Content copyright . Louis McKee. All rights reserved.
Philip Dacey
THE ART
OF LOUIS MC KEE
--from
Volume 24 spring ‘07
Classical artists inevitably run the risk of seeing their work undervalued. Given Quintilian’s “The perfection of art is to conceal art” and Ovid’s pithier “It is art to conceal art,” the artist who follows their lead will lack the showy literary gestures some readers consider a sign of strong writing. In the dance world, virtuosity is distrusted; in the
literary world, it is not distrusted enough. Louis McKee is one of those artists who eschew flash and glitter, and exploring the nature of his artistry provides a lesson in the essential humility and genius of the classical poet.
The career during which he has consistently practiced such a demanding kind of art spans many books and chapbooks, including particularly River Architecture (1999), a selection of much of his best work from his earlier years, and more recently Near Occasions of Sin (2006). Poems referred to in this appreciation can be found in either of those books …. (and are printed below.)
One of the latter group, “Light,” provides an excellent launchpad for a look at McKee’s work because its relative briefness is inversely proportional to its abundant artistry.
In music, minimalism equals minimal means/maximum effect, a little developed into a lot. Similarly, “Light” is like a resonating chamber where its limited number of elements recur and vary and echo back and forth, often inconspicuously. The main element is identified in the title and recurs in numerous forms: electric lights in houses, the light of awareness (“He knew... I didn’t”), a house on fire, the tip of a lit cigarette, darkness as the inverse of light. In context, “In the dark” is both literal and metaphorical, suggesting the son’s insufficient understanding of his father. Also, the father darkens the house in a positive way by not wasting light whereas the now-adult son’s dark carries regret, a sense of loss or waste.
Note numerous other quietly operative felicities that give this poem weight and direction: “leave” at the start refers to the allowing of lights to burn but later returns implicitly in “ran from the house” as a permanent leave-taking from the family; the father “owed” money but the son “was indebted” emotionally; “I was not coming back” broadens from its first meaning here--not returning to a room--to not ever coming home again; the father in effect ultimately “leaves” by dying but then comes back at the
end, visible across the dark room. And “as though it were on fire” is poignantly ironic, given the son’s departure from the house his father darkens and the son had carelessly kept lit. The implication is that what drove the son from the house was the son himself. (It ought to be said that this poem looks back to, and is in a class with, Robert Hayden’s “Those Sunday Mornings.” The independent strength of “Light” gives the lie to amateur poets’ fear of reading lest they be influenced unduly.)
“Light,” in summary, exploits its few elements to a fullness without straining or self-display. A reader can be forgiven for finding it moving while not also consciously observing and crediting its workings. The poem’s dense, intricate, inventive weave of its parts is there to serve, not be the focus of attention. The poem is classically classical.
While shunning look-at-me literary performances, the Romans also loved to uncork long sentences, often periodic; i.e., grammatically unresolved until the very end. How justify them? Such sentences less advertised the poet than gave emphasis and drive to the content of them, raising the emotional ante, suggesting a state of intense and directed energy. And such sentences can be found throughout McKee’s work, where they seem effortless, because of their flow. “1962” (a good example of the historical dimension of his latest book) is 24 lines long and contains only two sentences, the
second 18 lines long itself. In “Alone, Not Lonely,” he unwinds a 21-line doozy of a sentence. These sentences and others like them seem to grow out of themselves, organically, not be the product of artistic manipulation; in fact, however, they’re about as natural as a ballet dancer spinning repeatedly on the axis of one toe. To write in that manner, one must be less a blossoming flower than a commanding general.
“Sisyphus,” while exemplifying many virtues characteristic of McKee, also demonstrates the emotional power of the long McKee sentence we’ve been talking about. Beginning with the word “Today,” halfway through the poem, McKee gives the reader a ride--“like ice riding its own melting,” as Frost said--that is syntactically the equivalent of the ride the speaker, who is in love with another man’s wife, is giving to his own heart. The sentence descends the page like the Sisyphean rock itself. In the context of the poem, the non-stop sentence/descent also echoes both an extended riff by Thelonius Monk and the spinning of a quarter on a bar. Such seamless layeredness marks high artistry. (For more seamless layeredness, see “Seascape” and how it moves with such easy--i.e., hard-won--grace between ocean waves and a woman and time’s give-and-take.)
“Sisyphus” allows us to segue to other strengths of McKee. I love the moment in the poem when the speaker asks, “Did I say my wife?” The question draws for us a bright, shining line between the voice we hear and the craftsman silently hammering the poem together, a line readers can easily and understandably fail to see. If the poet had really misspoke, all he’d have to do is change his wording. Instead, the “wrong word” precisely
reveals the pathos and quandary of the star-crossed lover. (Wallace Stevens: “Personally, I like words to sound wrong.”)
And when the lover refers to “another psychiatrist,” McKee leaves out the name of Freud, not only honoring the intelligence of his readership but also acknowledging that what is unsaid sometimes communicates more than what is said. Much of a typical McKee poem, in fact, takes place in the margins or between the lines. In “Summer Neighbors,” for example, about a failed human connection, he refers to the ocean’s changing appearance from night to day, as it goes “black then blue, black, blue.” A
lesser poet would have drawn an explicit connection between emotional pain and the black-and-blue of a bruise; McKee’s poem is the more powerful for his not doing so, as serious pain is beyond words. It’s his reticence that speaks, if you will, of that pain.
Likewise, in “Empathy,” the speaker admits, “I don’t know / what to say about the events in
an off-hand anecdote or reminiscence but to a virtual meditation on language and friendship and erotic pleasure; the deliberate tonal misdirection prevents our resistance to entertaining some hefty considerations.
The Irish poet Brendan Kennelly has called McKee “a moving, complex love-poet, at once passionate and reserved.” I agree completely, and the judgment points us toward one place where McKee brings his artistry of restraint consistently to bear. After all, one of the Latin poets quoted at the start is one of the world’s great love poets. Connecting the dots of classical art and love suggests that great love poems selflessly focus on
the love-object or the lovers’ relationship, not on displays of the writer’s skills. The following line by McKee--a declaration as strikingly authoritative and personal as anything in Akhmatova--“The differences / between what two people thought / and what they said is a wildfire,” is a prime example of the passionate reserve Kennelly admires.
The references to Ovid and Akhmatova remind us that McKee studied Latin (as well as Spanish) for several years and was a Russian language minor in college. And, inspired by an Auden essay, he delved further into English in a way not enough American poets have: “I eventually got one of those two-volume OED's, boxed with a magnifying glass, and for many years used it regularly.” Such studiousness sets into sharp relief the artistry that hides itself but is founded upon years of preparation and the assiduous development of an aesthetic consciousness. Just as athletes train, McKee
trained. (As a high-schooler, he memorized Poe’s “The Bells” and won a bet; more training.)
McKee’s most recent book features much attention to love. “Trespassing” economically anatomizes a triangle and ends, “The breach in the fence was not / of my doing, even if the crossing over was; / let him tend, then, to his tasks / for both--for all--our sakes.” The erotic also finds a home here. The title of “Rosato” refers to both the wine and the reddened face of the woman, whose private parts are explored in public by her partner. And “In Medias Res” (not a surprising title for a classical poet) combines both a triangle and the explicit description of a sexual act.
Another, different triangle appears in “The Nurturing,” where, with great tact, McKee tells the story of an adult male relieving the pressure in his best friend’s nursing wife’s breasts by sucking on them with the approval of the husband. And such signature tact occurs in “Starting Over,” about a Barbie doll he finds and keeps as a kind of companion: in other hands the poem could have been just cute or embarrassingly lugubrious but it’s pitched by McKee straightforwardly, coolly, and is all the more poignant for his doing so.
Reading these and other McKee’s love poems, which often are elegiac, I thought of Wilfred Owen’s “the poetry is in the pity” because pathos (pain, desire) is so prominent in so many of the poems, but it’s pathos shaped and delivered by his keen ear and command of language and form. McKee knows how to negotiate between manner and matter. He speaks, as lover, of “pieces of myself I was going to give” to his beloved, but the poems are equally pieces of himself he’s giving to us, his readers.
If part of McKee’s art is his ability to disarm his readers and put them at ease in his presence, so that he can work his magic, one further element in his work responsible for that ability could be his Roman Catholicism. “I was waylaid on my way to the seminary -- her name was Marie, God love her,” McKee has said. The term “confessionalism,” used in a literary context, usually recalls Sylvia Plath and Co., but the term when applied to McKee can mean the practice of treating his readers like father-confessors and revealing to them weaknesses or failures that he has faced by means of a veritable examination of conscience. In “Rain,” a poem knitted unobtrusively together by the imagery of stones, the speaker confesses he has “lusted / after the Winochek girl” and made things worse by persecuting a classmate who had done the same thing. (It’s appropriate here to recall the title of McKee’s latest collection, The Near Occasions of Sin, a book, according to Brendan Kennelly, “in the state of grace.”) The effect of such confessionalism is to expose the speaker’s vulnerability, to put the reader in a position that invites understanding and empathy, even forgiveness.
McKee’s Irishness also pervades his work and may in part account for much of his music and rhetoric (e.g., his management of sentences). As he says in “Noblesse Oblige,” he grew up with “wordslingers” in his blood. He has described his own family as “crude, rowdy, and vulgar,” and is proud when a cousin, seeing McKee’s blood after a minor accident, calls it “the blood of Irish kings.” In the space and tension between vulgarity and royalty, the drama of McKee’s poetry plays itself out. McKee’s restraint as
a poet is remarkable enough, but verbal restraint for an Irishman is akin to a miracle.
The very non-Irish/non-Catholic African-American blues plays its role, too, in McKee’s verbal music. The blues, he tells, “has to be said / twice if anyone is going / to hear.” The remarkable poem “The Angels” employs repetition so deftly it creates fugal effect. A handful of words and phrases recur and weave in and out and around each other in staggered succession. The poem as a kind of sonic tour-de-force, obsessively repetitive like John Adams or Philip Glass--there’s that minimalism again--while at the same time never losing touch with the voice of the speaker recalling his adolescence. Brendan Kennelly reaffirms that combination when he says that McKee’s poems have “the candour of a next-door neighbor” but also “sound like songs--winged, humane, vulnerable.”
Sometimes McKee’s humaneness comes across as not so much in the Western
classical tradition as in the Eastern classical tradition, when he sounds fairly Chinese: “I wish you were here / sitting beside me on the riverbank.” He could be Li Po missing and writing to Tu Fu.
In “Following Tracks,” from River Architecture, McKee writes of “stones...glowing with moonlight” that “lend some hope to this miserable night.” Such writing, so freighted with pathos and balanced in articulation and emotion, reminds me of Eliot on Tennyson. The modern Anglican argued that the quality of Tennyson’s faith was measurable by the quality of his doubt. In McKee, the quality of his hope is measurable by the quality of his
lamentations.
It is the essence of McKee’s work to be rich in artifice and craftsmanship and informed poetic strategies while at the same time consistently brave in its presentation of two confrontations: a person’s with himself and that person’s with the world outside himself. To read McKee is to witness drama and struggle; if the art is hard-won, the human
victories are, too. McKee is a bracing and welcome poet, whose artistry and
accomplishment must not go unsung.
**************************************
The following poems are cited in the above essay:
Young, I would leave
lights on, and Father,
a few steps behind me,
would turn them off.
He knew what I didn't;
that despite my intentions
I was not coming back.
He only used what light
he needed, for newspapers
and crosswords, for calculating
what he owed to whom
and why. I never knew
how much I was indebted,
and ran from the house
as though it were on fire.
Old, now; it should be
easier to sit in the dark.
Sometimes I think I see him,
my father, sitting across
the dark room, only the red
burn of his cigarette moving.
--from Right As Rain
(Nova House Press, 2000)
BACK TO THE POEMS
Sonny Liston was running
around Georges Hill
wielding a gun, and a block
away, Mary, the Mother of God,
had appeared to three girls
in the park and told them
to pray for peace. Hell,
in this neighborhood
anything might happen;
this was Nineteen Sixty-two,
and Gary "
was screaming from transistors
the kids on
carried, and the girls danced
while the boys tossed
pennies against the walls
of the factories, of their future,
and as young as I was, sitting
on the step with Linda Davis,
I knew I should kiss her,
and make something else happen
on the hot summer streets
of
to help us remember them.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
In a last minute attempt to hold on
to something I couldn't name
I picked a wildflower from a field
in
and dirt and broken glass, where we walked,
a woman and I, who had become friends
quickly that afternoon over bottles of beer
in a dirty, harshly lit bar that should have
been a luncheonette, though if it were
you would not have eaten there. Anyway,
the woman and I had gone for a walk
through the back door and into an open field
where she seemed to think it was safe
to share a joint, though I'm not so sure
that was what I was after -- as if it were
a purple flower I'd gone looking for,
but in the end, that is what I got,
and I was still holding it in my hand
when my bus pulled away from the depot
across the street, and I looked out
the window pretending she was there
waving goodbye with a smile bigger
than all of
of back inside the dumpy bar, looking
for another stranger to buy her drinks,
who might share a joint, a kiss or two,
and take nothing with him when he left
except maybe a flower neither of them
could name, one of those you can find
in every weedy corner of the state.
I was carrying a book for the long ride
home, but I don't remember which one.
It is somewhere on my shelves now,
and in it there is written a name and number,
in case you ever get to
in case
and there is a flower, too, an unnamed
purple weed, like on of those you'll find
in every corner of
get the chance to go looking for it.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
I think this is what I remember: some psychiatrist or other,
I assume his name was Asperger, wrote about abnormality,
an autistic personality, and he documented symptoms,
many of them more important, but the only one I recall
is that children with the disorder are given to spin, and watch
spinning objects, apparently for long periods of time.
I’ve been sitting here for hours, a book of Greek myths
open on my knee, and Thelonius Monk on the CD, two
disks I’ve been playing over and over for weeks, solo
tracks, and I particularly like three different takes
of “April in
to the music than I am to the story of Sisyphus, “the absurd hero,”
Camus called him – it is actually Camus I’m supposed to discuss
with my students in the morning, but what I’ve been thinking about really is my wife
and her mind, the way it is spinning, the way it has been, like a quarter
a lonely man lost in his beer and the wake of a few bad days
set to spinning on its edge, a picture in itself of sad boredom,
all the more sad, I think, if over the din of the talking
and the television in the corner being ignored, it is Monk’s piano,
what I think must be the sound track of many lost lives,
so why couldn’t it be the slow “April in
why not? It is playing again now, and I’m watching
my own quarter spinning, my wife’s mind spinning.
Did I say my wife? A slip of the tongue,
something more often connected with another psychiatrist, a whole
other story, and this other guy would have plenty to say
about all this, but I’ll save that for another day.
Today it’s about this woman changing her mind, her mind
spinning like a beer drinker’s quarter in a dark corner of a bar,
a woman’s prerogative, I understand, to spin, to change,
and tonight I’m thinking about this woman changing like Tam Lin,
and I’m trying to hold onto her, because the story says
that is the only way to break the spell, and this woman,
who, by the way, is not my wife, but someone else’s,
is changing, spinning, and tonight I am mesmerized like a child
with an autistic personality, an abnormality,
and I can’t see either side of the coin, though I try, everything
riding on the way it falls, and head or tails -- my friend,
Jerry, used to say, “heads I win, tails
you lose,” and mostly he was right, his personality
was also abnormal, and everyone, me included, loved him,
and because of that he almost always got his way,
whichever way the coin fell, and the woman, married
to the other man, however the quarter of her mind falls,
she will win and I will lose, but for now
all I can do is watch the coin spin as though I have
Asperger’s Syndrome, and even Monk, pounding the keys,
can’t help me get this rock to rest on top of the mountain.
--appeared on DOL – Drexel On Line;
and The New Zoo Review
BACK TO THE POEMS
Once I stood here with some regularity
and watched the waves mount the morning,
rolling up only to come undone on the beach.
I saw monotony, the day by day
undoing of the hour. Today, time
is nearly gone, and breakers still crest
white with a start, like a woman I knew
who would tease me by flashing her breasts
when life was insisting other things
were more important. I loved her for that,
even though I knew she was doing it
because she could do no more,
and this was something she hoped
I would hold on to until some time when
things slowed down, or stilled.
But the waves keep coming, keep dying
on the sand. If I raise my eyes, though,
the white wash of another wave breaks
the blues, like a breast, a lovely promise.
They told me when I was young
to keep by back straight, my head high –
the thing is, to keep your eyes on the horizon.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
A girl was sitting near me
on the stones. Summer neighbors,
we hardly knew one another,
and so sat there with our own
thoughts. Or I did. Blue
water in the ocean turns black
with evening. Did you know that?
The sun was still behind me,
but a shade was coming
over the day. I wondered
what it was made the ocean go black
and then blue again. How could I
even be sure it would be blue again?
When I felt her hand take hold
of my shoulder, I shivered
as though a chill had torn the heat
from my back. She misunderstood
and quickly pulled her hand away.
I said nothing, although
I wanted to. I wanted to
call her back, to hold her hand
and tell her about the water changing,
going black then blue, black, blue.
I wanted to call her, but couldn’t
remember her name, for Christ’s sake,
couldn’t even say, “wait,”
as she walked away along the rocks
watching her step, saying something,
“see you later,” or something.
I just sat there, watching her
walk away, watching the water go black,
wondering about the blue of morning.
--from River Architecture
(Cynic Press, 1999)
BACK TO THE POEMS
For months I’ve been staring at a large print of the “
pinned to the wall over my desk.
I’ve been trying to write a poem about 9/11 – something I don’t
feel comfortable about,
but think needs to be done. When politics enters my writing, it is usually
like a dog’s nose
poking in from the margin, or some sneaky Kilroy peeking out from
behind a wall;
whatever I am doing doesn’t seem to interest them, and they move along.
The empty space in lower
this is what Picasso was showing us. Nazis
bombed the shit out of a small Basque village in 1937 while Franco just
stood by.
It wasn’t a very good time for the artist, either. I look at those poor creatures –
the tortured imagery – the woman with arms outstretched, an anguished mother
and child,
a man trampled underfoot, an agonized horse, a bull seemingly befuddled –
I don’t know
what to say about the events in
the people who lost their lives.
Recently, I have had my heart broken. Hardly a comparable situation.
But sometimes I look at the Picasso on the wall and I see the pain in those faces –
pained faces that may closely reflect those who suffered in the
But what I know is the smaller but horrendous pain I have been feeling.
I see the anguish, the shock and terror in those faces, and I know that last night,
at the age of fifty-one, I cried, and not very quietly.
I know that empathy and sympathy can only go so far – that pain is pain, though;
and if my pain is lesser, less nobly earned, then so be it. It hurts nonetheless;
these people I saw once on the wall at MOMA hurt, and for a moment I identified
the pain.
That sad expanse of black and white, and a bad situation with a woman –
a silly piece of Art, and a petty, selfish moment –
this is how we come to elegy, and for a moment I am embarrassed,
but not because of the tears growing fat in my eyes.
--appeared in New Zoo Poetry Review
--for Frank Allen
What does it say -- remarkable?
Worthy of being remarked upon?
Is that enough? Get to it;
find out why you noticed
and now want to say so.
Nothing you call "remarkable,"
when the word satisfies you,
is even worth an adjective.
Frank, I wish you had
been with me today: I stopped
at a roadside stand somewhere
in
and a chance to stretch my legs.
The woman who worked there,
apparently alone in the middle
of nowhere, in the slow hours
of the off-season, had warm
blue eyes, and a ring
in her voice that made each word
sound like it came with a prize.
Our exchange was all business:
I had someplace to be; she had to
be there. I thought of you, though,
and I wanted to tell you
that this woman was remarkable.
Later, I'll think of other things
to say, other, better, words,
but for now it is enough
just to have taken notice, to have
mentioned it to a friend
who knows a lot about diction.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
Men have measured their ends
and driven stakes, laid rocks,
along the edges. Fences were built,
and it was understood, the idea,
that one has a right to his own.
Tonight I roll my fingers
through a wisp of hair loosed
at a woman's neck and linger.
I look with sadness into sad eyes --
another man's world; I covet it.
The breach in the fence was not
of my doing, even if the crossing over was;
let him tend, then, to his tasks
for both, for all, our sakes.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
Everyone’s dead
serious, or laughing
crazy, looking deep
into each other’s eyes
for a spark, or a tear,
some hint of what
it’s all about,
while under the table,
under their noses,
under your skirt
I roll my fingertips
in your soft pubic curls
and watch your face
redden like the wine.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
I went down on you
in the middle of the afternoon
in the middle of the living room
with the front door wide open
because you got that look in your eyes,
and it didn't help, your clothes
being loose, and I did intend
to hug you goodbye, but your lips
gave way to your tongue, and
your tongue was as sweet as I imagined,
and then you were back in the chair,
the one we've decided is now your chair,
and I was on my knees before you
and the sun was pouring in
over your lovely breasts, your hair
shining, and your husband, God
knows where he was, but
he should've known better.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
Because I said I never had,
and more than likely never would,
she said I could, and I went to her,
kneeling beside the chair where she sat.
She moved her baby to the cradle
of one arm, and opened her blouse,
offering me her swollen breast.
My best friend’s wife; and he knew
how uncomfortable I was, going
to the kitchen to ease the pressure.
His “go ahead” more than permission,
encouragement, almost a blessing.
It was sweet – more than I expected,
but I didn’t want to stay too long, afraid
it might be misunderstood.
And I was worried I might hurt her.
So, it was mindless, really,
when I pulled away, a different man now,
coming through a different childhood,
and then leaned forward, this time
to kiss the rosy nipple. Not a child;
this was the man, bold for the moment,
a lover-son, too embarrassed
to look into her eyes and say thank you.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
After the divorce it took awhile
in a small cheap apartment
but finally I got another house,
this one bigger, emptier.
I moved in with nothing
of my own to fill the rooms,
but still threw out the two chairs
and table the previous owners left.
I kept the doll I found
in the yard, a Barbie with matted
blonde hair and not a stitch
of clothing. A new wife,
I thought, and I proposed to her
right there in the middle
of my cutting the grass, lifting
my beer in a toast to love
and long years together, and though
I doubt she really wanted it,
I did pour some on her hard pretty body,
and used my finger to rub away
the mud that was caked all over her.
Later I actually bather her
in lemon-scented Joy, along with
the dish and glass I’d used for breakfast,
lunch, and dinner.
I didn’t feel weird
about any of this yet; this was still weeks
before I was in Kmart and bought
the outfit, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt,
Cowgirl Barbie, but for comfort, really,
something to wear around the house.
It would have been wrong if I’d gotten
the tight black sequined dress I saw,
or the hot baby blue mini with the silver
belt and matching fuck-me pumps.
It would have been wrong if I had
kept her naked, sitting on the bookcase
bare-assed for all the world to see.
But is this so wrong?
She listens to me
Sometimes; sometimes I can tell
She is not paying attention at all,
but that’s okay; sometimes I’m not much
for talking myself. She is always there
when I need her though. Is that so wrong?
And I’m always there for her.
The yard
is her nightmare, but she knows I won’t
let that happen to her again. I’m not so sure
about the life she’s had, the station to which
she’s been accustomed, but it is good here,
in this big empty house. She is treated well,
and her wardrobe, now, is next to none.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
It is the rain: this afternoon
I had to walk home
through an unexpected storm,
and it has been coming down
steadily since. I think of Stephen
and the stones he suffered.
I think of Chet. He was slow,
the kind of boy who had trouble
writing his name, counting change,
but who turned hits and at bats
in his head every night and knew
the averages of every starter
in the National League. One day
he dropped his pants
in front of Debbie Winochek
and she screamed Rape!
There is more or less
to this story; it comes through years,
and the gossip line, like pails
passed hand to hand by volunteers
at a fire. What happened here
is not important, though, not
to me. It isn’t what happened
that afternoon in the Winochek’s basement
that matters. It’s not
what I think about tonight, listening
as I am to the rain beating like stones
on the roof. I remember Chet,
the last time I saw him – I don’t know
what happened to him, what came
of the whole thing; I only recall
how a week or so later we saw him
sitting by himself on the tracks behind Sears,
and how we acted as one, my friends
and I, picking up stones and throwing them
down at him, and how he was scared
and screamed and cried, but we ignored it,
angry, righteous avenging angels,
who, ourselves, each of us, had lusted
after the Winochek girl, but knew
enough not to do anything about it.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
BACK TO THE POEMS
--for Tom Devaney
“Would you look at that, now,
boyo; ’tis the blood of Irish kings,”
and that quickly I forgot I hurt,
forgot what I didn’t yet know;
the thieves, poachers, herders,
highwaymen, turf-cutters, all
the beaten and weary family ne’er-do-wells,
rogues, liars, and wordslingers,
and every one a tenor, a sport, a cad
you could trust your coat with,
set your cap on, and never
give them, any of them, another thought.
I’d fallen down the wooden steps
with a glass in my hand, and Packy,
just off the boat, somebody’s nephew
or cousin, I’d never seen him before,
and never since, an heir himself,
he took me up in his arms and carried me,
glass in my hand, to the car,
to the hospital, and there was blood,
red royal screaming, from a long
noble line all over his shirt --
“Would you look at that,”
he said, pulling at the bloody mess,
his visit-to-America white shirt,
costlier, probably, than any of his others;
“the blood of Irish kings.” Indeed.
I tell anyone who will listen
that the scar is actually my lifeline;
women touch it with their fingertips.
I let them trace my future,
feel for the pulse beneath, and know
from where it all springs.
from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
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You can go weeks,
months, years, and bad
things keep coming,
piling up in the corner
until they can't be ignored
any longer, and it is then
that you go into the yard
and finally say something
about it, say it twice,
in fact. This is the blues,
and it has to be said
twice if anyone is going
to hear, if anyone is
going to feel it.
I'd like to tell you
that you go back inside,
then, and it's gone,
the mountain of grief
you left in the corner.
But that's not how it is.
The bad things are still
there, always will be.
However, outside the night
is filled with sad song,
sad twice, and its beautiful.
-- from The Near Occasions of Sin
(Cynic Press, 2006)
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Adolescence came the night
we were walking back from the playground
after all the basketball we could fit in
before dark, and a loud car pulled up
beside us, four girls, a red Mustang,
the Angels, loud, on the radio,
but they didn’t need directions, they knew
where they were going. What they didn’t know
was that we were thirteen, not even
in high school – that’s what they asked us,
What school ya go to? but something told us
to hedge the question, the Angels, loud
girls, too many girl groups, we made fun of them,
Ronettes,
but not the Angels. The Angels were okay
for some reason. That should have been a hint.
Things were changing; things were
already different: a red Mustang and four girls,
the Angels singing, and the lights over the court
girls pulled up beside us, four guys
and a basketball, a radio loud, girls
singing, and we hedged questions
until they pulled away laughing, loud,
four girls, the red Mustang, amber lights
winking in the distance, music, girl groups,
four, loud, and that last night, Thank you
and goodnight, Thank you and goodnight,
(Cynic Press, 2006)
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From a moving train, through windows
smeared with the dirty air of a dozen states,
there is nothing to be seen.
Just stones, behind us and getting farther
away, glowing with moonlight.
They are irretrievable now, but still
lend some hope to this miserable night.
Ahead there is another town;
I don’t know that yet, and tonight
I am quick to doubt it, but tracks
always go on to another town.
There will be more lights there,
more stones shining with the bellyful
of moon. You can trust a train
on a miserable night, and the promise of stones.
--from River Architecture
(Cynic Press, 1999)
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