The Smell of Tweed and Tobacco

Poetry Chapbook from August, 1994

(Jim's favorites highlighted)

The American joints in Prague
Islands of regret, ying and yang
turned on by common language
Return to the herd from isolation
A removal sometimes too distant

Familiar words and glances
slivers of invitation, slices of turning away
"Brokaw said . . ," the words fade out
Piercing female laughter, strident, American
A herd call, that warns of predators

Exclamation of the ill at ease being easy
Unsettled settlers, circle words like wagons
huddled for warmth around a common fire
"Can you imagine a pickup line like that . . ,"
Words from Chicago faster than the planes

Recognition, pulling species to species
Desert watering holes, where no one drinks
sensing lions, edging near to paw the mud
sniffing one another, checking out our kind
Drifting in from distant plains, but not for long

GUARDIANSHIP

They are ancient
this couple on the tram
His face the peaceful
of the truly old
Taking whatever comes
with grace, fingers flipping
The head of the cane
reminding him of life
Near blind, cheek bandaged
handsome even now
A face caught in repose
he approves himself

Facing seats, she watches him
eyes kind with love
Guarding each day left
with all that went before
Given years enough
all roles reverse like their's
Fathers now children
guardians the guarded
His once strong hands
remember their protection
She sees him through
and thinks of flowers

CORNER OF MY MIND

There's a corner of my mind you own
and I don't want it back
but will always be aware
of where it's gone, who holds the mortgage

If it were land, only wilderness would do
Untouched, untrod places in my mind
Were it a house, a fireplace reflecting warmth
Soft wines and conversation, over candlelight

Your ownership treads lightly on my land
A moccasined foot that leaves no trail
letting me look back upon myself
to wonder, if you were really there at all

SUDDEN ILLNESS

No water, that's just the way it is
The tap turned on with expectation
So American, but this is not America
The spigot blindly hisses nothing

Damn, no shower, dishes go unwashed
Unshaven, the one flush already gone
the toilet becomes a silent enemy
for hours, maybe days, unknown time

True civil service, this expecting water
heat or light or elevators up and down
Utility deprivation, reminder of a captive life
Fifth floor jail, the sentence undetermined

So I write and try not to need to pee
Think of other things, try faucets
betting against myself, expecting dry
getting it, cursing as the hours stretch

A day, then two and compromise
Hauling buckets, agreeing to terms
Balancing desire against necessity
each a minor victory over circumstance

Hand fill the toilet tank and flush
Stove heated water for a shave
Nothing more than alteration of routine
It works, I work and life goes on

Like a Christmas gift out of season
suddenly it's back, rusty and spitting
Then running clear and cheered at
Health regained, after sudden illness

SMILE FADING

Teeth showing, smiling as if
no other sign of recogniton worked
Unnatural it seems and forced
Somehow an expected thing

An aggression, this baring teeth
in lower forms of life and yet
there may be evolutionary lag
The welcoming of flashing canines

No message in that smile for me
Thin and flat, of little consequence
Deeper feeling left to quiet eyes
Smile fading, nothing left to prove

Leave it alone, a grin will do
No teeth to prove the pleasure
seeing you, unexpected in my day
We'll sit and drift, stir our coffee

Amused at nearby laughter, shrill
Playing no part in what we share
Quiet water, deeper pools of trust
Our contract signed with no negotiation

Two lives allowed to touch

SCANT RATION

I theorize, permitted in the sense
theories are not laws, belonging
to any mind or state of grace
caring to wander or wonder

Sometimes, in that state suspended
I drift to tribal cultures, test hypotheses
where any breast will feed a child
Skin hunger fed by carrying the young

Only need fulfilled, a scant ration
always shared, knowledge of elders
taken wide eyed, given one on one
Honored both ways in love and trust

Humanism at its core, in simplest form
Power lunch and power love unknown
The wheel wasn't such a damned good deal
It rolls, we forget to trust and love ourselves

Less is more, God is in the details, words of Mies
applied to buildings, defining tribal souls
Time there to watch the wanderings of days
Hold the hand that reaches out without a price

RUMMAGING

Thoughts unspooled and words as yet unwritten
A rummaging in closets, some unopened fifty years
pulling down memories, like old clothes
Wondering if they'll go together, fabrics complimentary
or better thrown out, dragged into the street

Several hats I wore no longer fit this head
The scuffed and well worn boots now pinch my toes
yet scarves of remembrance, still warm to touch
A soft shirt also fits, jeans comfortable with age
Some of it may enhance my current fashion

Perhaps an outfit here, something worth the time
Grabbing, pulling off hangers, some dropped
others brushed off, held up against the light of now
Knowing if the combination doesn't work
at least there's warmth, a covering of nakedness

BRICKS

My aloneness washes over me
like a warm friend
with kind words over coffee
Supporting me with ageless friendship

Thoughts spun out in solitude
The road full of welcome detours
idle contemplation, piles of bricks
To see what arrangement builds a home

No time earlier to peer inside a brick
study fissures, examine the aggregate
Speculation among the cracks and crevices
hot from the kiln and cooling in my mind

One laid upon its brother frames a wall
Mortar slowly set and rich with recollection
Some joints struck, others trowelled
A journeyman's hand to hold the blade

If walls close out, they close in as well
Protection from the breath of wolves
Constructing rooms grown soft and warm
where candlelight throws long shadows

FOLLOWING CLOUDS

Clouds scud by my rooftops quickly
Infuse in me the movement of the earth
Shifting storms against late yellow sky
The moment by moment of timelessness

Front coming in, unaware I'm standing here
looking up and judging preparations
Anxious to be taken unprepared
Swept along to other darker continents

Something wrong with building fortresses
A bid to stand against it all, planting trees
holding on, holding back, holding out
Out of breath with clutching at eternity

Eyes too full of tears to see the slide
of dark and light, amazing color splashed
Structure deconstructed, particles ablaze
Dimension all adrift, following clouds

STEPS ALONG THE WAY

Illusion makes a mockery of reality
and we have thrown in with it
Suspending lives in hopes and dreams
as etherial as disappearing mist

Hungering for there instead of here
Thirst that turns away from inward wells
The hunt for a light that never flickers
Forgetting the romance of wavering candles

The chase its own game, never ending
No pause at the top of darkened hills
to gaze at waves of grass that roll away
toward a horizon of self discovery

Human doings, disguised as human beings
flashing false credentials at the borders
Searching continents with outdated maps
Forward, always forward, damn the sideroads

A destination finally achieved, left wondering
why the streets are empty, no friendly face
at the end of all that troubled journey
The miles winding down to spaces emptied

Never savoring the steps along the way

STAYING NORTH

Late season snowstorm
not even falling, somehow
suspended, boiling in updrafts
if snow can boil
Large flakes, heavy with weightlessness

Is it genetic, this need to see winter,
To pull it around me
warming my soul with cold shrouds
A north country man, longing for south
Held here by need of winter magic

Comfort lies nearer equatorial lines
Warm colors, a gentle breeze of friendship
more easily acquainted in unbundlement
In love with places leaves never fall
Drawn there, held here

The insideness of winter
Steaming breath left at the door
Chairs pulled to warmth of fires
Conversation intimately huddled
A warmth in cold, found nowhere else

KEPT SECRET

A secret I'm keeping
from all my young friends
Something in which they'd find
damn little comfort
So sure that life is slipping
underfoot like sand
It keeps getting so much better
all along the way

Not the teachings of experience
but more common stuff
Friendship deepened
not so badly cut by rivalry
The warmth that comes
from fires that no longer rage
The giving of oneself to another
and needing no return

Not a tired sigh, last gasp
that sees things ending
But a deeper breath of loving
at long last well begun
Knowing all the values
that finally showed themselves
Were in us then, are in us now
will be there yet tomorrow

A PRAYER FOR RAIN

A reflective thought in quiet times
Progress not being quite so much
a matter of things accomplished
as fullfillments promised to myself
Unwrapped carefully like cherished gifts

A world of expectation washed away
Permission to drain the pond
New waters curl around these rocks
while slowly, ever so slowly
sharp edges worn and smoothed to fit

This gentle wearing away, takes time
It comes no faster than it comes
Leaving me to dream a while
with hopes the waters don't recede
and meanwhile pray for rain

UNCUT TIMBER

Gliding, setting cupped wings to land
Tilt, slide in among thick branches
Time for no time, direction undirected
Offering of shade, protected space

A place to rest and ruffle feathers
Preen a bit, resume the song
that began elsewhere, notes sung
from a life in other forests

Restive, with an eye for predators
Interrupted flight, to wing in here
Landing for a while to contemplate
options of unending emigration

Perhaps to stay a while, more likely not
Catching breath and stretching wings
Testing seasons, judging angles of sun
Lost in gentle foliage, then gone

No place to build a nest
No reason to establish this far north
Permanence needs warmer springs
further south than these roots grow

Still, there's something to be said
for the maturity of uncut timber
Years standing against storms
A history of drought and flood

Spread branches that ask nothing
No need to stay, no rush to go
Shelter from one season to the next
A silhouette on migratory routes

FLICKERING IMAGES

It's a sign of age, this
technological complaint
Something gained
something missed
It is what it damn well is
Longing for the time before

When people spoke
Leaned across fences
Smiled on the street
Helped each other
Before the blue flame
ignited every living room

Taking us away from friends
From family
Even from ourselves
Neighborhoods now empty
Fireflies uncaught
The time is gone

When conversation meant
more than table scraps
left to last night's dog
Ravenous again tonight
Panting and lying there
eyes fixed on flickering

DRUMS STILLED

Tribalism, just another endangered species
The genetic birthing of mankind's humanity
passing like drum talk, smoke on the wind
A scattering of ashes, borne away like breath
Leaving us breathless

Ancient forests may yet grow again, not these
Waters be refreshed, a wounded earth heal over
Not here
Not now
Not ever

Tribal worlds will see no reclamation
Drums forever stilled, the flowing breast run dry
Nothing left to suck, but barren thumbs
Uncivilization
Civilized

LOCKS WITHOUT KEYS

This constant and unending
yearn for touch
Pleading of skin softly textured
against skin
Murmured words, warmth of bodies
stretched
The intimacy of waking
to tousled hair
cast across a pillow
caressed in sleep

These things consume
the waking hours
Interventions in the day
Locks without keys
Self exile, yet yearning
for a tearing down
A deconstruction
magnificently conceived
Practiced inelegantly
just behind the eyes

Out of reach and bound away
from knowing
the blind constraint
the fear of nakedness
Not the common stripping off
of clothes
but the unlayering
of protected tenderness
shyly unrevealed
Spoken only in the mind

Blood red thoughts, peeled back
and salted down
Preserved for now against the decay
of rejection
or acceptance
or something in between
A tightwire neverland
too unsteady to walk
No net, the first step never taken
turning back

Imprisoning ourselves
within the walls of solitude
Shuffling feet in timeworn pathways
of avoidance
Eyes cast down, sharp edges of life
worn smooth
Waiting for some unknown jailor
jangling keys
to come and slide back bolts
untumble tumblers

CLEAR IN THE MOMENT

Poetry is, among other things
plain thought
A communication of moments
one to one
And yet it's fashionable
and publishable
to obscure a vision
in labyrinthine language
Creating a kind of metered
crossword puzzle

Labored over, Webster and Roget
in hand
Wandering and lost
in poet's fluttered thought
A run through fields
a waving of gauzy nets
hoping to pin down
the chloroformed specimen
Waiting for Godot in the pages
of New Yorker

E equals MC squared
is such a simple concept
The formulation and proof
beyond the capability
of our more ordinary mind
An envelope pushed
True poetry in the complication
of Einstein's mind
Simpy presented as a gift
clear in the moment

FORGOTTEN COAST

I thought I'd paddle
a forgotten coast
Just to feel sand scrape bottom
as I shoved off
Watch the shoreline
from two feet off the water
Having seen it all
from thirty thousand feet

Flying too high above
leads me to faulty vision
Sometimes the flash of water
running down a blade
The ache across the shoulders
is all there is to know
The only thing that's learned
from being here

And here is where I'm at
trying to squint a bit
Into a sun that blinds me
just before the time to set

BETWEEN THE LIGHTS

From time to time there are lights
CBS or NBC
once again discovers Prague
and the magic dies
if ever there was magic
Maybe just the pooling of our blood

Those of us who live and love
and fight the trams
when the eyes of the world are elsewhere
find it easier then
This life between the lights
The glare turned soft and silver smoked

Hemingway's not here, it couldn't be
the Paris of the twenties
Some godforsaken town will bear
decades from now
a similar sound byte description
and call itself the Prague of the nineties

And television lights will blaze again
across the startled faces
of writers trying to make it work
To pull down scattered circling thoughts
Longing for the quiet times
between the lights

LEGACY

In a life too stingy with permissions
he learned so late to give his own
His first denied, to enter life with grace
Slapped instead to wailing awareness
then torn unasked from breast to bottle

The world is colder than the womb

Permission denied and then denied again
to shit benignly in a diaper, smiling and untrained
or cross a street, question the parental voice
To cry in some unmanly way at hurts
His growing life a rhetoric of learned denial

Not sure he likes this place

Industrialized youth, life as an assembly
stamped, pressed, bottled and capped by forces
not his own, a shape as unknown to his soul
as foreign language, catching in his throat
A manly age, unprepared to be a man

But it's expected and projected

Son to husband to father, struggling and stained
Looking for reflection in all those other eyes
A darkened glass in search of light and warmth
Handed off worn tools to build as best he can
these faded monuments to dreams gone by

Too young for all the dreams to pass

Yet any age is old enough to learn new skills
To feel the warm encouraging embrace of hope
The finding of permissions late in life
Reflection of self worth in bathroom mirrors
Gifts given late, the legacy of other generations

Never too late to pass a good thing on

UNREGISTERED

The meaning of life is so unclear
I wonder at the search
Why all the scrabbling around
in wounded philosophy

A sixty, seventy, eighty years or more
mind fuck
It took so long to know
Nepal had no answers

The relief is finding after all
it doesn't have to register somewhere
on a scale of one to ten
Maybe just a smile over coffee

THE WAITER'S EYE

All this stuff made sense somehow
Poetry when I wrote it or so it seemed
The whole thing just a moment's look
at whatever came along and caused

The muse in me to muse, if anyone
believes in muses anymore, but
that's getting complicated and I know
that poetry's supposed to be thinning

Not fast food, but an evening out
Five courses across linen and candlelight
I feel I've ordered the wrong wine
Made myself a fool over silverware

Which fork is salad, which is meat
I hope perhaps you'll understand
this place is pretty well beyond my means
I hope to have enough to leave a tip

But the waiter's eye is hard for me to catch
Some people are more meant for waiter's eyes
They're instantly there, smiling and obsequious
I have a hard time getting coffee

DIGGING DITCHES

Success, like love
is always hanging close
Can't be thrown and tied
before the bell
Not a rodeo event at all
you know
It slips up behind you
whistling
Taps you
when your feet are wet
and all that's on your mind
is proper boots

Should it come along
I hope it's small
Undemanding
and just a living in it
You'll laugh and say
the hope's well founded
Words on paper
don't make writing
But men's legs aren't made
like horse's
Too heavy a load
they begin to shake

But hell, a man's a fool
not to wish
for evidence
he's got a word to say
that now and then someone
finds worthwhile
There's ego and sweat
in digging ditches too
Everyone digs in something
looking up
to see how near it is
to quitting time

DOC MARTENS

Standin' there
in her Doc Martens
waitin' to kick
some ass

Sometimes
her boots
hold all
the courage there is

MUDDY WATER

I dreamed I was floating
in a tank of literary agents
Murky shadows
darting under me
Surfacing from time to time
for air and money
and giving me
the old fish eye

PERHAPS

Old songs drift across the bar
Differing for every generation
Bits and pieces of memories
clear as shattered crystal

A young man in the fifties, my songs
cry out from the thirties and forties
The decades before me beckoning
while talking up the eighties in the nineties

Times gone, flown like Pierce Arrows
Anachronous as Bogie and Bacall
Forgotten roadhouses and dance bands
Unforgotten memories of heads on shoulders

Drifting smoke before the Marlboro Man
Eyes that never screamed, but touched
Conversations softly held and hands
that sometimes softly held the words

Will they build nostalgia for today
The music no longer melody, but noise
Generations look back on these times
Remember, yearn for them again from there

Perhaps

LAST TIME

Push, pull, moan, grunt
and complain all you want
Just do it from down here
in the writer's trench with me

I can't stand to have you sitting there
Legs over the edge
telling me the dirt I'm throwing
isn't coming fast enough

I'll boost myself up
Wipe my forehead with a sleeve
grin and have a Coke
Ask you how it's goin

We'll crumble thoughts
and swat at flies, wondering
away the afternoon together
Leaning on an elbow, looking up

Then you'll leave and I'll jump down
to watch you walk away
Knowing that we'll surely talk again
We won't

There's a last time for everything

BRIT LEAVING

He left the island of Empire
to see a hunk of what they'd lost
Islands of home and mind
too small to hold the dreams
And now he's left the States
and Europe too, for another Island

This one a continent and perhaps
large enough for dreaming yet
The girls of Manchester left behind
San Francisco, Perth, a few in Prague
Wondering where the crooked grin
has fled and how and why

This is a man of leaving
A life work for some

CONTINUITY

They come and go
then go and come
And yet I'm here
A continuity
An address
not yet scratched out

SAYS HE'S BORED

He says he's bored out of his tree
Trees are to be climbed and gotten out of
Boredom is as good an excuse as any
Drop lightly off that last branch and look up

Peace here in the quiet of isolated culture
Sometimes good to be away from known things
Relationships carry that taint as well
To slide behind quiet thoughtful foreign eyes

Not always enough to admire the writing
Wondering at the skill of words laid so easily to page
What takes his breath away is not the rhyme or meter
but the bravery of standing naked with the truth

READING POETRY

Reading other's poetry is for me a handsome meal
The house wine is always good enough
Potatoes, yes thank you, I've always liked potatoes
and if there's a green salad, all the better

Dinner in a home is always up to par with candlelight
Intimate conversation and no choice of menu to be made
There's something putting off in wines or words I can't pronounce
Complicated sauces, and I've never been much for dessert

I fire would be nice and good strong coffee at the end

LINGERING TO FALL AWAY

You fell in love with me in Prague
Washed in the excitement of constant revelation
Caught up in how our bodies moved together
Soft light of evening spread through all our windows

A secret city, held back for centuries and you and me
Cobbles worn smooth with timeless hand held wanderings
Each turn catching breath, a romance that sees unclearly
Then home to throw our breath away in twisted sheets

It finally settles in, this love of place and conversation
Drifts to knowing all the streets, to having heard it all
Hearing it again, eyes no longer pulled away from seeing us
Centuries gone, revealing only you, stripped down to only me

Too strong a love of place, our hands linger, then fall away

THE BLIND SIDE

Seconds, only seconds,
when ten make a lifetime
A rush of defenders,
guys built like locomotives
dropping back and back,
to find a downfield reciever
A current of motion and color,
no time, no time, no time

Third down and twenty three,
absolute need to get the ball
not where he is, but will be
at a split moment crossing
A place in time and space
that doesn't exist, but will
A study in the futures market
of moving bodies

Drop back again, shrug him off,
step up or eat the ball
The time is now, make it happen
or crumple and walk away
That long slump shouldered walk
across the field to roars
that could be cheers, might be yet,
except for the blind side

THE SMELL OF TWEED AND TOBACCO

My old man, that's what
we called our fathers then
As in my old man
can lick your old man
and here I am remembering
at an age where I myself
could be accurately named
in those same terms

Well of course
we loved each other
It goes without saying
and so I've said it
and it rings true
Rolls from the tongue
because that's
the way it was with us

I kissed him on the lips
from earliest memory
Unselfconsciously
until the day he died
No turned cheeks for us
I remember brilliantly
his arms around me
Smells of tweed and tobacco

Locked in that embrace
the same for love or combat
Only minor variance in the hold
but who could know
at such a tender age
the warfare of generations
The minefields in backyards
playing with loaded guns

Those darker sides of growing up
with unexplained sharp edges
But it's darkness that shapes the man
and gives dimension
to what otherwise would be
too innocent a memory
Flat and plain and way too smooth
to honestly recall

Each friend, each enemy and love
knew just a piece of him
Myself as well and I saw him
largely through a youthful prism
The colors of his character
depending on the light and angle
An intensity that blinded me
and made him many men, all heros

There was a time, when I was just fifteen
and finally asked my dad
about a thin blue line that ran
from mid arm to shoulder
Not a scar, but something
near to that, just below the skin
He said when he was about my age
he had a secret motorcycle

An Indian, his parents didn't know about
He layed her down on cinders
limping home, he cleaned torn flesh
as best he could with a toothbrush
He wore long sleeves that summer
they never knew or so he thought
That story changed our whole relationship
I saw him differently

Knew that once this man had been
a boy, a kid a lot like me
who held back dreams and
sometimes tricked the edge of truth
Worked around his own father
sometimes winning, sometimes not
A momentary clarity between us
when we were briefly man and man

And yet he closed all my young dreams
to substitute his own
Took away that youthful indecision
and carved it to another shape
One that I lived with and lied with
and struggled with as though
I could slip inside his arm
with all those cinders and make him proud

Just another secret hidden away
and toothbrushed from the truth
Hugs and tweed tobacco smell
bore me up and tore me down
To see myself as him and try
to live a life that's his not mine
Years of that, decades now
and sometimes I still see more of him

than any son should see of that craft
that intensity we call a life
In recurring dreams I fly a plane
that cannot clear the trees, full power
pull back the stick, they loom and loom
then brush the wheels and clear
Ten years since I've had it now
but it's out there somewhere looming still

The batter of a wall, that mason's term
for the sloping back that gives it strength
Larger at the top it falls, there's pain
but strength and insight in compression
As if that weren't hard enough to learn
it can't be taught, just done or not
Knowing what to keep and what to throw away
from that broad base he gave

My middle years of struggle made a wider top
brought me to deconstruction
Rubbled heaps, the bricks of wealth
mortar of mortgage, dust of broken promises
A constant hosing down to see what belongs
what must be hauled away
Not to judge his wall or anyone's
just look at mine and see it's battered back

He died as well as he could, better than some
and not nearly well enough to suit him
The tortured wasting away of cancer
that darkened his eyes with fear
teaching me even in that, there was a better way
than he had found to do it
Finally he flickered and was gone
like a guttered out candle and that was that

What lasts, what's there left of him for me
gone now nearly thirty years
What lasts of lessons and life, of obligation
and searching, what lasts of prismed colors
Love lasts, or at least remembrances of it
Shadings of the prism, fine blue lines
on arms that slipped around me and gave a damn
The smell of tweed and tobacco