I have waited . . .

with a glacier's patience
Smashed every transformer with every trailer
Till nothing was standing
Sixty five miles wide
Still you are nowhere, still you are nowhere
Nowhere in sight
Come out to meet me
Run out to meet me
Come into the light

That's what Neko Case has to say about love in her song This Tornado Loves you from her new cd Middle Cyclone. If you've never listened to her, Neko Case is my new girl crush. Her voice is liquid; as my bandmate Noel says it has no sharp edges. Noel does not say this about my voice.

You'd think that with it being National Poetry Month I'd put up a poem, so I shall. Here's James Hoch, and this is one of my favorites:


My Letter of Introduction to God

I’m 33, Christ’s age; you remember Christ.
I was lucky enough to be born in New Jersey,
so believe I am entitled to a few things: I’d like
a stone house floating on a lake, for the stones
to shimmy and fall into water, to salvage them,
so I could learn masonry. I always wanted
to be a stone mason, so elegant, so strong.
I’d like a house in Mexico and a day for me
to wake, pomegranates growing in my yard.
I’d like a cast iron tub, lavender and sage,
for my wife, Isabelle, to soak in. I’d like a wife
named Isabelle and a few children who look
a little like me, okay, a lot, but better than me,
small enough to run beneath the belly of a horse.
I’d like a horse for my excessively beautiful
children and, if she would agree, for my wife,
my excessively beautiful wife, Isabelle, to ride
through the streets, though no one would
possess her, not even me, who’d try to.
I’d like the streets to be empty, empty of want,
empty streets, except for the horse, his odd
fondness for staring into troughs, and dogs,
a pack who would remind me of people
I have loved and failed to love well enough,
the way they roam back into my life, ones
that would tend not to stray beyond my voice,
and if so, would turn gentle, more caring,
like the horse the children feed pomegranates.

I like this poem because it's just so well done, and in it Hoch makes a little fun of himself too. As a matter of fact, his poem led me to write the following poem, which is nothing like his poem.


On vacation in Cape Cod I think of Idaho, home, and other places

Unfamiliar landscapes take me back. In Idaho they’re breathing smoke right now. The desert, saying “burn baby burn,” is giving up outbuildings, sagebrush, condominiums and homes.

Here, we can’t imagine fire could take hold. The rain comes smelling like chlorine afterwards, and while it’s on there may be a flash flood, or someone may find Jesus again. What can I do? The people are nice, they smile, say hello, and mow their own lawns. Sometimes it’s all too much.

Because I’m from New Jersey, and there at 7:45 the lawn crews start their engines early. I bitch -- and think about who I might call to put a turd in their $6.00-an-hour life so my father can sleep in. At 97 he has little else to do but stay in bed and dream about the city, the boat, the war, his long dead family.
In upstate we are soggy and feed on greens and riggies, pronounce certain words as if they’ve been lying in the back of our throat for awhile. The rains wash our trees, and we know no tan, no brown in summer, no sun in winter. Delirium too energetic, we dig our cars out schloggy, hoisting and dumping the lake effect to piles on each side of the driveway. My snow’s as high as me some years, and I am hid behind it, easy to be wan and gray as the shortest of days.

In Idaho on a big sky day, you can see the top of Chink’s Peak, and the gap and cows aren’t dusted . Miles away the Tetons look like jagged teeth and meth is cooked in their shadow. The Mormons look south to where Marhoni and his horn stand proud, and the rest of us just look up and pray for rain.


What are you listening to and/or reading today?
Good Friday to yuz; ooops, that was last week
P.S.: Clark, please don't think I'm obsessed with, you know.