Sunday, July 10, 2011

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.

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8 Comments:

Blogger anno said...

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...

10:18 AM  
Blogger Dee Martin said...

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 :)

12:05 PM  
Blogger Teresa said...

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!

12:19 PM  
Blogger murat11 said...

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.

12:46 PM  
Blogger murat11 said...

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.

12:49 PM  
Blogger murat11 said...

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.

12:53 PM  
Blogger Teresa said...

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.

8:05 PM  
Blogger murat11 said...

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."

9:40 PM  

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