Music That Makes Me Happy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0CBzKfvA80
THIEVERY CORPORATION

Audio Therapy. I do not speak any foreign language, yet this album says to more to me than most albums in English. The Language of the Soul.

Welcome to The Vagrant Day: My Poetry Blog

I just never know where inspiration will come from, but it most often comes from experiences and emotions. I invite you to comment on my work. I am interested in how others feel about my poems. Share your thoughts.

Fishing with my Father, 1970

He’d have a Pall Mall hanging loosely from his lips,

his eyes squinted tight behind sunglasses.

That habit he had of moving his head to the left

to shake back the sun-bleached hair that fell

from a side-ways part. Old dark green

boat shoes on his feet, holding the bamboo pole.

1970, probably. I can remember how it felt

to be small and unknowing. This man

who was everything good and true,

bigger than the sun, wider than the water.

His instruction so tender and slow,

taking the worm, baiting my hook.

My father, squatting behind me,

his tanned hands placed over mine so tiny,

we cast the line into the quiet lake.

Promptly impatient, I needed his steady

slowness to keep me still until

we had a tug, a heavy signal from

underneath where it was always dark.

Then dad pulled hard and the bamboo bent.

Out of the water sprang a mid-sized fish.

Dad was smiling, so I smiled back, until

he removed the hook and threw the creature

in a big red plastic bucket behind.

My, even then, poetic soul was thrown.

Panicked by the death of anything living,

I remember begging and crying, “Throw him

back! He can’t breath!” And my father laughed.

That made me cry more because it broke

my heart. But he saved my fish.

Shaking his head at my silly indulgence.

That was the conflict that lasted a life.

My father intolerant of my different way of

being a human being--someone beyond his

self-imposed, limited scope that meant fatherhood.

Where did my poetic, vagabond soul come from?

I know your paintings and I  have your jazz albums.

As I age, my face is more yours.

My one-liner sarcasm comes from your habit

made mine. Sometimes I catch myself clenching

my jaw, holding it all in just like you. And as my

beauty and health start packing, I recognize your pride

pulsating through the pronounced veins I got from you.

A Modern Response to Euripides’ The Medea

Jason messed with the wrong Corinthian

in that ancient play about the dangerously

pissed off Medea, the “X” of your nightmares.

Jason starts knockin’ boots with Creon’s

daughter, a genuine princess with a royal

bank account balance. Jason up and leaves

Medea and his own babies behind to

marry that spoiled brat of a princess so

he could hook it up with King Creon’s

power and financial means of success.

Well, the shit started gettin’ real when Medea

set the plan in motion to take out the royalty

and her own two boys of tender age to boot.

That girl was straight trippin’--wouldn’t hear

anything the sisters had to say bout

doin’ the right and ladylike thing.

Medea was straight out of her head when

she poisoned the princess and the king,

and murdered her own flesh and blood--

those two snot-nosed little boys with smart mouths.

Then, just to make sure those missing marbles was a lost cause,

she scooped up the kids’ dead bodies

and took them with her to God knows where

just so that rotten Jason couldn’t have ‘em.

Lord, if that ain’t a revenge tale for the ages.

Chicks and dudes been lovin’ each other to death

since at least 431 B.C., huh?

That’s some crazy ass shit right there.”

The Moment

The young woman stood

with wind blown hair

her makeup running down

the hollowed cheeks

behind her opened mouth

that quivered silently

under shattered eyes

full of blame

for someone

already gone.

Poem for Nick Drake

Poem for Nick Drake

Strange that I’d never heard

the haunting words you wrote.

Not once had I reveled in the

darkness found between the notes.

I think I have been in your room,

stood at the round window you had there.

I’ve gazed, misty across the meadows

that felt the weight of your thoughtful stare.

I see you were one not sad, but sick

the gloom that consumed you organically grown,

while your light long fingers danced on strings

words and melodies were born straight from bone.

My soul knows you, Nick, as a quiet man.

Your laughter comes from another room.

Your sadness comes close now with each careful word.

I find you everywhere now, like the moon.

Your Face Reminds Me

Your Face Reminds Me

Your face reminds me of lines I need to write.

Your lips speaking poetic words about this world

we visit when it’s just us two.

In the room where love came to find us long ago.

I was so far from anything relevant

and you were very bitter like strong coffee.

Late afternoons, the sun slanting in through the blinds--

stripes on the lined shelves of literature.

A place where all else falls away, unnecessary.

Pushing the papers and opened books aside,

sudden lust was a visitor we welcomed.

Pleasure had to be restrained there,

kept quiet as a shameful secret we shared.

What do I miss the most?

The urgency.

I miss the urgency.

I Used to Know A Guy Named Steve

I Used To Know a Guy Named Steve

Steve was a black man of thirty-five. He was greasy and had dandruff. He dressed very badly in black denim and cheap stretchy pullover shirts with three buttons center, top. He wore too much Drakar Noir in an attempt to cover up the smell of sweat that clung to him always in the south Texas heat. He’d had a bad acne problem in high school. The scars were quite deep. His thick glasses were always smudged with fingerprints because he was always pulling and pushing on them. It was a nervous habit. And when Steve talked about his demanding life in the music industry and how he’d just come from a rehearsal, it was all just bull shit. He was really quite convincing with the musical knowledge, but someone had seen him slinging burgers at Maggie’s Restaurant on Blanco. Said he works the day shift six days a week. Can’t say I was that surprised.  I never brought it up. Steve had enough strikes against him for one guy. I decided to let him live his dream with me since no one else was buying it.

The Day We Pulled the House Down

The Day We Pulled the House Down

Dad had purchased the lot next door

and the weak old house that sat on it.

Old neighbor Annie had lived there

and left her pieces of memory behind.

My sister and I combed the forgotten place and

found what we thought were treasures.

Two small green bottles with aged labels.

One for me and one for her.

Keepsakes of a day we’d remember

with vivid detail like a video loop

that repeats for an eternity in the mind.

We were all there, the family.

Dad, mom, all three siblings.

Dad and brother securing the thick rope

around the old house and then to the truck.

The truck’s grunting and pulling

until the house seemed to go up

in a puff of smoke, but it was dirt

and the house was falling,

folding in on itself like an unnatural bloom.

Five of us watched it die a loud

long unsettling human-like death.

It left us each shaken in some odd way.

We couldn’t know then that it was a metaphor

for what can happen to regular people

like us in the huge crap game called life.

We became a house of abandoned

rooms, cobwebs hanging in corners.

Someone took all the trinkets we left there.

Nothing was costly; just precious to us.

It didn’t even feel like home anymore.

Then the house that was home was pulled

by the thick rope that surrounded it.

The foundation crumbled in surrender

and the walls gave up the good fight.

It fell with the cry of a valiant, but tired soldier.

We all shed tears as we watched it happen.

Now, home is not a place we can go

by taking a particular road or certain turn.

But the house of the mind has countless rooms

full of lovely things to smile about.

In the Dressing Room: A Prose Poem

In the Dressing Room: A Prose Poem

“We have a pay phone back by the bathroom stalls, but they got no doors cause someone got caught smoking weed or doing coke or something else equally bad in there but the girls in this place don’t really care cause there’s nothing to hide around here other than your money and you better keep that in a place no one can get at or you’ll be leaving here with tears running down your young and disillusioned face broke as when you came in so you’ll be smart not to trust any of the girls and don’t loan them your shit or you won’t get it back--here you go! here’s a locker you can use just don’t leave nothin’ important in it if you don’t have a lock cause you can leave your things and your money with the house mom who’s right over there on the other side of the dressing room. Up those stairs and through that curtain there is the main stage and you’re up first so you better get dressed--My name’s Exotica. Good luck out there, girl.”

In That Old Photograph

In That Old Photograph

It looks as if my skin’s too tight

like my soul hasn’t had the chance

to work its way to the surface

of my then smooth mask of face.

I don’t know who she was--

the way she tied her scarf like that.

Made up far too much for a young

girl so unformed and unsure

of everything around her.

Life will loosen

the skin of the soul

pulling down what once

held with certainty

to the bones of youth

exposing something truer.

A falling into place--

settling like a house

well lived-in.