Apple Valley, CA
—High Desert Photos Courtesy of Public Domain
PROFESSOR OF FUTURE AND REMOTE CHANCES
Left the residential factory at dawn. Maybe I’ll
make my cubicle in time for the first online class.
Teaching two sections of International English
for Oligarchs this semester, but the signal’s weak
out here & my devices are useless. Graves fill the
north-facing window of the No. 27 bus as we roll
past two intellectual silos silhouetted on the horizon,
reflected specter of my face haunting the view—
I wonder if there’s more room underground, where
it’s said some can be trusted, even interacting with
other mammals. I miss dogs suddenly, but that
passes, & the afternoon up here opens the wrong
way, I realize, not to mention course enrollments
slipping, not to mention AI-generated baby names,
not to mention viral sickness in the stifled light,
so perhaps I could let loose underground, in the
clay & damp, get tangled in the roots of things,
dig up something ancient, recite a poem or prayer,
invert an incantation, slumber low in the humid
memory of cool campus evenings, human faces.
Left the residential factory at dawn. Maybe I’ll
make my cubicle in time for the first online class.
Teaching two sections of International English
for Oligarchs this semester, but the signal’s weak
out here & my devices are useless. Graves fill the
north-facing window of the No. 27 bus as we roll
past two intellectual silos silhouetted on the horizon,
reflected specter of my face haunting the view—
I wonder if there’s more room underground, where
it’s said some can be trusted, even interacting with
other mammals. I miss dogs suddenly, but that
passes, & the afternoon up here opens the wrong
way, I realize, not to mention course enrollments
slipping, not to mention AI-generated baby names,
not to mention viral sickness in the stifled light,
so perhaps I could let loose underground, in the
clay & damp, get tangled in the roots of things,
dig up something ancient, recite a poem or prayer,
invert an incantation, slumber low in the humid
memory of cool campus evenings, human faces.
ANOTHER VICTOR VALLEY SUMMER
Freaking hot, so what’s new in the
desiccated view, my head sopped like
a filthy mop, and all I see is trucks, all
these trucks, why so many goddam
trucks and Call of Duty losers who
pay to wash them every day! When I
had my F-150 (R.I.P.), rain washed it
or I hosed it off in my driveway, me
sucking on a beer bottle like dark art.
Any way we look at truth it creaks,
then protest like Jeanine, who’s always
fogged, or worse—wired, with thirty
milligrams of Ritalin kicking in plus
three-and-a-half grams of homegrown
shrooms, but, really, she’s a kind of
masterpiece, coming up your gravel
driveway, opening your gate, glaring
through your front window, so if you
leave the porchlight on she'll be there:
wiping her eyes, claiming to be clean,
no privacy, half-naked interloper, an
unwashed truth right before you. Can
you bring yourself to dance with it, or
would you stare like it’s on a screen,
a movie character you’ll study, later,
if you have the time, as decades pass
and Jeanine’s mascara is still smeared,
and we inch through the day, back to
our bedrooms, our mosquito dreams,
distant laments, strange and precious.
Freaking hot, so what’s new in the
desiccated view, my head sopped like
a filthy mop, and all I see is trucks, all
these trucks, why so many goddam
trucks and Call of Duty losers who
pay to wash them every day! When I
had my F-150 (R.I.P.), rain washed it
or I hosed it off in my driveway, me
sucking on a beer bottle like dark art.
Any way we look at truth it creaks,
then protest like Jeanine, who’s always
fogged, or worse—wired, with thirty
milligrams of Ritalin kicking in plus
three-and-a-half grams of homegrown
shrooms, but, really, she’s a kind of
masterpiece, coming up your gravel
driveway, opening your gate, glaring
through your front window, so if you
leave the porchlight on she'll be there:
wiping her eyes, claiming to be clean,
no privacy, half-naked interloper, an
unwashed truth right before you. Can
you bring yourself to dance with it, or
would you stare like it’s on a screen,
a movie character you’ll study, later,
if you have the time, as decades pass
and Jeanine’s mascara is still smeared,
and we inch through the day, back to
our bedrooms, our mosquito dreams,
distant laments, strange and precious.
WE HAVE TO TALK
Everyone seems to have a QR code
linked to a sense of dread. Excuse me,
but red onion with white vinegar won’t
cure Covid. Forgive me, but a voice
that feels this authentic isn’t necessarily
an authentic voice. What I would like
is to take you to a bar, buy you a whisky,
read to you from William Matthews’
Blues if You Want, ask you how much
compassion fits in a fist. Are you more
truthful when naked? Why does art you
see in other cities seem better than your
local scene? I’d like a pepper-spray latté
with my Joyful Resistance, per favore.
Never trust a healer on crutches. If you
hold your coffee mug long enough, last
night’s laughter will echo in your mouth.
Everyone seems to have a QR code
linked to a sense of dread. Excuse me,
but red onion with white vinegar won’t
cure Covid. Forgive me, but a voice
that feels this authentic isn’t necessarily
an authentic voice. What I would like
is to take you to a bar, buy you a whisky,
read to you from William Matthews’
Blues if You Want, ask you how much
compassion fits in a fist. Are you more
truthful when naked? Why does art you
see in other cities seem better than your
local scene? I’d like a pepper-spray latté
with my Joyful Resistance, per favore.
Never trust a healer on crutches. If you
hold your coffee mug long enough, last
night’s laughter will echo in your mouth.
AS I TRAVEL THROUGH THE VALLEY
Big Sister departed on a blank April
afternoon full of High Desert traffic,
car radio droning crap pop, my wife,
who never liked her, at home getting
ready for work, with some fat clouds
rolling in from the west, roaming away
from ocean, slow, tear laden, and in
that glassy-cold evening I thought
I heard Big Sister sing to the ancient
tortoise buried in her backyard, long
burrowed, waiting for years to pass,
with all their silly and useless pain,
Big Sister’s bronze Mohave face all
lit up like late summer morning hills,
while coyotes closed their ochre eyes
settling down for naps, as robin song
ascended, and I couldn’t recall being
without her— still cannot imagine.
Big Sister departed on a blank April
afternoon full of High Desert traffic,
car radio droning crap pop, my wife,
who never liked her, at home getting
ready for work, with some fat clouds
rolling in from the west, roaming away
from ocean, slow, tear laden, and in
that glassy-cold evening I thought
I heard Big Sister sing to the ancient
tortoise buried in her backyard, long
burrowed, waiting for years to pass,
with all their silly and useless pain,
Big Sister’s bronze Mohave face all
lit up like late summer morning hills,
while coyotes closed their ochre eyes
settling down for naps, as robin song
ascended, and I couldn’t recall being
without her— still cannot imagine.
GIVE ME A HOLE
A resilient friend listens to my story,
says, Your voice is on speaker, but
you’re already dead. My life is here
somewhere. Today is the first Monday
of the rest of my week. Let me live it.
First, I cut off the heads of poisonous
social media threads and grow a long
tail for balance, a strategy that creates
plump profits by selling low volumes
of unique bullshit to many in person
instead of large amounts of common
crap to keyboard warriors. My friend
asks, But what about your Sun Sign?
Easy, I reply, As the second sign of
the Zodiac, an earth element, ruled by
Venus, I can develop a formidable sex
addiction, while keeping my insides
soft, like a purr or a black velvet iris.
Give me a hole in a tree with a red
squirrel for company, a spy satellite
in my head, plus maybe some yellow-
flowering weeds blanketing the earth
below, and watch me tattoo my good
intentions on everyone I meet. Birds
will squawk and chitter. Moose will
trample mice. But I’ll be way north
of feckless, more than a plug nickel’s
worth of limbo. I’ll dance like bricks
shook loose by an earthquake, sing
like the Tibetan monk’s brass bowl.
It’ll be winter for all you punchlines.
I will sparkle like a snow-frosted pine.
A resilient friend listens to my story,
says, Your voice is on speaker, but
you’re already dead. My life is here
somewhere. Today is the first Monday
of the rest of my week. Let me live it.
First, I cut off the heads of poisonous
social media threads and grow a long
tail for balance, a strategy that creates
plump profits by selling low volumes
of unique bullshit to many in person
instead of large amounts of common
crap to keyboard warriors. My friend
asks, But what about your Sun Sign?
Easy, I reply, As the second sign of
the Zodiac, an earth element, ruled by
Venus, I can develop a formidable sex
addiction, while keeping my insides
soft, like a purr or a black velvet iris.
Give me a hole in a tree with a red
squirrel for company, a spy satellite
in my head, plus maybe some yellow-
flowering weeds blanketing the earth
below, and watch me tattoo my good
intentions on everyone I meet. Birds
will squawk and chitter. Moose will
trample mice. But I’ll be way north
of feckless, more than a plug nickel’s
worth of limbo. I’ll dance like bricks
shook loose by an earthquake, sing
like the Tibetan monk’s brass bowl.
It’ll be winter for all you punchlines.
I will sparkle like a snow-frosted pine.
HEROISM
I needed to be impossible boy. Trapped inside
a body built for bleeding, able to enter the dollar
store or a stallion stall or the kitchen where mother
swayed in waves of scotch and Elvis on the radio
while cradling our old cat in one arm, stirring from-
the-can stew with her free hand. Impossible meant
not clumsy. Not suffering. And please Dear Lord
not embarrassing. Stay present in your own skin,
I repeated, just as my Auntie said to do. Pain is a
yellowing of the mind, my father would interject,
Go to the store, buy what we need for happiness.
Look in the mirror for signs of escape. No, burning
yourself on purpose is not heroic. Can we agree the
school bus driver doesn’t care. Can we swivel away
from sneaking Nyquil and talking into your hands
at night. I think to be a man is to be impossible boy
long enough to drown, swim back to the surface,
and wield a whale-bone knife. I think flesh is to be
undone, like me, leaving a drunken ghost in a skull
to manipulate numb arms and legs. My desire is
heroic: volcanic Mexican space-funk sex to reenter
my body, bleed a bottleful of pain, buy some time.
ONE FOR THE BOY
I think about him, how it’s going.
The boy who pissed his pants
in the school lunchroom. The boy
who broke into neighbors’ homes
to sit, watch TV, walk around and get
the feel of what it would be like
to be someone else’s kid, then later,
in his own bed, lie awake shaking
fantasies from the tree in a moon-
stained window. Each morning,
I split an orange, toss half in the air
for him to catch. I wonder at his
alternative life from the cheap seats
of my thought. Angels never speak
to me. But they descended on him,
black-feathered and glowing with
fractured sun, from the inside out.
The sky is a lonesome body. His
small frame quakes fantastic with
fury or glory or fear. Mine wants
for architecture, starlight. I ponder
that soundtrack of hemorrhaged
hands, him shitting his pants, and
wishes balanced between a doomed
waterpark and homemade lemonade.
Whenever I slip outside to sneak
a cigarette, I light one for the boy.
His eyes gleam red as he smokes
through the valves of a severed heart.
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
I’m just looking for an angel with a broken wing.
—Jimmy Page
__________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Impossible Boy Michael Dwayne Smith for today’s fine poetry!
I’m just looking for an angel with a broken wing.
—Jimmy Page
__________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Impossible Boy Michael Dwayne Smith for today’s fine poetry!
“black feathered and glowing…”
For info about
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
