

to sit in his truck

way out in the country

topping pecan trees

with a chainsaw.

 

My job to drive the truck

to the

nearest farm for help

if dad hurt himself bad.

Drove past the hair salon,

one of the last places

had my life threatened

on my way to inspection:

old widower 1990s boom box

on counter by sink for company,

outside I start to unscrew

the spark guard on

electric panel box

the moment before

I put the screwdriver to the box

I always think:

could be last moment of my life.

 

The Tri-Rail blows the crossing

fifty feet away.

I put the cover back on,

neighbor starts chainsaw.

Train takes me to my youngest son

when we shared a love of trains

chainsaw brings father dead

a year ago, tomorrow,

when I was 11 or so,

he pulled me out of school

to sit in his truck

way out in the country

top working pecan trees

with a chainsaw.

 

My job to drive the truck

to nearest farm for help

if dad hurt himself bad.

He never did

I never drove, I’m glad.

 

Screw the cover on panel

leave the old man

and drive across the tracks,

no train coming.

Hierarchy of “Darkie”-ness of Dreams

dream small

little brown person

 

Unless you can run

fast or jump high

 

please only dream

to stay in your little mud pathed village

or to clean the toilet

to pick the tomatoes

for Americans and Europeans

 

you are not a white person

you do not get

white person dreams

 

 

stay in Africa

die in slavery

these are the dreams for you.

 

dream small

little brown person

 

yours is not expensive preschool,

best primary and secondary school

you have no right to hope

to graduate from University

and make a real difference

your job is to be a small round hole,

for a small round brown person,

like you,

to be refilled when you die

and can be replaced with another

person of very small dreams.

 

If you can’t accept this

the world, especially the white world,

the powerful world,

the world in control of

everything,

cannot accept you.

 

dream small

my little brown friend

 

tell your child to dream small

your small round brown child

 

the 5

[image error]

117B or Green Bullets

Green bullets, black hair

It’s about race and the environment

killing, saving the earth, at once, we-killed-all-the-humans-would-it-save-the-earth?

Who would we be saving it for? Would not 7 billion rotting bodies create a carbon bubble?

 

What are my devices, my strategies?

 

The perfect

Word

Goes under

HERE.

 

I used to drive a truck

lots of trucks

my favorites always diesel

smell at the pumps cold morning,

the lovely putter,

massive yet stuttering at idle.

 

What does it all mean?

 

I will ask Al,

He will have a careful answer

I have none.

 

If I recycle the cartridge

am I reusing the container?

 

The questions

will outlive me.

 

What will I outlive,

is that the point?

Hard plastic tip

Is that the point?

 

HERE.

For my Seventh Birthday

I got my last dead grandpa,

I saw daddy cry.

 

By most accounts,

my first dead grandpa

was a saint.

 

I mostly remember

pictures.

 

And folks, including

my last grandma,

who will never quite be dead,

thought my last grandpa was a jerk.

 

He doted on us grandkids

we all missed him,

my grandma lived alone

in the little green house

on the farm

by the big pond.

 

I guessed her lonely

though she never said

not to me,

within two years

she married her

high school sweetheart

and became Grandma Brown

 

This is not the story of my dead grandpas,

and come to think of it, I had three.

The last, JB Brown, she buried, too,

but lived in his little house

on Santa Clara in Jackson

until she died.

 

 

 

This is about smell of soap.

 

Grandma Brown had one hall bathroom

as old houses do

outside a floor furnace,

almost burned bare feet.

 

The bathroom, unheated,

save steamy bathwater,

cold linoleum

but a plush rug

spared one when drying.

 

Over-the-john cabinet

of golden plastic

held spare tissue and soap

there, between the soft imagery

of nude children bathing

the aroma blossomed in heavy air

a sweet perfume of ladies soap

in a small boy’s nose

All the grandpa’s and grandma’s have been dead a generation, the houses, too

the lone remainder is the smell

and when I die it will be gone

for no one else alive will remember

standing cold and clean in the little Santa Clara house in Jackson, feeling the chill, the softness of the rug, steamy little prints faded from years of moisture, the coldness of the floor off the rug, the burn and cut of the furnace as one trod across to a bedroom to dress.

This painting, I hold in my head, of smells and memories and touches of cold and hot, locket size, fits only in my mind, if I can share it, maybe someday, someone, long after I am gone will and know what an old man knows, what a small boy knew, a thing that was wholly good, a thing to hold a lifetime, after bodies have rotted, after bulldozers smash old houses, after the air has become too polluted to breathe, in some place, where the world I knew is almost forgotten, maybe someone will see and smell whatever soap they have and imagine they can remember steamy air turning to cold and feel of the towel,

drying, drying,

out to the furnace and on swiftly as it burns and cuts, to the cool dark bedroom to dress warmly to go out with the cousins and play down by the creek in the cold Christmas air.

 

For my Grandma Brown, and the amazing Al Filreis who never got to meet her.

 

(It is hard to express how much I dislike long poems, as I am a firm believer if you need more than 100 words, you need an editor or another poem, but I cannot manage to make this any shorter than 448 words.)