Who Would My Cats Vote For?

How will my cats decide who to vote for for president?
(or “whom,” if you please).
They don’t watch tv or read the paper.
They never talk to anyone; they don’t even know about the election.
We leave them by themselves a lot—
the two siamese tabbies and the big tuxedo male.
It’s amazing how they never hurt themselves,
even though they get their claws caught in the screen sometimes,
or their head caught in a bag handle.
They hang out by the windows at night, pressing against the screens.
They don’t really know about going outside,
but if another cat walks through the yard—
or a raccoon—
they raise all hell, yowling and puffing like snakes.
I don’t want to touch ‘em when they’re like that—
I might end up on an iv with a septic fang wound.
I’d say, the kitties are pretty concerned about security.
Second priority: their food bowl—speaking of which,
there are ants in their kibbles in the morning—
sugar ants or grease ants—
twenty or more gathering under a tiny round morsel on the floor,
streaking in all directions if I move it.
The cats won’t eat their food when there are ants in it.
I have to grind it down the garbage disposal, ants and all.
We put out stuff for the ants—cinnamon, cayenne pepper,
but nothing stops them from entering through cracks in the wall.
The Democratic platform lists all the benefits we’ll get if we elect Hillary,
but killing ants is missing.

Skeleton Walking the Dog

Ran into Don just now—
he was walking
his dog too.

I reproached him for wearing headphones:
You aren’t hearing
the world around you, I told him.

As a skeleton, I can’t hear either, of course,
so I can’t be a media consumer
(it’s only by a literary convention

that I can even talk).
All I can do is dangle here, while my ghost
mutters silently about the past.

What’s the name for someone

who can only mutter silently about the past?
An exhumer, Don thought.

The Bad, Bad Dream

Donald Trump on a video
inviting Russia to help find Hillary’s 30,000 missing emails.
Is Hillary worried about this?—I would be a wreck,
even if the missing emails were not incriminating.
People vituperate: “This is treasonous!”
The FBI is looking into it.
Of course, Trump hasn’t actually asked Russia to do it
except on the video;
he hasn’t personally requested a favor from Putin.
So what’s the difference?
If the FBI found a private communique, would that be treasonous,
but the video invite isn’t?
Or maybe it isn’t technically treasonous
to ask a foreign country
to hack a political opponent’s emails.
Has Trump consulted a lawyer?
What law is he breaking?
Trump could say to Putin at a party,
“By the way, could those great hackers of yours
“help find Hillary’s missing emails?”
That would be a joke,
but in virtual reality the emails
are right there for the Russian hackers.
Somebody’s going to find ‘em.
I had a dream:
Donald Trump on a video
with five or six children lined up behind him.
“I sodomized all these kids,” he was saying.
“I enjoyed it.
“There was rectal bleeding.
“Here they are.
“Show the people where you were bleeding, kids!”
Would this be breaking laws?
Trump could be prosecuted for sodomizing the children,
but not for airing the video.
It’s only a video, isn’t it?
only a bad, bad dream?

Ontological

Felt terrible yesterday.
Didn’t go to the pub sing,
didn’t listen to Michelle Obama’s speech.

Finally took a five-mile walk,
and in a little book hut near Ashland and Hamline,
I found The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerback—
tiny 7 ¾ x 4 ¾ volume in the Ungar Milestones of Thought series, ed. Waring and Strothmann;
based on the 1843 translation by George Eliot;
carefully lined and annotated in blue ink
by Cooey 1986
(penned on the inside cover).

God is the greatest we can conceive—

the inmost nature of religion—
that which is highest for us, from which
we cannot turn away—
id quod nihil majus cogitari potest.

Not to be is a deficiency.

Existence is perfection, happiness, bliss.
From that to which we offer up
all that is precious, we cannot withhold
the bliss of existence.

Talking to Myself

So my niece Bambi
posts a beautiful note about a man 
she tends bar for:

“Not more than three beers max in a whole day.
I think he’s schizo, but I’m not sure.
He carries on non-stop conversations with himself,
but can also carry on a hell of a conversation with you.

Tuesday he came in in fine form,
just a-giggling and chatting away,
smiling and full of some of the best one-liners.

He even took out my garbage while I sat by the bar.
When I told him he didn't have to do that, he said,
‘That's okay, what else am I gonna do, set around and talk to myself?’

He played ‘I can't Drive 55’ on the jukebox,
and he was singing it, and after the chorus he says,
‘Well I can't drive but I can run 55,’
chopping his arms by his side really fast, laughing.

I went back to check on some guys in the pool room,

and I said, ‘You guys alright?’ and he says,
‘You talking to me? Oh no, wait, that's my job.’

Chatting away, he sighs, and I hear him say,
‘My god, this conversation sucks!’

Laughing with you, Bud, not at you.
I know it doesn't happen near enough.”

Balthazar, a Christmas Poem

Driving north today, I saw 
a wise man in the back of a red Ford truck.

Propped against the spare tire,
the wise man was wearing a purple fez,
and a gold star protruded from his chest on a wire. 
I didn’t see the other wise men
or the Baby Jesus in his little cradle,
but I noticed that the figure had a swarthy face
and was clearly Balthazar, the blackamoor wise man,
King of Egypt and Tarshish,
bringing resin of the thorny commiphora tree—
Myrrh—to the Holy Child.

I thought of the American olden time,
time of lawn jockeys and Little Black Sambo stands,
and in my white sentimentality still farther back
to the old minstrel show days,
when with tambourines and bones
blacks and whites blacked up alike
and danced to Jump Jim Crow—tune now proscribed
even under the innocuous name, Jump Jim Joe. 
We don’t dare bring those memories back,
or even acknowledge them as part of our true heritage.

For my sake, though, suppose the driver—
the other wise man in the truck—
simply carries the statue with him as a mascot.
Suppose he laughs at, abhors, and identifies with—all three—
this figure of a devout Balthazar,
sanctioned by centuries of racist iconography:
an African bearing witness
to the miracle of the birth of God.

Wanting to see the driver’s face (not that it would answer
anything), I changed lanes
and passed the truck.

Yep, a black man.

This poem was on an early page in this blog, but I took it down and revised it after I saw Henry Louis Gates's article about Balthazar, which is easy to find online in The Root. I noticed today that people have searched for this poem ("Bathazar funny Christmas poem"), so I’m restoring it in revised form.

The Three Marys

In the New Testament, Mary's proliferate.

I want to get straight about them.

Three sets:
daughters of St. Anne,
the Mary’s that were present at the crucifiction,
and the ones present at the tomb.

St Anne gave birth to two different Mary’s:
THE Mary,
who danced with her feet,
raised in the Temple
so her feet would not touch the ground—
this Mary had to leave
when she started menstruating.
Then she got pregnant, and we know
the rest of the story.

Besides Mary Mother of God,
there were Mary of Cleopas (or Clopas),
and Mary Salome.
These Mary’s were all half sisters—
had different fathers.

So who the hell was Clopas?
Some guy Mary’s half sister Mary married.
And Mary Salome—she was present
at the tomb, but not the crucifiction?
So is it that all the sisters were at the tomb but not the crucifiction?
That would mean that Mary Magdalen was not at the tomb.
That seems wrong.

Mary Magdalen is my favorite.

Mary Salome was the wife of Zebedee
and the mother of James and John—
James sometimes thought to be Jesus’s brother,
even his twin—
it’s confusing.

Mary Salome’s name was probably actually Mary Shulamith,
so she’s the one Antschel is refering to:
ashen hair Shulamith
as we shovel a grave in the air    there
you won’t lie too cramped.

Anyway, Shulamith was at the tomb,
Mary Shulamith,
mother of James twin of Jesus.
Black milk of daybreak.

But now what about the Marys at the Crucifiction? In the Gospel:
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his Mother, and the Mother’s sister, Mary of Clopas, and Mary Magdalen.

And in the Gospel of Philip:
There were those who always walked with the Lord: Mary, the mother, and her sister, and Magdalen, the one who was called his companion.
His mother, her sister (now), and his companion
were each a Mary.

I’m going to say
that Mary Clopas and Mary Shulamith were the same person.
So all the Mary’s were both at the crucifiction and at the tomb:
Mary, her sister Mary Shulamith,
and Mary Magdalen.

Mary Magdalen was called Jesus’s companion.
She was Jesus’s sexual parter, his lover,
and also the Sophia,
the fallen and redeemed
soul of the world.

The Skeleton Goes Camping

Morning at Lake Itasca

I want to let this morning sun
warm my bones.
The coffee went right through me.

Blowdown Trail: The Skeleton Foresees a Second Flood

A lot of white riff-raff will be arriving to join me.
All that will remain alive
will be a rainbow.

Pioneer Graveyard: The Skeleton Communes With Nature

Here am I, sang the vireo. Where are you?
In the boneyard,
with no voice to sing.

Skeleton Wading in the Mississippi Headwaters

My white limbs are beautiful, shining regal and serene.

But I remember when my body was dark like the rivers,
and I had a heart.

Curing Cannibalism

Workaholism: needing to immerse oneself in activity at all times.
  Give Satan your dominant hand!

Eating disorders: anorexia,bulimia, overeating.
 Put down that possum carcass!

Health: obsession with avoiding disease.  Eat raw meat, especially poultry!

Sexual addiction: predation, pornography, promiscuity,
any other inappropriate sexual behavior.
  Keep custody of your genitals!

Appearance: inability to be happy
with your God-given punum.
  Shave off your own eyebrows!

Achievement: to be the best.
Your resume becomes your religion.
  Commit errors to appease God!

Religion: emphasis on the form
rather than the spiritual truth.
  Say “wine” and mean “blood”!

Intellectual: prejudging all your experiences.
  Practice not caring if its
  Mexican or Chinese for dinner!

Sexual: choosing the wrong, “slumming.”
  Consider your poor embarrassed partner!

Activity: unhealthy preoccupation with anything—
the Net, politics, video games.
  Erase all extant electronic files!
  Don’t write any more poems!

How Do You Bow 'Em?

we will win,
we will win,
even if you don't believe it,
we will win.
                  Pablo Neruda, "Ode to a Common Person"

in solidarity with blackpoetsspeakout. I will not remain silent while this nation murders black people. I have the right to be angry.

What a time to be alive!
What a time to be alive!
The revolution has come.
What a time to be alive!
What a time to be alive!
When we stand up, we’ve already won.

Day’s gonna come when I won’t march no more
down u-up.
Day’s gonna come when I won’t march no more
down u-up.

But while my sister ain’t equal
And my brother can't breath,
Hand in hand with my family
We will fill these streets.

down u-up.

down up, down up, down u-up

Singing with Jayanthi Kyle
at the SPPD,
St. Paul Cathedral dome in the distance.

These are African rhythms
that as Americans we all learned
hundreds of years ago.
A joke to think anybody knowing these rhythms
can be white.

Anyone who thinks they’re white is not my friend.

Sawing-sewing fiddle bow
in the hand bobbin.
The down-stroke-style bowing all Appalachian fiddlers are taught.
Molsky tried to teach me,
and Clayton Candy Girl.
Bruce and Shanilec
white men both.

As a white or black man or woman,
how do you bow ‘em?

Down up, down up, down u-up.

Washington (Lightnin') and group with ax-cutting.

When the rattler gonna howlin’

Good God A-mighty!
down u-up.

And the captain gonna ride 'em.
Good God A-mighty!
down u-up.

And the bully jack a' diamonds
Good God A-mighty!
down u-up.

Sitting here in my white Tainter Lake world.
John Dowland was a white man,
or is that anachronistic to say?
Farewell, farewell,
but yet or ere I part, Oh cruel,

When the sun is gonna screamin'
Good God A-mighty!
down u-up.

A cafeteria supervisor is a powerful
job, a caring and generous job. Phil

Hey policeman, I can’t breathe. Lay down your
weapons and your badges and listen to me.
down u-up.

was a caring and a soft-spoken man, a listener.

Hey officer, I have a gun in the car down u-up.
GET OUT YOUR LICENCE! HANDS UP! down u-up.

perfect for the busy cafeteria. He was never

rushed or impolite, always respectful and
Patient and Generous, Quiet, Calm with kids.

Kiss me sweet, kiss me sweet, kiss me, my jewel.

down u-up

President Obama, are you marching with me? down u-up.
Mayor Coleman, are you marching with me? down u-up.
Gotta get a senator a-marching with me down u-up.
Not gonna stop until my people are free down u-up.

Reverend Sekou teaching the Ferguson workers,

asking rows of devastated people
who’ve just faced the brutal shock and awe of the state,
“Do you believe you’ve won?
we’ve won?
Well, you will after we finish singing this song."

What a time to be alive!
What a time to be alive!
The revolution has come.
What a time to be alive!
What a time to be alive!

When we stand up, we’ve already won.

Where do you put the up stroke exactly?—
even half a century ago in Argentina,
sewing the tissues and fabrics together,
sowing wheat in the human fields,

I stopped at nothing,
looking for you
in everything,
because, my hand

on your shoulder,
like old friends,
I say in your ear:

Bully don’t get worried down u-up.

Long bow-needle in the hand-bobbin.

And it keep on a-hangin’.

Klingon Skeleton

The only
real white people
are skeletons.

Even
without gray matter,
can skeletons think?

The skeleton is a cold
reasoner,
a flesh-less Mr. Spock. 

                                     

Does Mr. Spock
ever get
a hard-on?

The things we really care about
are not the kinds of things
skeletons think about.

A skeleton can’t sing
because it has no
lungs or heart.

Advice to Poets

Writing poetry is a wonderful way for you to be engaged with the world and your life.

For others, reading your poetry may not be that great a way to be engaged with the world and their lives.

You shouldn’t be at all discouraged by this. You should publish your work to the world however you can.

If someone reads it, that will make you happy.

But you won’t be surprised or hurt when they don’t.

Three Tang Dynasty Poems

Deer Park, Wang Wei

Hills. Not a soul to be seen.
But talk echoes to the ear,
brightness reentering the woods,
green glow on the lichen patches.

Parting, Du Mu

Dissimulated feeling,
smiling at the parting toast.
The sleepless candle bares its heart,
shedding private tears at dawn.

Moonlit Night, Du Fu

Tonight from her lonely room

the Fouzou moon is watching over
my little boy and girl,
who don’t know where I am.

Dressed in mist, hair wet,
cold in the clear brightness.
When shall we two watch
the moon again, tears dried?

Empathy

Way to express the fourth chakra!
voice, audience,
listening, speech, expression,
self-realization, humility,
vibration, telepathy, epiphany,
channeling, in and out of balance.
Ashbery a danger—
he’d eat me alive with his Rimbaud,
which I refuse to read.
But how am I hearing Sappho’s voice?
Attribution questioned even—How
can it NOT be Sappho?—
This poem IS Sappho:
de duke men a selena
kai pleiades me sayde
nuktes para d’rxet w’ra
e’gw de mona kate d’w
Moon and stars going down,
night, alone.
Cajun song—
Sappho’s ancient Greek sounding like French
(have I ever heard?).
Pearl Pirie hearing it from my typing fingers.
Not ashamed,
my voice can't deliver it.

The Day After the Fourth of July (Attempt at a Ron Silliman Imitation)

Felt shitty yesterday.
And now still today.
Ate pork with old friends on a big river deck.
St. Croix cigar boats.
Beer in a big floor cooler.
But I just drank four cans of water.
Climbed up to the path below the house to pee.
That’s what I’m remembering now.
Now the sound of trucks in the alley.
Red bird-berries over the porch.
My feet bare on the cedar slats.
White tee-shirt, lime-green lettering,
S. Padre Island, TX—
where I walked the beech and saw
watermelon chapstick in the sand.
Now a philosophical thought,
my mind feeding me so much shit.
Who is being fed? What is one hungry for
in Ron Silliman’s writing?
A slant of mind, of
another mind from mine.
Standing near our little
stunted spruce tree, peeing
on our old cat Rascal’s gravestone.
Tiny blue-gray chickadee
beating its wings
inches from my eyes.
It’s all gold, so write it.
You can’t stop writing
till you die.
So, realizing I can switch everything around later.
Is that legitimate?
To ensure authenticity,
the poet never lieth.
But I’ve long departed
from my one-sentence-per-line plan.
But now I’m back.
Always the birds. Always the traffic hum.
Always my feet pushing
away from the earth,
heel-toe lifting off,
heel-toe soft landing.
Walking, though I sit at Dunn Bros.
wasting these precious early morning moments,
“Good morning, bon joir.”
“I’ll get you a jamba juice.”
Already it’s hard to think of much to add.
Soon I’ll have to stop writing.
What’s keeping me alive.
Because the poet nothing asserteth.
Never having cut
the stem-girdling root.
Actaeon watching the naked bathers.
Man of the invasive gaze torn
by the dogs of the goddess. In
shady clearing, corpuscles
of sun lighting
the bitten throat.
Furry coat a bloody smear.
Poor stag!
But why should we feel sorry
for a filthy peeping Tom?
Back to whatever.
Our little bird garden.
Small, long-stemmed white flowers.
Upside-down pink badminton birdies.
A sidelong sunflower.
And the living-room curtain selection task.
Desert pearl. Sunflower seed.
Mojave taupe. Shit-brindle.
Changing registers, discourse levels.
Returning once again to the abstract.
Objects pulled from their context.
The meditative. A serious reflective person
expressing insights about life.
The audience sighs! What wisdom! This will be
one of thousands of poems they’ve encountered.
Will they remember it?
Why do they enjoy it, sighing as they do?
Beholding my soul naked.
They let my soul touch them. Am I really
such a slut?
It’s clearly all a put-on.
Everyone is acting.
If you pretend hard enough
to be moved, are you moved indeed?
Jack Nicholson playing the E-minor Prelude.
It’s vanity, really, people conceited
about how sensitively moved they are.
Well, I’ll surprise ‘em
by not being moving at all.
They’ll be mildly put out, although they probably
haven’t been expecting anything consciously.
They can completely ignore me if they want to.
They won’t notice how the style of this ramble
keeps changing from periodic to run-on.
They won’t know I’m holding out on ‘em—
as, for most people, it’s quite difficult
to pay much attention
when someone is intoning a poem.
But now, to my left,
a gray-haired man in a red plaid shirt
is saying to his chubby wife and son,
“Shall we now wander out into the day?”

The Yeshiva Bucher: a Glossary

Balbatish: Having admirable traditional virtues. Are you kidding?

Baruch Ha-Shem: Inshallah. Why not?

Bashert: Destined shmoonie. Chagal roses, waiting out the poor Bucher’s seven-year Torah course.

Beytsim: Balls. He didn’t have them.

Broches: Prayers. Sounds like “broaches.” A little bling the clueless, broke Bucher can’t buy for the Bashert.

Studying to be a Cantor: What a catch!

Farfufflah and farmisht: Wandering Jew in brown suede coat.

Blowing weed out the shwartze fentster.

Freig nisht, ich darf neitig pishen.

Ha-shem: The name. For what?

Naches: Luck. Man of no fortune, with a name to come.

Not much Saychel, either: Brains of a nay-geboym beibi.

Shana punim: For which he keeps custody of his eyes.

Wore a Shmatta, ate Shluff, beat his Shlong. A Shmendrick for sure!

Shmoonie: Shmoonda. His fondest wish.

He’d walk out and sit all night wordless: a Stummie.

Voo den? Wha’d you expect?

Yadnitze: Vagina? No, Russian. More “backside.” Shmoonie it is then.