Poems and Lyrics
"Keep it up, and you'll be the Grandma Moses of the Poetry World."
-- Michele Leno
"Patrick: You are a poet!"
Until recently I considered poetry the sullen offspring of pundits and poofs (see illustration above) until I enrolled in a senior-citizens poetry-writing course in July. Each week our instructor, Deborah Clayton, drills us, mercilessly, with on-the-spot writing exercises.
It's always unnerving to me. We are then tasked with turning these jagged fragments into polished gems back at home.
At 56 years old I am the kid in this class of seniors -- mostly women in their seventies and eighties -- who've been at this or years.
Unlike writing for newspapers, poetry allows me to play with words in a whole new way: Like Picasso breaking down the traditional portrait into primitive geometric shapes.
Granted my end product might leave the reader scratching his head. But as a long-suffering traditional wordsmith and slave to the Associated Press Stylebook, I'm finding that fooling around with syntax and punctuation a refreshing change of pace.
My only regret is not finding a suitable rhyme for the word Nantucket.
(Most of my friends’ dads fought in World War II, but all I remember about them was they spent their weekends fooling around in their yards, busying themselves with projects that took their minds away from their war experience. That’s my guess. Bobby Shelton lived across the street and did in fact have an olive tree in his front yard. An uncured olive tastes like bitter hell, but we loved throwing them at each other. It took days to wash away the purple stains. And our mothers always had a fit, which was part of the fun.)
Olive Juice
Fresh, uncured olives
plucked from branches,
leathery, purple, bitter,
tasting nothing like their
Thanksgiving cousins:
Black, pitted jumbos
atop tiny briny fingertips.
Ten poked-out eyeballs
at a cannibal banquet –
delicious spoils of war.
In Bobby Shelton's yard
we gather our ammunition
from that silver-green tree,
lob them at one another,
leaving inky bullet holes.
We crumple, twitching
in mocking death throes
among beached brethren
dotting the shoreline
back at Omaha and Utah.
Mr. Shelton cuts the grass,
mowing around the carnage,
around the boy soldiers,
lawnmower rat-a-tat-tatting
German machine-gun fire.
Killing the engine, he asks:
Who was that hick kid?
We rise from the dead
shrugging our shoulders.
The one in front of me?
Right there in front of me.
Shot on the landing craft.
Go and wash that crap off.
Your mothers will have a fit.
Didn’t even make it ashore.
Henderson? Hendrickson?
A helluva thing to happen.
We’d never seen a dad cry:
bottled-up saltwater flowing
seaward from faraway eyes.
Nov. 22, 2009
Malibu, California
(Wax lips, wax mustaches, wax buck teeth, wax tongues and wax fingernails were among my favorite Halloween items. I haven’t seen them recently, which is a damn shame. Every kid should have the experience of clenching a pair of wax lips between his teeth, then chewing those luscious lips until they are sucked dry of artificial flavoring and Red Dye Number 2.)
Wax Lips 1961
Unrealistically red,
a permanent pucker
that’s bigger than life,
of paraffin not collagen.
Streetwalk the block,
with wax lips protruding.
A movie star’s moue
lipsticked crimson.
Kiss me once,
then kiss me twice.
Then kiss me once again.
It's been a long, long time.
Sickly sweet, slightly soapy
I gnaw these prosthetic lips,
chew them till my jaw throbs,
then expectorate pale remains.
Nov. 11, 2009
Malibu, California
(When I used to drive past the Brew 102 brewery in the early ’70s I'd wonder if it were the unfiltered water from the L.A. River that gave that long-gone L.A. beer its distinctive tang. I also remember once seeing a crazy homeless guy standing on a freeway overpass, imaginary baton in hand, "conducting” the traffic below. I’m sure voices of angels filled his head. Both memories led to this poem.)
River Prayer
From underneath the underpass,
the place the homeless call home,
assembles a vagrant congregation.
Our newest member just arrived
somewhere from the snowy East
to this land of perplexing sunshine.
Gracing the river’s cement wall
a hastily spray-painted blessing:
God bless you -- God damn you.
We shall gather at the L.A. River,
knee-deep in refuse and rust,
for another bone-dry baptism.
Nov. 4, 2009
Claremont, California
(A love poem, which addresses that eternal question: What if?)
We Are Still One, My Kindred Spirit
I was with you,
in spirit, last night
when our waiter brought
to the table
two glasses of wine,
white and red.
I poured yours into mine,
blushing, wondering,
how your life turned out.
Oct. 20, 2009
Malibu, California
(I used to watch Felix The Cat cartoons every day after school in the early sixties. Later, at night, and during Saturday movie marathons -- I watched a lot of television as a kid -- I’d hear his name and see his image in commercials for Giant Felix Chevrolet (“Se habla espanol at Giant Felix Chevrolet!”). Even as a naive elementary school kid I felt my cartoon hero’s job as Chevy pitchman to be a conflict of interests and a little on the cheesy side. None of this has anything to do with the poem below, really, now that I think about it, although the Giant Felix sign is mentioned in the fifth line.)
Blind Man’s Bluff
Ambulant upon an asphalt sea, footloose and fancy-free,
Downtown-bound to visit dilettante and derelict.
Sidestepping sleeping figure on a Figueroa sidewalk,
near the taco wagon where tongues wag in foreign tongues.
Giant Felix with Cheshire grin and fleet of Chevies,
pointing one plastic paw to the street scene below:
Blind black man wearing Ray-Bans, laughing to high heaven.
“Brother, that’s a good one,” he says to white walker.
“Thanks. But I don’t know what Ray Charles looked like.
But, man, oh man. Whew! Could that son-of-a-bitch sing.”
I got a woman, way ’cross town, that’s good to me, he moans,
cupping white walker’s two hands in his own rough paws.
“Soft like gambler’s hands.” White walker pulls free, walks on.
“Later,” blind man says, slipping pinched Rolex in his pocket.
Oct. 14, 2009
Malibu, California
(Sometime in the mid-’90s, Las Vegas’ Fremont Street was covered with a five-block-long, light-show canopy in an effort to make downtown more palatable. To whom I’m not so sure. In the process, the soul of Las Vegas was snuffed out in my book. Shortly thereafter, video slots were bought in along with a general dumbing down of the once-rich casino culture.)
Buffalo Slot 1941
Pulling arm and whir of reel.
Three sevens: clang clang clang
rained down Liberty silver dollars.
Or was it quarters? Dimes? Nickels?
Buffalo nickles, beautiful and shiny.
One bought a Roi-Tan. A fisftul, a shot.
A pocketful, that brassy blonde for the night.
Well, part of the night and a piece of the blonde.
Stony green-visored dealer asked you: “Hit or stay?”
Hit on 16. You bust. Stay on 17. You lose. Jeezus Christ!
Reach for wallet and another twenty. Jeezus, Joseph and Mary.
“Twenty-one? I should have bet the whole stack. Well hell’s bells.”
Later some bright guy thought the street and casinos needed protection.
Or perhaps it was for that family who drove from Fargo in a station wagon
to watch their father piss away two weeks’ pay in two hours at the craps table. So they erased the starry desert sky and put a canopy above neon sign and grime.
Today armless, soulless, slot machines spit out vouchers – should some fool win a spin.
Real coins? Nicotine-stained-walker-and-oxygen-tank brigade doesn’t give a good rat’s ass.
Beats pulling grimy handles and waiting for that slow-poke change girl. Oh, where is she now?
Turning nickel tricks? Buffalo nickels, beautiful and shiny. One bought a Roi-Tan. A fisftul, a shot.
October 8, 2009
Malibu, California
(I grew up in Claremont, Calif., when the citrus industry was still alive and well. The orange groves have since been cut down, and in their place are Banana Republics.)
Sunkist Days
Chubby Claremont boy gazing at the San Gabriels
beneath which clings a necklace of orange pearls.
Citrus groves, green and gold, in perfect rows,
Rooted in a boulder-strewn alluvial fan.
Old Baldy, snow-capped white, peeks past ridges,
watches as valley life imitates orange-crate art.
Here and there, signs of prosperity, inevitable change:
Tract homes, schools and service stations sprouting.
Down by railroad tracks, in the packing houses,
Mexicans fill splintery crates with those scattered pearls.
Orange trains destined for Omaha, Duluth, Columbus
and, ultimately, grainy black-and-white newsreels.
Five decades later, gazing northward through smog,
Skinny worldly man sees homes where that necklace hung.
Many stand empty – abandoned, foreclosed, dried up.
The ground beneath them remains fertile, though, waiting.
October 4, 2009
Malibu, California
(We were told to complete the line: “You can tell for sure when you’re in _______ when. . .” with the city of our choice. I went with New York, which is like shooting fish in a barrel as far as I'm concerned. I spent four years working and living there. I once saw Henny Youngman walking down the street and said hello to him. He was the inspiration for line 16, though, regrettably, he didn’t call me an effing putz. The poem is based on two very old jokes about New York City and New Yorkers.)
On The Effing Sidewalks of New York
You can tell for sure when you’re in NYC
when a simple request for the time of day
leaves a naïve inquisitor/visitor stunned,
mouth agape, cheeks flushed, speechless.
Some don’t know not to ask, and dare to:
“Excuse me. But can you tell me the time?”
Six bitter bullets fill the cylinder
in this verbal game of Russian roulette:
One, click.
“Go buy your own effing watch!”
a squat Brooklynite barks from his pretzel cart.
Two, click.
“Right. Like I got time for this. Go eff yourself!”
answers an off-duty Astoria cabbie.
Three, click.
“Yeah. Two hairs past a freckle, you effing putz,”
snarls an old Broadway down-and-outer.
Four, click.
“It’s ten two. Tend to your own goddamn business,”
whines a flushed Christopher Street poof.
Five, click.
“The middle door is locked. Orange! Only nine can make it in the end,”
a certified street crazy screams at a lamppost.
One last squeeze of the trigger, and then. . .
Six, ka-pow!
“I’m so so sorry, but I don’t know what you mean by ‘excuse me,’”
the native New Yorker says with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Fourteen words sum up the heart and soul of the city.
Uttered without malice and matter-of-factly:
“I’m so so sorry, but I don’t know what you mean by ‘excuse me.’”
Turning, she adds:
“I wish I did. Truly I do. Now, please, go back home to effing Omaha.”
October 3, 2009
Malibu, California
(In June I visited the village where my grandparents were born: Batopilas, Chihuahua, a former silver-mining town at the bottom of a steep canyon in the middle of nowhere. The only way in and out is by a bus that makes one trip a day on a narrow dirt road. During the Mexican Revolution, the owners of the silver mines were dragged out of their comfortable offices and shot by the Revolutionaries, and the town went into an economic downspin.)
Batopilas Night
Hitchhiking stars, Venus and Mars,
zigzagging down canyon walls, earthbound.
Dust-covered bus rattles into the village.
Air brakes sigh a sigh of relief.
Entering his adobe hut – quietly –
Mariano listens to his children’s breathing:
In and out, rising and falling,
a faraway shoreline.
Maria, plump and puffy and warm and inviting,
fast asleep in their bed.
He kisses her pale forehead tenderly.
She begins to purr.
Outside, in cool darkness, sitting on a stump
and scratching a pair of warm dog ears,
Mariano raises his head heavenward:
Dog? God? He says in broken English, then laughs.
As if on cue, he begins to hum “Cielito Lindo”
as that beautiful sky turns from black to pink:
“Cielito lindo, dame un abrazo,” he sings.
(“Beautiful little sky, give me a hug.”)
Canine eyes, pinholes of light, love and forgiveness
glance upward at this strange earthly master.
With a plaintive whine and wag of tail
the dog taps time on the desert floor:
Whump. Thump.
Whump. Thump.
Whump. Thump.
Whump. Thump.
September 29, 2009
Malibu, California
(This piece was inspired by a sign above the carousel at the 100-year-old Santa Monica Pier: Riders 200 Pounds And Over Must Ride Chariots Only. What it really says, in so many words, is: “fat people are not allowed to ride the ponies.” I envisioned this portly guy settling back in his stationary bench -- making the best of the situation -- and imagining himself in ancient Rome.)
Nero Takes a Ride
(at the Santa Monica Pier)
Riders 200 Pounds And Over
Must Ride Chariots Only
A since-forgotten sign maker still mandates.
And so rides our modern-day Nero.
Amongst his mounted legionnaires,
Shrieking kids rising and falling on painted ponies.
His toga, an untucked T-shirt;
His head wreath, a Bubba Gump ball cap.
Bouncing belly counts cadence
As calliope toots and clangs
Sweet Rosie O’Grady
And The Sidewalks of New York.
Two-hundred-and fifty pounds, spinning
round and round and round within Coliseum walls,
Tripping the light fantastic,
While his minions cheer him on.
The music dies. The spinning stops.
He rises, regally, and dismounts,
Stepping onto terra firma
(And a wad of sticky chewing gum),
Leaving the chariot for another
To fiddle about in while Rome burns.
August 3, 2009
Malibu, California
Patrick Timothy Mullikin
P.O. Box 151726
Ely, NV 89315
(435) 621-8514