Whiskey Breath

Poetry Chapbook from June, 1997

(Jim's favorites boldfaced)

I wash a lot of dishes and I write
make the bed and scrub the john
and write
I cook and walk the dog, look out windows
change the bulbs in reading lamps
walk around the joint a while
smoke a cigarette and think
maybe take the tram to town
But sometime in the day I write

It's what I came to Prague to do
leaving life an unmade bed behind
There's compulsion in my orderliness
born out of guilt and changing horses
that kicks my focus in the butt
It may be just a letter, poem
or e-mail to a friend
barely enough to call my work
But sometime in the day I write

CALLING CARD IN RHYME

An asteroid is what they claim
filled the skies with muddy rain
killed off all the vegetation
left the dinos without ration
only smaller stuff survived
and in time mankind arrived

The rock from space might well have missed
a better thing I must insist
if those big guys were still around
asphalt wouldn't cover ground
the air would not be so polluted
the laws of nature convoluted

Don't lament, there's lots more out there
and scientists without doubt care
much about what's in the heavens
and think we'll keep on rolling sevens
still, dinosaur-times came up craps
a lesson to us all perhaps

To think about the state of grace
that came to us from outer space
to use our time and use it soon
cleaning up the mess we've strewn
for who knows why and who knows when
a calling-card may come again

CHALK

My writing will set your teeth on edge
like chalk on a blackboard
because I set you on edge as well
It has to do with knowing the author
too well
with the history we share
that makes all words your words
even if they are mine

For if there's been failure in us
it's come for the most part
from my side
No, don't argue, don't take my part
and call a share for your own
The husband who is absent, the lover gone
the father elsewhere
All of them are me

If someone said writing was for runners
they said not half enough
This frail thing I do
can't for a moment stand the light
of over-shoulder-looking
of praise, support
or even understanding
Most not of all the understanding

And so I let you see it in witheld pieces
or a sudden gush
but never as it's done
Shrugging away the parts I know must grind
as I have ground
It comes to me easily, this unease
these shaped words that are your words and mine
left over from pain and joy

CHIPS

There in the paper, lost among the news
of stuff the reader values
with a more heightened surge of blood
There's the item of yet another chip
newly minted and its capacity
dates this piece as surely as a time capsule
One point six billion calculations in a second
as if we could concieve of that

Ludvig spoke of less as more and proven right
by the architecture of computer chips
it's a legacy of thought in either case
But thought's a different thing than calculation
and we're still Model T-ing with calculation
and I wonder if we may outrun thought
bound to a dictatorship of zeros and ones
as if we could concieve of that

So there it is, tucked away in my paper
among more popular wars and scandal
Still man's an old hand at making war
well taught in the art of scandal
and such an untested naive calculator
Zeros and ones may answer before they're asked
these questions of man's thoughtfulness
as if we could concieve of that

NIGGLEMENT

I walk carelessly between fine lines
some of them drawn by me
but mostly they are sketched
laid out and prescribed for me
by others
And yet I'm a grown man, aged enough
to be responsible for choices
long past my parental dictates
yet not far enough perhaps
from the echoes of requirement

No, no, that's not the word at all
so little is required of me anymore
the word's shopworn and yet
there's that nigglement behind the ears
That creeping up upon me, a stealth
of something far less easily defined
so subtle it leaks away from description
but it's there like a duplicitous thought
something I'm better than awake
yet see in the nakedness of sleep

Expectation, yes, yes that's a closer word
catching me when I least expect
and when I thought it all lay well behind me
Like a long dinner, an interminable feed
where the main course was overdone
but the salad surprisingly crisp
and a spinach souffle light as clouds
still brings the expectation of dessert
and afterward a well aged cognac
There's always something after

I suspect it's the something after
that walks behind me
sniffing in doorways
letting me know its breath
and ducking from sight when I turn
There's the difference, in early life
everything is next and now it's after
Next is an easier expectation
a ball less punishing to drop
But here I stand, in a life of mostly after

TALK ABOUT TRUST

Mornings I hold my electric toothbrush
under cascading floods of water
applying the paste, jamming one end
into a socket, 240 surging volts
and the other into my mouth
Talk about trust

And driving at night on twisting roads
I hold steady to a speed far beyond
the range of my headlights
rounding each curve in peace
my mind on other things
And it's trust again that carries me

But my trusting self is controverted
limited to the things I can't control
like airplanes taking off
pills I swallow and bridges crossed
the transactions of my life
Accepted, risked without a thought

Yet I lock my house and lock my car
keeping a hand on my wallet
aware of my accomplice in the street
the one who trusts his welfare to strangers
but wouldn't stop to light my cigarette
Sharing a faith that's limited to syndicates

What franchise allows my trusting step
into opened elevator-doors, confident
without looking, the elevator's there
but causes such a shiver up my spine
at strangers' footsteps in the night
So trustful of the many, untrustful of the one

FOLLOW THE MONEY

If you want to find an answer
to Medicare
or the Internet
why homeless occupy our streets
the neighbor leaves his grass unmowed
tomatoes have no flavor
universities are out of reach
dogs run loose
terrorists terrorize
and we are all so confused
Then follow the money

I talk with friends in endless
circular conversations
listening to this or that
opinion
of how and where we've gone wrong
Intellectualizing, our mental equal
of putting out the dog
But never once have I heard suggested
the closing of computers
and shoving back of educated chairs
to simply follow the money

We choke on the heavy breath of cash
in cities jammed with cars
suburbs slammed with drugs
prisons crammed with kids
and hope for something to be done
a hound following the wrong scent
There could be a profits in from clean air
and drug free youth
with education
Compounding interest, renegotiating
learning to lead with the money

HONEY IN THE WOODS

There are times in life, each life and every life
when it all comes together
when the base metals configure themselves
for a day or a year or ten
to form a compound of peace so sweet
it's like finding honey in the woods

And I've wasted those times for the most part
casting their precious moments aside
in conjecture over whether they would last
or were really ever good enough
or would be there again tomorrow
But I waste them no more

A honey-tree is come upon unexpected
A taste so sweet it begs me to savor
if only for a moment its miracle
And I must confess I've never found one
at least not in the woods and yet
I know they're there in reality and metaphor

Metaphor will do, you get my drift
and when your honey-tree appears
lay back and savor, try not to look ahead
Taste the sweetness of life in that moment
However long, let it wrap around your tongue
a found thing, like honey in the woods

IN SIDELONG GLANCES

Lives that haven't worked out
as planned or hoped for
Something unforseen, a blindsiding
along the way to expectation
You see it every day on the metro
walking down the street
at corner tables where life
can't be found on the menu
in any of four languages

The vacant eyes of plans gone wrong
or no plan at all
Measurement against too long
too tall, too fat or thin
too poor, too sad, unloved
in a world of lovers
But we're mostly seen in sidelong glances
from just across the room
in perspectives poorer yet

It's not the reach, the length of arm
the skill for gathering amiss
But the nature of us all at work
a lingering sense we've come up short
By whose standard, who set my goal
if not my own wanting heart
and who can put right what's wrong
if not my voice, my mirror
relaxing the lines that etch my face

MY OLD DADDY

My old daddy used to say
get 'em young
treat 'em rough
and tell 'em nothing
And so how did this philosophy
work out for him?
Married thirty-seven years
to a beautiful woman
with such a strong sense of balance
that without ever a demeaning word
she caused him now and then to pull up short
so aware of his unresolved self-conflict
that I'm not sure he ever recovered
Books could be written of that
and perhaps will be
But he was a man of such sayings
always delivered with a wink
and what the hell can I make of that?

NIGHT PEOPLE

Night people,
the ones who leave my house
when I am sandy-eyed
and much in need of sleep
I take my leave to bed
and they take theirs
to those remaining hours
beconing before the dawn

How can it be and why
does this anamoly exist
This differencing of turned clocks
Habit perhaps, my Pavlov's dogging
of a lifetime early risen
and all those years I dragged myself
from decades of warm beds
unable (unwilling?) now to change

I drop to bed in soundless bliss
scrunched away and tucked
Their leave taken to pubs and conversation
the All-Nighters
lost in threads of theoretical debate
the daylight won't allow
And I hunger for that, jealous
of their aptitude for night, remembering

Yet the days of bull-sessioning are not enough
though I remember their pull on me
and the intensity, the upper with no downer
Would I have it back, perhaps or maybe not
After all, I speak of jealousy and hunger too
but it's there, available
and I have opted out for bed
A Night Person once myself, no more

OF A MORNING

When I am showered of a morning
have brushed my hair and shaved
I know that what looks back at me
as I wipe the last trace of foam
from that steamed and pampered face
is as good as it will get
and a sort of amazement overwhelms me
one you've maybe felt as well

The best that face can do is so unlike myself
This childishness I carry
this constant feeling of wow and yeah
isn't even there among the lines
no matter how plumped and primped the face
except perhaps for the eyes
and they need glasses now as well
A tiresome theme, overworked, old as love

Universal though, you'll know it now or later
a voice that speaks all languages
What surprises life has had for me
under rocks, where I still peek as if a child
The various disasters and incredible good fortune
caught me with the same astonished smile
A fabulous puzzle, just more pieces now
where age has caught me still a kid

ON A GOOD DAY

The difference between being a dog and a human
is that you can go to the kitchen
for a piece of chocolate
and a cup of coffee, if need be
without waiting for your dish to be filled

at least on a good day

This being a man has its advantages I say
Damned few perhaps, but there you are
the choices are wider horizonally
the misadventures drawn more boldly
if not more seriously

at least on a good day

And if we are not our own best friend, then who's
At least it should be said our tails are wagged
over human values, or what serves
for human values
Scratched behind our ear, not made to beg

at least on a good day

REKINDLING

I am a rekindler, a plagiarist it seems
of other's thoughts taken as my own
Today, just today in the car, an illustration
Something was said of dreamlike quality
I forget the example, perhaps an angle
of the sun or both thinking the same thought
and I mused that perhaps death was merely
waking from the dream

I drove a while and came back to it
I really like the ambiguity of that thought
said I may want to work on it a bit
find a place to give it length and breadth
Been done said she, already commented upon
and I was stunned, really are you sure
Been done and I pondered, is original thought
as rapturous if it's been done

For surely there is rapture here for me
in this imagining of death
as waking from the dream of life
But I'm a reader and it's been theorized
that every percieved sense is cast in memory
My god, it's made of me an architect
of other men's labored drawings
a rekindler, blowing breath on old coals

Is nothing new, can an egg be unscrambled
am I leafing idly through other men's pages
Reversing Vonnegut, lifting a phrase of Doctorow
to slide it between the slices of my sandwich
I reject that, for who would paint having seen Picasso
or sculpt in the same world as the Pieta
It's a damned good thought this view of death
and I may work on it yet, but still . . .

RIVER DUCKS

River ducks, they sleep
webbed feet paddling
against the current
Heads folded beneath a wing
it holds them motionless
And I sleep and hope
to hold myself in place
against tomorrow
When all's said, all done
all totalled against the odds
I'm just another river duck

SMALL EXTRAVAGANCES

Letting a candle burn for no other reason
than the fact that I enjoy letting it burn
catching from the corner of my eye
as I read
that shivering light grown shorter
as page turns after page, the waste
a comfort somehow
a small extravagence

THE DAMNEDEST DREAM

I had the damnedest dream last night
but then I'd used a heating pad
to ease the soreness in my neck
just before sleep
and perhaps I'd overwarmed
my brain as well

But this came from way left field
a business competitor from years ago
a guy I'd scarcely thought of
in twenty years
and there he was in perfect clarity
imposing upon my sleeping life

A word of explanation for the reader
this fellow used to clean my clock
regularly winning contracts
the best there was
far more skilled than me
and he bettered me again last night

Dream interpreters make of it what you will
this throwback to a time long gone
but I awakened with a strange sense
of pleasure
that he would take the time
to reappear and get me once again

THE HARD PART

The hard part isn't the writing
that comes easy, like dinner
when you know someone else
will pick up the check
The hard part is where the hard part always is
the hard part is selling
Getting someone interested enough
in the shoes you cobble
or the nuts and bolts or words
to pay you for them

Shoes and nuts and bolts and words are product
Stuff that slides off the line and needs a home
Peddler's work
Market forces intercede in good times and bad times
a million people sewing leather
ten million more pulling punch presses
and stringing words together, properly spelt
You got product, you gotta move it
don't tell me if it's good, don't tell me how you sweat
tell me the hard part, if it will sell

THINKING OF REEVE

Three or four days a week
I have jam and toast for breakfast
and each and every time, buttering
I think of Christopher Reeve
How strange are these associations that spring
from an ordinary chore

Christopher Reeve is paralyzed
the victim of a fall from a horse
and I have spent much of my life
on horses
But that's not the key to this flashed image
our connection's simpler than that

He played a secondary role in a movie
titled The Remains Of The Day
that was made from a book I loved
And in this movie his butler makes him toast
precisely spread with jam
as butlers do or at least as butlers did

I'm stuck with this remembrance
can't or wouldn't shake it, just smile
and wonder if it's a help to him
this constancy of Christopher in my mind
Perhaps . . . there's energy that flows from thought
and mine comes to him at time for toast

NOT FICTION

A Novel is not a made-up thing,
a fiction surely, but ill defined
as a work of the imagination
When it's not
but more accurately a point of view
spun out
The characters taking themselves places
not imaginary
Surprising the writer
catching him unaware, as life itself
turns sweet or bitter
in a moment on the bus

And it's these moments on the bus
that make it all worth while, that pull
rather than push the work
Plot is simple, plot takes its own course
and when it's going well
I needn't steer, don't touch the wheel
just run along behind
trying to catch up and not be left
A film in my mind, all camera angles
not set to wait for sunsets streaming color
but trying to nail down the quality
of light that's there

LAW IS NOT JUSTICE

Law may be the crutch upon which
we prevent ourselves from staggering
in the uneven search for justice
And yet we are so like benign drunks
stepping over-cautiously, unaware
in our need for peaceful sleep
that law is not justice

No more than peace is the absence of war
or bread alone makes a banquet
I find as you find, inequalities in the pages
of my daily paper, momentary unease
a sense of helplessness, frustration
Yet laws are given of men
and justice must be taken

Paraphrasing Anatole France
the majestic equality of the law
forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges
to beg in the streets
and to steal bread
And where I ask is justice in that

If law is the opposite of anarchy
then what opposes justice
but the need in all of us to stand
apart, somehow above our fellow man
Rich will drive and poor be driven
one to home and one to jail
The bread of law calling itself a banquet

So arbitrate, interpret, determine and decide
the work of juries and the judges
who are called justices as well
without the slightest trace of irony
Speed laws may not make of us skilled drivers
yet with dedication, hours behind the wheel
we may yet navigate a route to justice

THIS MORNING

There are many kinds of abuse
and I abused you this morning
Letting you face the day
more tired than I
who stayed in bed
When I knew you anticipated
a tough meeting
and might have wanted support
or at least words
And I elected sleep
or what served for sleep
to send you off wordless

POLEMIC

So I read my rant on European politics
and, sitting down to scattered applause
he grinned wryly and said "nice polemic"
For my part I grunted something noncommittal
as wry is what he does the best
and I was unsure of the word
settling discomfited back among the crowd

That evening my dictionary brought me some relief
allowing that polemic
meant controversial argument
and not something bitter to be swallowed
(enough irony in that confusion)
Yet a compliment loses some of its luster
four hours later over Webster's Collegiate

AT THE WINDOW

A small inheritance from my brother
and what does it mean
It means he loved me, found me needy
late in life
that he has stood at the window and moved on
and now I am the next in line
and will move on like him
with nothing left to give

It means the small cold feeling
of a printer cartridge run out
or unexpected electric bills
need no longer turn me to panic
He smiles at me from a photograph
the only one I have and puts his arm around me
taking care of my careless self
Grins his grin and winks and leaves the window

AFRAID

All her life
afraid
she wouldn't get
what was coming to her
And in the end
afraid she might

I LEAVE IT ALL TO YOU

Biography is a lie told innocently
A compiling, but a life is not a compilation
nor is a man
the summing up of all his facts
My true life is lived behind walls
some of it in the dustiest of corners
Only small portions revealed
as though someone had peeked
through the dishevelment of mortar
broken away and crumbling
Not in darkness, but light dim enough
that even I see myself unclearly

Autobiography is a softer fiction
spilled out in the winding paths
we would have chosen for a leisurely stroll
mostly in someone else's shoes
A life seen from the inside, as we hear our voice
in a different tone than the listener
surprised at the sound recorded
Writing my life, I'd skim across the happenings
filling endlessly with what was meant
chucked full of the kindnesses
buried in every thoughtless moment
tirelessly forgiving all my sins

So the one is too much outsiders interpretation
all strictness, too little bleeding
as the subject must have bled
The other an endless bandaging
the frantic covering of wounds still open
avoiding the infection of truth
whatever truth may be
The clarity of life, meticulously researched
or lived with all its subtleties
is too confounding a thing for writers
And lie or fiction, I leave it all to you
Protesting that it was not me, but my shadow

WHISKEY BREATH

Years from now, when I write
that a character's cheerful scruffiness
hung about him like the breath of gin
Will I remember Carol Shields' description
on page 118 of Small Ceremonies
"A cheerful scruffiness hung over the station
like whiskey breath"
And is that plagarizing
or selective memory
or the buried stuff we undig and take as ours

But it happens, reading Rushdie
or Elmore Leonard
That phrase, a delicacy with words
clicks in my mind and makes me pause
to re-read and smile, salt away
and I know it's hung there like a cheese
ripening, waiting out some future knife
I am what has been flung through my mind
from every source

A writer is supposed to use the observed
Noticing the stranger sprawled inelegantly
Each detail of his clothes, closeness of his eyes
mole on his cheek, button missing
But what of Anne Rice's images of Venice
even though I've been there
Do they creep into my work as well
a selective memory
plagarized, remembered, borrowed, what?

BREMEN

Each trip to see some small part of the world
is a surprise, not in what is expected
that's always well enough researched
One knows Amsterdam before ever going
Is charmed, beguiled, whisked along
in a state of rapture
but seldom surprised

It's the unexpected that's the wonder for me
On my way from known Berlin
my mind full of anticipated canals
impatient with Bremen in my way
A dirty, bustling port city no doubt
Merely a blister on the map of Germany
stealing time on the road

It's old city center, six centuries of it
flower marketed and vegetable stalled
nooked and crannied with a human scale
upon which architecture long has turned its back
holds me there, brings me back
begs me stay an extra day
And so I do, taking the luxury simply offered

The old central winding park steals away my afternoon
taken deftly by gabbled ducks and dappled shade
feeling I was born here, lived some other life
among these homes I know and don't know why
This for me is the charm of travel, its pull
to the liveable unknown, caught unaware
in a place I would have spent a life

MY KID

The alarm went off at eight
as it is set to do
An easier chore for alarms
than for those who answer them
And I rolled over
unwilling to let go of the pillow
not because of being up too late
or some other reasonable excuse
But for reasons I had to reach for
scratching through what is me
as well as what used to be
and what once was
that has come to lay itself in this bed
and use my name

A long way to go
and I wasn't but halfway there
These debates with the me that is
and the me that used to be
and I hear my father's voice
What're you gonna do
sleep your damn fool life away?
and he's right
but my kid doesn't want to work today
My kid has been trying to tell me for a month
that he doesn't want to write

But I've not listened
as my father taught me not to
My kid wants to come outside and play
walking the dog on long rambling tours
of parks and ponds we haven't seen
Impatient with the abbreviated runs
we've shoplifted from my day
What's the point of dogs if not for loving
and the searching out of secrets
My kid needs to cut and paste
and build some imagery
of motorcycles, vintage cars
biplanes, treehouses, big boats
Roman walls and naked women

To fill his kid-mind with exhibitions
Wandering the streets that too long
were just the way to somewhere
My kid hears voices
calling him to play
and the turning in my bed
is an answer if I hear it
There's work to be done
but not until my kid is breathless
ruddy-cheeked and ready