Minor Men

(in honor of Henry Thomas, Robert Pete Williams, Lottie Murrell

Joe Callicott, and so many more)

 

The men who sang the blues—

played the riffs that I teach myself—

lie quietly in graves

that few, if any, 

people ever visit.

 

     Alive, these bluesmen

     wanted nothing but to play,

     not caring that the future

     would make them great.

 

None lived dignified and distinguished,

dressed in nice shoes and stiff hats.

Most could sing personally

about the jailhouse or county farm.

 

     Their best licks

     carried solemn knowledge.

     The greatest verses

     held the weight of us.

 

     They sang about goin' down t' the crossroads,

     how badly they'd been mistreated,

     the way their women done them wrong,

     about goin' home.

 

I look at their photographs,

the lined faces that so few remember,

at the sunken cheeks and broken teeth,

and there are more often smiles

smirked beneath beaming eyes

that seem to say

these men savored life

until their last breaths.

Timeline

Two and a half million years ago,

the first imprints of man led

from the Olduvai Gorge,

and, serendipitous

or planned perhaps,

the feet of Homo habilis

stepped into Homo sapien.

Mongols, Turks, Phoenicians:

barbaric tribes dismounted their steeds

and gathered in civilized politics.

What dreams and visions

did the first men and women

carry in their evolving brains?

What hopes powered their desire?

Sumer, Mesopotamia, Egypt,

and the great classical eras

of Greece and Rome —

Senators, statesmen, saints and martyrs

all urged and coaxed humanity

from its origin in the Serengeti

toward a more advanced world.

Democracies, aristocracies, dictatorships —

split between ideologies,

people marched to gain control.

Kings craved more land,

knights galloped in search of grails,

only to fall in the smoke

of gunpowder and artillery.

Crusades, revolutions, invasions —

patriotism and loyalty

pit nations against one another.

Men and women followed

rank and file from one history

to a future that now burns

with fiery mushroom clouds.

Two and a half million years ago,

had our footprints led in another direction,

where would we end up tomorrow?

Beyond Sympathy

I weep:

for the boy
bleeding from shrapnel
in his head,

the mother who buries
her children beneath
the burning sands of Canaan,

the soldier who pulls the trigger
when his edgy nerves
no longer withstand the strain,

the engineer who spends
meticulous hours
inventing ways to kill.

I do not weep for the dead.
They no longer suffer what we do.

Don't Shed Your Tears For Me

(Tanka Blues)

Tanka: a five-line poem in a meter of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables

1

One day I will walk

naked like the August sun

across a round sky;

     Do not miss me when I'm gone,

     it would only cloud your thoughts.

2

Please don't bury me

in a cold and hollow grave;

let my ashes fly

     where only light remembers

     all that has come and moved on.

3

When it's time to go,

let me leave here forever.

Don't enshrine my name —

     a funeral is for those

     who believe they need to cry.

4

Why kill white lilies

and shroud your head in sorrow

to mark my passing.

     I hope while I was living

     I gave you reason to smile.

Bar Riff: Fallen Petal

A slow gig,

not many listeners,

summer tethers sweat

upon my brow,

but the notes settle

easy upon the barstools.

Old men in T-shirts,

leaning on the bar,

waggle their tongues about

motel maids

and “gals” who got away.

The bartender serves requests,

on key,

in time—

knows the regular favorites.

At the end of the bar,

a black-haired girl,

dances with a pint of gin,

unzips her black dress,

lets it fall like a dahlia petal,

and dances out the door,

into thick fluid moonlight.

My guitar stutters,

a half rest,

changes tempo,

leads my fingers through

unwritten chords.

Aria

Aria

Fog rolls in this evening,
like an old song I had almost forgotten—
a soft melody that sifts through the air,
the way a fond memory
brings a smile to my face.

Aleutian geese,
hidden behind the white music,
gaggle and honk on wing,
headed somewhere
I cannot see.

Singing notes into the coming night,
I settle myself at the place
where I need to be.

Memory

We are endangered,
the lot of us: Asian, Malaysian, African, European.
No worse off than other vanishing species,
except we could have done something about it.

Just a blip in the history of everything,
not much more than waking in the morning
and lying down in bed at night.
We were born to die
and we forced the issue:

gunpowder, smog, atomic bombs
genetically engineering the world
into a monoculture,
the creation of lethal viruses.

We paid so little attention
that the end came upon us
before we understood reality.

How could we have forgotten something
that lasts forever?