poem: Mary Karr dreaming on Chuck
long-limbed branded rifleman,
avatar of the dreaming west,
Jason in his rounds of the steepled
frogbent gloom, life
mirrored in the groves
of door-to-door misery
plumping the pillows
of the dried scrolls
at the bottom of your belly,
asking for naught but
entry into this life,
that life, any other
but the drumblooming
frenzy that freezes your belly
taut, lightning bugs
starlighting your fate
inside the screened-in porch
of your wary mind,
casting a weary eye down alley,
across lawnspace,
up and down the doxy gams
of your sister's bounty:
live in that shadow long
enough & the Specific
rolls its head into your
drowsy tentacled afternoons,
the call is inventory-blessed,
catching fire in the swamplands,
the delta force of a belated
gaggle of angels calling
you out, calling you forth,
calling you past the rounding
place of your withered home,
prairie dog hermitage
coyote nunnery
cottonmouth nest in the synapses
of a spoiled food fate:
Chuck was ever nothing more than
the call to your own desertion,
the world tumbling
through your bones,
your daddy momma sister
in the waters
of memory's collapsible gate.
avatar of the dreaming west,
Jason in his rounds of the steepled
frogbent gloom, life
mirrored in the groves
of door-to-door misery
plumping the pillows
of the dried scrolls
at the bottom of your belly,
asking for naught but
entry into this life,
that life, any other
but the drumblooming
frenzy that freezes your belly
taut, lightning bugs
starlighting your fate
inside the screened-in porch
of your wary mind,
casting a weary eye down alley,
across lawnspace,
up and down the doxy gams
of your sister's bounty:
live in that shadow long
enough & the Specific
rolls its head into your
drowsy tentacled afternoons,
the call is inventory-blessed,
catching fire in the swamplands,
the delta force of a belated
gaggle of angels calling
you out, calling you forth,
calling you past the rounding
place of your withered home,
prairie dog hermitage
coyote nunnery
cottonmouth nest in the synapses
of a spoiled food fate:
Chuck was ever nothing more than
the call to your own desertion,
the world tumbling
through your bones,
your daddy momma sister
in the waters
of memory's collapsible gate.
Labels: past nothing
8 Comments:
Somehow missed Chuck-the-branded-rifleman along my own way, but didn't need to know him to appreciate the sounds and cadences of this wistful bit of backward reflection. Loved the "drumblooming frenzy," the "lightning bugs starlighting your fate," the "doxy gams," the weary/wary, the quartet of withered home/prairie dog hermitage/coyote nunnery/ cottonmouth nest"; loved all of it right down to memory's collapsible gate. Only you could have so much fun singing in melancholy...
some wonderful imagery here and I LOVE drumblooming!
screened in porch of your wary mind...
I'm in the very beginning of Lit - have it on the iPad and I am reading 2 others - one on the kindle and Scott Bell's Plot & Structure. The iPad seduces me to time wasting (Words With Friends is addicting and Zite which is a sort of rss magazine that "learns: as you "like" items.)
I love the image of the Delta Force angels calling you out and the collapsible gate of memory. Mary got you stirred up :)
love the gaggle of angels calling me home and the prarie dog hermitage with a coyote nunnery. I hope I don't have cottonmouths nesting in my synapses, but one never knows...
Happy Sunday to you, bro!
Anno: I was just singin' harmony to Ms Mary. No Chuck Connors in Rifleman for you? CC was probably TV's version of the Duke. In her second memoir Cherry, Ms Karr informs us that as a young girl she wrote poems to Chuck's character "Jason McSomething" in Branded: early cross, maybe, between Highway to Heaven and Caradine's Kung Fu, if you can imagine that heady goo.
Dee: In the recent duke-out between MK's Cherry and Charles Portis' Masters of Atlantis, I fulling expected CP to win out, but I have to say that MK's got me in her clutches for the duration. I liked the delta force gaggle, too.
Teresa: I'm thinking more along the lines of cotton candy nesting up there in those brilliant TZ synapses of yours. You pick the colors.
Yesterday, Walden's friend Aidan took one look at my tri-colored (blue coconut, creamsicle, and tamarind) sno-cone and said, "Looks like clown hair in a cup to me." Cracked me up. Still does.
The way my hair is sticking out in random curls today, I feel more like Medusa with cottonmouth snakes.
Love the clown hair in a cup. You have interesting taste in sno-cones. I didn't know one could get blue coconut and tamarind. I only knew about Blueberry and strawberry.
Teresa: Vinh, our local vendor, is, in Walden's estimation, the George Lucas of sno-cones. In other words, a genius. Walden has tasted all 30 flavors, and declares them all superb. When he goes to Vinh's windows these days, he either says, "Surprise me," or "Anything." Vinh loves Walden; Saturday, he handed him the cone and said, "Here you go, Mr. Anything."
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