Farm Report

J ust don’t say anything until i
finish okay you know we got rained
out on friday so on saturday
we had to play a doubleheader
simpson what’s new has a gimpy arm
and praithor wasn’t ready to start

anyway al couldn’t start against
sellers and tommy was due against
grainville what i really called about
was walker are you still there don’t say
anything well in the second game
i’m sitting in the bullpen our boy

pulling his usual his baby
blues not to be denied no glasses
and he says the tar bothers his face
of course there’s not a blooming cloud in
the sky and carver hits this sinking
liner and walker stands there squinting

so he breaks late and the wrong way you
still there but first walker was frozen
like he was even frightened to move
anyway he breaks the wrong way he’s
half blinded by the sun this is
where it gets are you still listening

this is where it gets really pretty
walker changes directions like he
bounced off a wall he runs and dives and
floats a few inches above the grass
like a pelican skimming for fish
you’ve seen pelicans before i guess

well he’s gliding along like a bird
i can see this white gown washed under
him like a wave i don’t know if i
need a vacation or not so this
wave or train bears him along till he
makes the catch and the crowd goes crazy

he displays the scoop and then the fist
for the groundlings and the organist
about has an epileptic fit
i don’t know if anyone else saw
or not this guardian angel what
else you want me to call it well she

stood cool yeah it was a she so what
well she stands cool as a cucumber
her breast is stained all green while walker
brushes off his immaculate knees
she wipes her sunglasses on her hem
you gonna keep interrupting me

so walker spits in his glove like he’s
about to heal an ump of blindness
well this angel was looking pretty
amused while he adjusted his cup
we’re dead last and they’re alone on top
you still figure we should call him up?

Bar Joke

Two spies walk into a bar. They are the only customers.
Bartender: What'll it be?
Double Agent #1 (motioning toward the far end of the bar): I'll have what he's having.
Bartender (calling to the opposite end of the bar): So, what's your pleasure?
Double Agent #2 (motioning back toward his nemesis): I'll have what he's having.

What should be the Bartender's last line?

Or, should the joke end after Double Agent #2?

Sunday Sonnet: The Name-Bearer

T here he is. Is that him? I don't know. I don’t know
his name. I don’t know his name, but this man knows mine.
He is greater than Adam, the innocent one,
naming the creatures as they paraded in line.

But that man bestowed no catness, no idling purr,
no electric fur, no lodestone for the compass arrow.
Yes. Here comes the one who brings flesh and bone and core,
bearing brass bell on his bronze tongue, pith and marrow.

Not unlike those who would gather fire on long limbs
and trek through rain and wind from distant lightning strikes,
or those who returned with brimming pots from secret wells.

Here he comes. Yes, it's him. He knows my name, knows me.
Say it, and resurrect me, remember me once
again. Give me water, bring me thunder, break the spell.

Tone 1:7

T here are two types of people. Those who can't sleep at night dreading what may happen to them the next day. And those who can't sleep at night planning how they will tear the wings off of other people the next day. Strike that. There are three types. I forgot about spectators.

I finally drug myself into work around 10:30 since I didn’t have any deliveries until 11:15, and I was type 1. It had been a long night. And no, I wasn’t hung over, just on the threshold of another failure of nerve - trying to figure out how I could come up with a good, or even lame would do, excuse for not going by to see Cadney today and dealing with the ruling. Admit it. That’s an odd word. 

Guys and Dolls

T he art of war
was nothing
more

than the moving
of roofs and
walls

rearranging
redressing
reposing

the furniture
the dolls
the dolls

Enfant Soldat: Démobilisé

Enfant Soldat

Child Soldier: Demobilized

W hen the recruitment bus came
          i just jumped in line
they taught me to use a gun
and to read landmines

N o one else from my village
        is left alive
and now they are stripping me
of my handmade knives

A Ghazal: Sort of

             i.

i guzzle her like a beer

and i don’t even like beer  

            ii.

i nuzzle the muzzle of

th’old grey mare, unbridled, bare

            iii.

i’m a frozen-foot drama

between cubs and momma bear

            iv.

is it morning already?

did delilah bare my beard?

            v.

i’m not really hung over

but i will take the bayer    

            vi.

if the moon is made of brie

bear me, bare-faced, on the bier  

             vii.

it’s chilly here, on the bier  

so chisel that stone B.R.  

 




How do you pronounce "ghazal"? 
More info on ghazals 

Blue Trellis

after a week away in detroit

my bike’s become a blue trellis 
an arbor for unfurled hearts

strung out but unstressed

Illiteracy

we gallop up to the wall
and stop
the horrible thought
the horrendous scene

escapes like a wily
fox
words there are none
to sic my son on the atrocities

galopamos hasta el muro
y paramos
el horrible pensamiento
la horrenda escena

escapa como un zorro
furtivo
mi hijo, palabras no hay alguna
para dar caza ante atrocidades

Sunday Sonnet: Gary Is Gone

T

his is where gary sat just outside the
dining room this is where his friend betty
sat with her cherry red walker i called
it her sports car gary shook hands like a man
every sunday for years we shook hands
and he would notice when i limped and when
my limp got better betty says “i guess
you know” and i ask “know what?” squatting down
in front of her ruby red ferrari
she says “gary went to the hospital
and he died” and i stumble out “i'm sorry”
while cupping her hands for just a twinkling
since they're swollen up with arthritis
gary is gone and his hands fold up inside us

Tone: excerpt from installment #6

While I was waiting for Tone to get off the phone, I had eavesdropped on Flack. So, I selectively applied what my mom had taught me about phone courtesy – don’t hover over somebody while they’re on the phone. I didn’t hover over Tone, but I did spy, gently and really out of earshot if you want to know the truth, on Flack.  Is that really eavesdropping, if you can’t hear anything? And since Flack wasn’t saying anything, I just watched him through his half-open office door and began to strain to try to hear something from the Tone call. Wasn’t hovering though.

Flack was on the phone with one of his west coast buddies. He was standing up at his desk, the dried flowers still a good distance above his head – Renoir’s brush collection drying in the rafters. Did Flack hang the dried flowers up, or did the Flackette help? Flack had recently added a barricade of potted violets to the edge of his desk. Living plants, in dirt, beautiful expensive pots in greys and milky blues, gorgeous black crazing, overflow trays, lamps, light meters and the whole bit.  If you got really close, you would see the note tacked to his desk: “10-12k lux. Red light-bloom. Blue light-photosyn.” If nothing else, Flack was a lunatic for details. The pots made an effective screen for Flack when he sat down. You couldn’t even see him.

Read the rest of installment #6

Study in Blue Silver and Green

the sky, cartoon blue

the water, molten silver

the land, old money

the boat, paid in full, in cash 
the bird feathers fall like ash

Tanka: In Motor City

in motor city

cyclist in black plastic bag

rainy (bat) blur (man)

my bike is a luxury

his is a necessity 

  

An Old Man Remembers

D

ans la même école

ans une chemise blanche à col 

elle était devant moi 

elle est morte devant moi 

là, elle vient, ma reine,

marilyn monroe

la mer est lin, mon roi,

et le vent n'est rien

Un vieil homme se souvient

I n the same school
n a white-collared blouse
she stood before me
she died before me

there she comes, my queen,
marilyn monroe
the sea is linen, my king,
and the wind is nothing

The Cage

1.  

T he carpenter did not

so much fling open my cage

as he threw in his lot

with me and with his aged

wine and perpetual bread

his nets and fish and boats

his hammer nails and boards

the hinges just couldn’t hold

and when the world was turned

upside down rightside up

and i was free to run

he stayed put to rattle the cup

Detroit Water

I t falls from the grey sky
and gathers in rivers

in great lakes and culverts
blue swales and red ditches

it's drawn into turbines

and lathes and silver drills

cooling and lubing and

cleaning and moving steel

it washes our counters

and our lady macbeths

and it beads on the hoods

of our classic corvettes

Tent Meeting

T heodore before
i knew him knew
the truth whole truth
and nothing but
communion was
remembering
saltines grape juice
and dixie cups

daddy as teddy
sank in the sawdust
in his wing-tipped shoes
betty’s wink was the word
the pulpit promised
peach crates stacked up
crates found out back
the broken book as bird

some young booby
testing its span
its pages ruffled by
the whiffling of
a tired
and nodding
oscillating
fan

Tone: excerpt from installment #5

Tone 1:5

W e headed back to the Econoline and I cleaned up the baby’s breath from the driver’s side. I had plucked it out at the last minute – why clutter up the magnificent roses. Flackette was a big fan of the gypsophila, but I was more in line with the English Garden school. It was indeed a “gyp,” a filler, watering down the moonshine. I palm-dozed the delicate, already starting to dry, flowers into the center of the seat - on top of the two brown cowhide oranges.

We drove back from Brookline, most of the way, in silence. It was an okay silence. Not the silence of I-wish-somebody-would-say-something silence. Nietzsche, I think, said something about a good wife was somebody you could talk to after the erotic dried up. I’ll take a wife you can sit in silence with, without undue tension. Tone was a good wife.


Read the rest of installment #5

Plumb Bob's Dream

P rivileged poet plumber pete 

holding a flashlight in his teeth 

under augean sink - that’s me 

and after/if I finish this 

this labour thirteen of herculist 

kiss my knuckles and bliss me with 

yon delta, peerless, pleasure zone, 

hippolyta, my very own 

american standard making moen

A Cruel Lens

W ater is a cruel lens
now, that i am cut off
now, that i have fallen

now, that i am detached
from the tree, and stricken
now, that you have fallen

and what will happen first?
will you evaporate
or will i flameless burn?

or shall we not take turns?

Strings

E lle rêve. si elle dort
avec son violon
entre ses genoux.

les quatre lignes fines
sur la cuisse l'intérieur
de la matinée.

l'âme du violon.
l'âme d'éveillant.

  










S he dreams. if she sleeps
with her violin
between her knees.

the four fine lines
on the inside thigh
of the morning.

the soul of the violin.
the soul awakening.

Daddy's Sweater

T his is my daddy’s sweater

it zips up with a bronze talon zipper

it’s an army green but never been in the army sweater

this is the patch on my daddy’s sweater

it doesn’t match, it’s a ladybug patch sewn over

the first one which was denim, which i thought was better

this is a wood-splitting, which we did, sweater

a walk in the woods, which we never took, sweater

this is a waffle woven giant hole at the wrist sweater

this is a holy sweater, since it makes me pray all year sweater

this is a walk with your daughter you fool sweater

a praying all year for cool autumn weather sweater

First Tomato

I take in the first tomato today
a Better Boy™ from 
my tiny Eden hidden terrace potted estate hobby garden .

                select your endings

Sunday Sonnet

D doesn't care where I graduated from school
or that my best church-going shoes are hiking boots
D doesn't really care what translation I use
or that my guitar is hardly ever in tune

D doesn’t care about my Appalachian twang
or that some, if not most, of my sermons are train
wrecks, or that all of the hymns under my fingers
groan like the blues and we meet where they play bingo

D doesn’t care about my stories or my plots
or my notes on the words from the carpenter’s cross
but she is quite happy about one of the arts
that I have practiced and mastered, at least in part,
the art of holding one of her hands, not too tight,
while pushing her wheelchair, a steady pace and straight

Tone: excerpt from installment #4

Tone 1:4

I hate Sundays. Especially late in the day. Bad things happen on Sunday evening. The Wonderful World of Disney really didn’t come on in colour like the advertisement said it would. Not if you have a black and white T.V. What did I know about receptors and decoders and tri-colour reproducers? Give me a break. I was 7 years old. I thought that was the wonderful thing about it– the show would ride in on a full colour horse and make your T.V. a colour T.V. for an hour. You know, just like the fairy with the wand turns the peacock. That explains a lot I guess about my childhood. I was a hopeful romantic. The guys in the Alamo would hold out. Ole Yeller wouldn’t die at the end. The horse with the broken leg wouldn’t get put down. 

Read the rest of installment #4
 

Seasons

fall fumbles on
their fading grass
winter dribbles
behind its back

spring delivers
and summer tips
his greenest pitch
her worsted cap

Courtly Lubber

she's out

of my mind

she brings me

to her knees

she laughs

in my face

i walk

in her sleep

Searching for Charles on July 4

 

i tried to find your grave today

but i could not

locate the place

so this small stone will have to do

to mark my remembering you

the sun was high at noon today

i trod alone

that barren place

the shadows clung close to their stones

like puppies to their chosen ones

The Man Hunt

______________________
In Memoriam

Andrew Samuel Griffith

June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012
______________________

A  
lways as a child

I watched and still watch

to build a manhood from black and white parts

the dandy map

with the sticky buttons

that was my map

the squad car

with antenna arc

that was my car

the guitar

on the front porch

that was my guitar

but these were just things

just props just staging

for the real building

the quiet sheriffing

the choir singing

the barney protecting

the aunt bee teasing

the opie instructing

the miss crump courting

and so the show goes on

in my own plans

to 10-4 first

and never to curse

but someday to marry

the county nurse

__________________________________________

Special thanks to my daughter Kate who helped take notes in the car on the way home from her Zumba class!

Image: Fair use. Screen shot of "The County Nurse" from season 2, first aired March 19, 1962

Passion/Pas Jeûnes

l'âme l'altiere de l'amour,

vole delà de l'eau.

le vol delà de l'eau,

apporte l'avilissement.

l'indigne de la diamant,

l'amant affamé de lundi.

l'indigne des monts,

les vieilles les monts,

les mains des jeunes

d'hommes, pas jeûnes.

 

Passion/Not Fasting 

the haughty soul of love,
flies across the water.

the flight across the water,
brings degradation.

unworthy of the diamond,
the lover hungry for monday.

unworthy of the mountains,
the old mountains,

the hands of young men,

not fasting.

Aftermath Class

                                                                                                             L.L. Dean 2012

how she held back
hair from fountain
lips breaking up
silver vaulting

while squatting and
and fumbling at
my locker my
coldblooded mind

forsaking all
numbers i twirled
the knurled nose of
my lock and watched

four pink finger-
prints charming on
that flagrant nape
unmoved she flew

past my torn mouth
numinous and
promising as
a fervent frog’s