probation poetry

Probation 5-7-18

NSP Meditations, Poetry , , , , ,

Who will show first today,

besides me of course?

Who will implode?

Who will wither with grace

or squirm?

Who has disappeared?

Who suffered a tracheotomy

to breathe foul justice?

 

The sweatband man skates up!

Cigarette dangling,

black slacks,

black knee pads,

black loafers,

black satin jacket,

gray hair pulled in a ponytail.

The ponytail blows

like a flag,

gray against the gray sky.

Dude has style,

a style keeping him alive.

 

I’ve decided to sit by the Coke Machine.

It feels full of life. I say hello.

No Walt Whitman in here anymore.

I bulked up on him.

I read a historian who wrote

that Walt supported

the invasion of Mexico in 1848.

He probably did,

the Manifest Destiny and all.

He was ahead of his time,

but not then.

It was soon to come

in Leaves of Grass

when he invaded

American poetry

and took a scythe

to the tall rigid meters,

and cut loose liberation.

Can a poet still do that?

 

Rigs roll up in the parking lot,

another skateboard, too.

A dog is vaping.

A woman is crying.

A gull drops a shit on the heather.

It will be on soon,

and I won’t believe

what I see and hear,

until I do.

Blades of Grass (not a probation poem)

NSP Meditations, Poetry , , , , , , , ,

I sit in the car, reading Perry Mason,

thinking about something he said,

“Every man, every offense

needs to be judged on its own merit.”

 

I’m 45 minutes early,

parked near the drainage ditch.

The willows await spring leaves

and more cigarette butts.

 

This parking lot is the ugliest place

I’ve ever seen in Oregon.

I’m part of its landscape,

a landscape without people.

 

A big black pickup

pulls up next to me.

It’s blotting out the sun.

The driver gets out,

walks to the office.

Two women get out,

and walk toward

the ditch to smoke.

It’s legal there.

 

They appear Native American,

one in her 60s, one in her 30s.

The latter is beautiful,

loose black hair,

black lips,

black jeans,

black hoodie

advertising a Portland pot shop.

 

She begins crawling into the ditch.

What?

I get out. The meeting starts soon.

I bring along Perry.

Walt is history.

 

“What’s going on down there,” I ask.

I move to inspect.

I smell cigarette smoke.

I look down.

She’s kneeling near the water,

taking closeups with her phone,

but not of herself.

 

She looks up at me.

“It’s so beautiful, the green,

the moss, the grass, the blades of grass.”

I mention the willows without leaves,

thin cylinders of various greens.

“Yes, I saw them,” she said.

She emerges from the ditch, smoking.

“Thank you,” I say,

“for finding beauty.”

She smiles and smokes.

“I like to look for it,” she says.

 

I walk into the office,

pull out Perry,

begin to read.

No probation office poem today.

Probation poem 12-4-17

NSP Meditations, Poetry , ,

They decorated the

probation office for Christmas:

Stockings, snowmen, Santas.

Green garland and green lights

shaped like a noose.

 

Stillness reigns.

Christmas pills.

Christmas black eyes.

No baying yet.

I can’t write a poem without baying,

so I won’t.

 

I’ve got Walt with me.

Was Walt into Christmas?

I bet he wielded his eel spear

to bring home eel

for Christmas dinner.

 

What would Walt make

of his country today?

Of course he’d be in prison,

doing what he implied

in Leaves of Grass.

 

Walt was always singing

praises for America.

Can you sing like that

for America anymore?

You can certainly bay.

 

We assemble around the table.

A new man

already in the act of disappearing.

I hear Americans gently baying:

I can’t go to church.

I can’t ride horses?

I can’t go see cattle with my dad?

I have to live in a stable.

I want to use so bad.

I need a job.

I can’t take a welding class?

I can’t live near a bus stop?

I can’t go to AA seven days a week.

I live in a culvert.

I can’t burn but I can take pills?

I spent the night on the roof.

I’m becoming more sallow.

 

Sallow!

A man said sallow.

I heard it.

 

He was wearing

a greasy brown hoodie

with the hood on.

I could barely see his face

(and it was sallow),

but I heard sallow

and I listened.

There is a difference.

 

I’m hearing

Americans baying

in this soundproof studio

and I’m recording it,

mixing, (no over dubbing),

producing an album

of an undetermined

musical genre

that somehow

I must release

because Americans need

to hear their

fellow Americans bay.

Probation Poem 11-13-17

NSP Meditations, Poetry , , , , , , ,

I drive into the parking lot

of the probation office.

I am not going to write a poem

about the experience today

or ever again.

 

Wind billows the American flag,

naturally at half mast,

perpetually at half mast.

Just keep it there

and turn it upside down.

 

I survey the vehicles in the lot:

meth rigs and a pickup camper

with a homemade red, white and blue paint job,

jury rigged with duct tape and baling wire.

Living upside down,

at half mast.

 

Time to go in.

I bring along Leaves of Grass.

I put my right hand on it

and swear I won’t write a poem.

 

A man bums smokes

A woman plays Angry Birds

A man hides in a hoodie

A woman fidgets

I hear a man say he has a 1:00 appointment.

He has no idea what time it is.

He has the wrong day, too.

 

The man now offers to buy a cigarette.

The woman takes him up.

He fishes out change.

They go outside.

I check her face: surface of the moon.

I check his face: faceless.

 

Sterility. The humming. The inertia.

I feel myself becoming the gray carpet.

I crack open Walt

to glean some life.

 

Rain begins to collide

against the windows.

The talk moves toward rain.

Two men describe it as “pissing.”

The talk moves toward pissing,

into cups, beakers, tubes,

and training their minds

and bodies for the UA.

 

We go inside the room.

I hear:

“I’m living under a bakery.”

“I’m journaling instead of drinking.”

“I need one good day.”

“I’m almost out of pills.”

 

When you hear a man say,

“I’m living under a bakery,”

how can you not write a poem?

Or whatever this is.

I swear it’s the last one,

until the next one.

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