Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 5

As the sparrow lies in the street

stunned from hitting

a window above,

human powered carts,

bicycles and bicycle taxis

roll by, miraculously never

running over the little bird,

which stirs itself,

shakes off and flies away,

like me, no smarter,

but alive.

I come from Montgomery

A midnight angel

Carrying hot dogs and chili

From Chris’s way downtown.

You sit on the beach waiting,

knowing the dogs will be cold

but wanting and eating

them, anyway.

Others have come before

and surely there are more to come

as I am only one angel, one eyed,

 one way, and there is more

currency than hot dogs

in the barbeque shacks

and roadside stands

and fried catfish at the red barn

with real homemade hushpuppies

and angels are they all.

With apologies to John Prine and Jack Kerouac

I am slouching towards Oxford

A rough beast without capitals 

and random commas, 

Oxford is for ties, as is Windsor, 

the house of thieves from which I steal, 

god and country, 

and all other manner of evil.

Should I slay St. George 

or his dragon 

shall I March in the crusades 

to kill the innocent for Jesus.

On what campus,

What ivory tower

What Ivy covered walls

Shall I tilt astride my donkey?

We Mixed Martinis in the Basement

Dusty and squalid,

though the glasses were mostly clean

and hand rolled cigarettes

from note paper and pine needles,

browned and fallen.

Oak might have tasted better.

The martinis had real olives

and we mixed tap water

and white wine vinegar half and half,

they were terrible, but probably no worse

than vodka for ten year olds.

You told me they drank these

in fancy clubs in the city,

the city I had never been to,

you meant New York,

but I thought of Paris,

though I had not yet been there either,

 it was the only city I cared about.

Someone somewhere talked

about dirty martinis,

but I don’t think they could have

been worse than our

little basement speakeasy.

Chorizos and Chiles

Saffron and dos tazas rice

enough agua in the pot

to cover all the ingredients

una lata de gandules verde

and one tablespoon of sal,

an onion and some garlic,

peal and slice the chorizos.

Bring to a boil, then let simmer

for an hour or so, until the rice

is almost dry. I may not know

how to speak Spanish, or Espanol

but I know good eating and this is it.

Call it what you like

its really Puerto Rican gumbo

I’m not even hungry

but I would eat a bowl full now.

I Stood on the Buckle

Of a twisted train car,

a boxcar and between it

and a tanker, or maybe a hopper car,

I don’t remember, but I remember

that daddy had seen the derailment,

the train wreck and thought to bring

my brother and me. I remember

it was dry and dusty, somewhere

not too far from our home in Shorter,

Alabama, maybe to the south a ways,

there were no guards there,

no one to keep us safe,

we climbed wherever we wanted,

and later we went somewhere else,

but I have no memory of anything

but standing on the buckle between

the derailed cars of that broken train.

Like the train, that broken moment

remains in the mind of an old man!

Calder Was a Racecourse

then a casino though never

a racehorse, a philosopher be,

it was Churchill Downs who ended the race

fifty years and then nothing, spin the wheel,

you could go to Pompano to watch

the harness racing, only it is gone, too

some say its better for the horses some say it aint.

Just a two-dollar bet don’t make me a saint.

Calder, oh Calder, I remember when

and Hialeah and so much more

and there isn’t even a Neil to make jokes no more.

He went to heaven or wherever atheist Jews

are supposed to go.

So, say on what you will,

was it Calder who cost me all of this,

and what of the flamingos, anyway?

I Have Crossed the Broken Bridges

And listened to the wild animal

screams in the middle of the night

the screams that quieted the mating bull frog’s roar,

on summer afternoons, I have driven

an Opel GT too fast for conditions

 as a young and foolish driver,

though we survived it all.

The road has been closed for decades,

but in my mind, we still go there

and listen to the frogs and smell the swamp water.

We waded across beaver damns,

we climbed on undiscovered Indian mounds,

and climbed on the rocks below the dam,’

and walked down railroad tracks

and swatted at mosquitoes and horseflies,

and were glad to be alive.

And today, we are still glad to be alive,

though old, though so many places

we lived through, and in, are gone

or closed or never really were,

but we are still alive

and still glad to be alive.

In 1956

They opened a soda fountain,

in Mammoth Cave and in 1968

they added a full bar with buffalo heads

mounted on the walls and paintings

of naked Indian princesses

in full recline behind the bar

They called it the Tavern in the Cavern,

but of course, they got it wrong,

 because the Mammoth is a cave system,

dead as the souls of the big man’s feet.

I used to drink there when I was still underage,

“underground under way.”

The fur on the big bison grew green

with mold and the bartenders

all developed breathing problems or so I am told.

Country

If I had red leather pointy-toed cowboy boots

 and a solid gold archtop Harmony guitar

and propped my foot up on your coffee table

while I leaned back and strummed the guitar,

and if I sang with a country accent somewhere

between June Carter and Dwight Yoakam,

would you call me hillbilly, and would you listen anyway?

You don’t know me but you dont like me,

and I wonder how many times

you have walked the streets of Bakersfield? 

And no, I have never been to California,

and I traded in my Stetson for my trademark

slightly dirty khaki hat

but I hung around the tunnel in Aliquippa,

strumming and walking and somebody

even took a picture of me looking out

to the west in the rain for the cover of the album

nobody bought called This Town is Union Made.

But when I was fourteen, I went to Brownsville,

Mc Allen and Reynosa, where they fed me tacos and tamales

and I fell in love with every Mexican girl

on both sides of the Rio Grande.