poetry

Ides of March Madness

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prespaul

Actor and Def Poet Paul Edward O’Brien

As I was polishing the prose of yesterday’s post into a blinding sheen, I received an email from my former student and current friend, the actor and poet Paul O’Brien, with a link to this amusing layout of Shakespeare’s plays bracketed for an NCAA-like tournament to determine the very best of the best.

Shakespeare_MarchMadness_OneSheet-(3)

Shakespeare’s March Madness

Accompanying the link was Paul’s commentary on the above bracketing, a tour de force that echoes the idioms of sports commentators.  I asked Paul if he would be so kind as to drive over to Hoodoo studios here on Folly Island and record it for you, which, obviously, he did, because – presto – here it is!

Make sure you hit the grey arrow below so you can hear Paul’s performance as you read along.

O brother, we few, we happy few! Madness? I’ll say, mad as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier! Whose picks are these? Marlowe? Earl of Oxford? Some amateur wannabe? Where to begin? Okay, first in the Tragedy Region: there is no way that two powerhouse top seeds like Hamlet and Lear meet in the first round! No way. That really would be a tragedy. They don’t square off until the quarters. Hamlet would have to get by Othello, which would be tough, but that tenacious squad of Danes and their unselfish style of mutual murder and mayhem would carry the day for Elsinore. Yeah, Iago’s got mad skills, but let’s face it, he still hasn’t learned how to be a team player. MacB is bloody good, wicked good, but lacks solid ball control–he just doesn’t know when to stop sometimes, and Lear advances especially if Kent keeps up the tight defense. The quarter final match up between Hamlet and Lear would be close, but I’ll take Hamlet by a couplet at the buzzer. On to the History regionals. You want history, hey, Henry V–you’re history! You’re all pomp and circumstance and bluster in the middle, and you put on a good show, but you run out of steam in the fourth quarter, while your younger self has still got moves and knows how to take control and change the game at the right moment. Yea, sure, Falstaff doesn’t always come ready to play, but hey, you got Hotspur coming off the bench. Gimme a break! Henry IV wins and then beats the Romans, who really just don’t have their act together enough to go too deep in this tourney. As for Comedy, here’s some comedy: Twelfth Night over The Tempest. Are you crazy? Who’s gonna stop Prospero when he’s in the zone? Viola? The Duke? Malvolio? Malvolio?? Oberon and Titania are too much for Benedick and Beatrice bickering in the backcourt, but it doesn’t matter because Tempest is going to the final four. And here’s a problem alright: The Merchant of Venice over Troilus and Cressida. No way that’s happening. Achilles takes it to the hoop past Shylock every time. And Antonio just doesn’t match up well with Ajax in the post. Final Four: Troilus and Cressida v. The Tempest and Henry IV v. Hamlet. Finals: Hamlet v. The Tempest. Hamlet is the favorite, but they’ll all be dead by then, and The Tempest has magic going for it, which is pretty tough to beat. And won’t it be great to see Caliban cutting down the nets?

caliban 2

Time, Time, Time Ain’t on My Side

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But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near

Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress

 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

Eliot, “Prufrock”

Of course, time seems to pass more rapidly as we age because of the forever diminishing frames-of-references that years represent.

For example, when I was five, a student at Miss Marion’s kindergarten, a year was a fifth of my life and seemed as expansive as a continent.  The previous Christmas seemed like a far distant outpost several time zones removed, separated by a progression of slow transpiring days that unfurled and closed like lazy morning glories.

[check out the vines on the left as Cat Stevens rejoices]

Now, that I’m 61, a year seems like one revolution on a Tilt-a-Whirl that’s gone haywire in Max Sennett short – each successive whirl faster – last Christmas seeming a day or two ago and the next a day or two away.

But here’s the thing.  For the past week it’s as if I exist in a Rod Sterling directed Twilight Zone adaptation of a Kafka short story.

Every time I reach for something, it’s the very last one available!  It’s ubiquitous.  Uncanny.

For example, the day before yesterday, I had to replace the toilet paper roll in the master bath and the very next day needed to replace the roll in what we euphemistically call “the powder room.”  Coincidence – of course – but then last night as I unfurled the dental floss, the spool unwound and spit out the last remaining thread . This morning’s dry dog food scooping found the cup hitting the bottom, the food not completely done, but within three or four days of depletion.

And here’s the clincher: at school, I forgot to hit the staple function on the copier in the work room,[1] so had to staple my Romanticism tests by hand, and guess what, not only did the first stapler I used run out of staples, but the next one did as well!

To be honest, though, there was plenty of looseleaf paper to distribute to my students who are at this very moment in time explaining why this stanza of Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” conforms to the subject matter and poetic conventions of Romanticism:

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic[2]

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[1] By the way, in those halcyon days before email, the copy room called the Lounge, and perhaps the fact that we in the working world are so busy there’s no time for contemplation may also play a role in the seeming acceleration of time’s passage.

[2] Of course, when I was copying my rubric for grading my students’ responses the copier ran out of paper.  I swear!

A Pathetic Whiner Keyboards an Ode on Indolence in a Keatsian Stanza

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sleeping man -thumb-250x246 copy

Click the grey arrow above for sound

 

This sad Saturday morn I wake in dread

of a task as loathsome as burying a pet.

So here I lie with covers over my head –

slothful, fretting, temporizing, and yet,

getting it done is what I got to do.

Oh, god, how dreary, stale and dull seems

to me the task of assessing research essays.

I’d rather suffer a case of the Hong Kong flu,

give my signed Hemingway away,

than put my pen to -oh – those wretched reams!

Radio Noir

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Toshiba Digital Camera

 

Click grey arrow above for sound.

 

Airboat, bayou,

black cat, voodoo

Sam Spade, razor blade,

rattlessnake, bad synapse,

prison break, loan lapse,

nylon rope, smoking

 

dope

 

coke

 

crack  . . .

 

. . . static . . .

 

Hitchhike, tattoo,

peg leg, hoodoo,

tat rat, concrete block,

trunk bang, thump-thump-thump,

shitcan, arm stump,

nylon rope, prison punk.

 

dope

 

coke

 

crack  . . .

 

 

. . . static . . .

 

Knock knock.

Who dat?

 

Po-lice.

 

hoo-hoo    hoo-hoo

 

Crash door, on the floor,

rasp frisk, arm twist

pistol whip, deep shit . . .

 

dope

 

coke

 

crack  . . .

 

. . . static . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

On ’95 Headed South to Key West

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Image

 

 

Click the great arrow above for sound:

 

When I put my hand upon that bible

(its old leather cover was cracked),

I wondered how many hands, both black and white,

were as steady as mine taking that oath.

 

I slowly raised my right hand and swore

to tell the truth, the whole truth,

nothing but the truth – so help me God.

 

I said it as if the Lord was as real as you and me.

I looked each juror softly in the eye,

the way Jesus might, if he was on trial.

 

* * *

 

They claimed I had to know the 4  kilos

were hidden in those bags, mashed

under wads of dirty clothes.

 

“No, sir, I did not,” I said. “I swear,

I did not know, would have hid

them better if I had.”

 

The fat man snarled; his sarcasm dripped,

“We’re supposed to believe you didn’t look?”

“No sir,  I don’t believe in snooping

through other people’s property.”

 

The fat man lost his cool, sensing he might lose,

raised his voice, “What about the smell?

The patrolmen could smell it, the K-9s went wild.”

 

I sighed an exhausted sigh and said,

“With all due respect, sir, I’m no dog;

plus I lost me some olfactory in the Iraqi war.

You can check my records on that,” I said.

 

* * *

 

My PD, she played a role as well,

was less a Yankee, more of a good ol’ gal.

She appealed to the jury’s sense of fair play.

 

“Let us hope,” she said, hand on heart,

“we have not come to that sad day

when we’re so cynical

we ‘re incapable of

mustering a reasonable doubt

in favor of a fellow human being.

 

“He could be your brother or son.

Let us hope we can still manage

to muster a reasonable doubt.”

 

* * *

 

There’s nothing quite like getting out of jail.

You feel so free it’s almost worth

getting locked up to get out again.

 

You look up and see clouds overhead,

and in your car with the windows rolled down,

you can feel the wind blow back your hair

as you bid adieu to that goddamned town.

 

You’re free to take this road or that,

free to head north, south, east, or west,

free to holler a rebel yell – you’re free again –

on ’95 headed south to Key West.

Too Many Dark Nights

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Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange

Click grey area above for sound

 

Oh, Leah, I ‘d resign tomorrow

if I could steel myself and endure

mom’s patronizing, smug I-told-you-so,

but no, I’ll continue to slog my way

through this damned Despond of Despair,

continue to suffer our insufferable DA.

No, I’m  good at least for one more year,

my own self-imposed sentence, you might say.

 

It’s almost always drugs.  Smack, crack

meth, Ecstasy.  With the resources

we waste prosecuting weed, we could feed

so many food insecure kids! We need

to get them out of those trailers

into pre-K if this unrelenting

cycle of poverty is ever to cease!

We’re talking Dorothea Lange like squalor here.

 

Let me tell you about these two clients of mine,

Jimmy Joshua Jeffcoat and Henry David Dobson,

as different as night and day, but in

a similar plight. Unable to make their bail,

they share the same cell.  Jeffcoat’s a creep,

with pitted methadonic rotting teeth.

Dobson, on the other hand, reads Oscar Wilde

and flashes a crooked grin of orthodontic white.

 

Jeffcoat’s doomed to serve at least seven,

if not more, but Dobson wants, as he says,

“a jury of my peers to decide.” Who knows?

He’s kind of charismatic.  DOB 4/1/75.

He sports a full head of slicked back hair.

A ruddy face, creased, furrowed, but kind.

I’d say he’s suffered way too much sun,

and a few too many dark nights to boot.

 

He calls me “Miss” in a formal sort of way,

and he’s practically tattooless, the only one

his dead son’s name, in between his fingers,

upside down from our perspective.

Yes, I guess he could be gay, though I hadn’t

thought of that.  But, yes, you’re right, the tat

is indeed a man’s name, and yes, Wilde, could be,

but if I had to bet, I’d bet he’s straight.

 

When this gig’s over, I’ll bugaloo back

to Boca, having done my time.

Might go grad school, SCAD, get an MFA

in photography.  I’ve learned being a lawyer

is not for me.  Should have listened to my

heart instead of my mom.  Oh, sure, she’s proud

of what she’s made of me, my Ivy League degree,

her youngest brand name of a daughter.

When Jimmy Jeffcoat’s Meth Lab Blew

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Image

Click the grey button above for sound

 

When Jimmy Jeffcoat’s meth lab blew,

me and Tiny Wade was smoking a joint

back behind outside the Stop and Go.

 

Boom.  One blast.  BOOM.  Tiny jumped

about a foot and a half, like a bullet or bigger

was headed his way.  “Got damn, what was that?”

 

I told him I reckoned a transformer blew,

or maybe a sonic boom? but then we heard a siren’s

whoop-whoop and knew that something bad was up.

 

“For sure, it ain’t no Islamic terrorist,” I joked.

“Ain’t nothing in this shitty skank ass town

worth the trouble of blowing up.”

 

* * *

 

We still ain’t recovered from that tornado

two years ago. The kids gone off to college

ain’t never coming back.  Tallahassee, Orlando,

Atlanta, they got movie theaters and restaurants.

Their parks ain’t littered with them empty canisters

the teens been huffing on all night long.

 

* * *

 

I hear they hauled Jimmy down to Duval County.

He lost his dog and parrot, both burnt to a crisp,

that parrot that perched and shat on Jimmy’s shoulder,

 

like Jimmy was some long lost landlocked pirate.

“Arrggh,” Jimmy’d growl,” and the parrot’d go

“Arrggh” over and over. I swunny it got old.

 

I suspect Jimmy ain’t laughing right now,

and I know for sure the parrot ain’t,

 

and that dog won’t keep me up ever again

barking his chained-up ass off all night long.

 

Yep, the sun comes up, and the sun goes down,

and now there’s one less loser in this po-dunk town.

The Back Roads to Tallahassee

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Image

 

Click the grey arrow above for sound.

 

Took the back roads to Tallahassee

to avoid the monotony of mile markers,

dead armadillos, and exit signs.

Took the back roads and took my time.

 

Didn’t make it quick enough to see him die,

but my step-mama filled me in,

sucking on a Marlboro like a man,

“A horrible death, a horrible death,” she said,

 

over and over, shaking her head.

I didn’t know what to say. “Too bad.”

“He fought it hard,” she said, “screamed

‘Get that Gotdamn light out of my face,’

 

then up and passed.”  She’d took a picture

and showed it to me.  Looked like

all dead people look – his eyes froze,

his mouth froze open like a fish.

 

No, my daddy and me didn’t get along,

the house not big enough to hold

the two of us.  Like in that

Springsteen song.  We’d cuss each other

 

and sometimes come to blows.  Of course,

me 35, half his age, been able whip him

for a while.  He sure whipped me

back then before, cracking a buckled belt.

 

Can’t quite pity the poor dead bastard,

laying there waxy with his hair slicked back

in that Sears and Roebuck suit, striped tie,

his mouth glued closed, his eyes glued shut.

 

His daddy beat him, and that daddy

beat that daddy before that.  I ain’t

got no offspring, but got my own

business, mind my own business,

 

so I have the time to take my time,

to take the back roads, to avoid

traffic, to miss all them 18-wheelers in a hurry

to reach them warehouses they can’t abide.

On the Slave Ship Lolly Pop

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Click the grey button above for sound

                                                        for Nancy Reagan

I used to stuff my face with candy

when I was a little boy,

couldn’t cop enough Mary Janes,

would kill for an Almond Joy.

 

Then I graduated to the Real Thing – Coke.

I was popping five cans a day,

plopping my dimes down on the counter

under caffeine and sugar’s sway.

 

Now I’m hooked on heroin,

am little more than a thug.

Wish I’d known then what I know now –

that sugar is the gateway drug.

Candy-Land-King-Kandy-candy-land-2005885-1024-768

Out of Action

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Image

Click grey arrow above for sound

 

Out of action, losing traction,

I slid down South, a bad mistake.

Florida is flat, crawling with con men,

rattlesnakes, swamps, and tattooed

waitresses who call you “Sugar Britches.”

 

Shooting for Key West, got waylaid in Mayo,

Way down upon the Suwannee River,

A taint of a town (tain’t panhandle,

tain’t peninsula), impoverished

in more ways than one.  No fun.

 

Met Loquacia at a juke joint call’d Phaz 2,

a concrete block shit hole

not far from the “Bo Gator Motel” where

I was staying – not clean, not well-lighted –

and my money was dwindling.

 

Loquacia was into iguanas, had them

inked all over her skin, crawling up

her back from butt crack to shoulder

blade and up over down betwixt her tits.

 

Just got one tat, the name of my dead son,

Thom, one letter from left to right

in the crotches between my fingers.

I open my hand and spread the span,

and poof! his name appears in Gothic.

 

Anyways, I spent my days scrounging,

hooked up, thanks to L, with this cat who claimed

to be from JA, Mo-Bay, but could have been

some South Carolina geechie for all I know,

but he paid me good to make a run.

 

Seems he supplied some squids

at the base up in Jacksonville.

2 kilos of what the geechie calls ganga

stowed in the trunk of my Chevy

in duffel bags. What could go wrong?

 

Long story short.  I’m writing this

from the Duval County Jail.  Loquacia

ain’t darkened the door.  Silver lining,

my rap sheet ain’t that bad: shoplifting,

public drunkenness, simple possession.

 

Working with a public defender, an

idealistic Jewish girl named Rachel.

She asked me about the tats, and sort

of teared up, she did.  Maybe she can get

me off – and by that I mean out of jail.

 

Anyways, here I sit, way

out of action, with absolutely no

traction. a semi-literate Oscar Wilde,

waiting for my upcoming trial

where I’ll sing like Joan Baez.