I took a job at the apartments,
And I sat down in the hall;
The 20-minute breaks were frequent
And the world was turning slowly, if at all.
I heard about the fortune-teller
Who foretold of a rare disease;
I cursed her powers of suggestion--
What a rotten thing to make someone believe.
I heard about the suicidal nephew
Whose increase in the dose
Of his popular antidepressant
Left him even more than a little more morose.
And there among the graders
Was a woman in high-top shoes;
She stood apart from all the others
Minding her own business and her own blues.
I looked around me at the gravel,
The dented cans, and broken glass,
And I knew that I would leave it;
I knew that I’d become a lucky man at last--
A lucky man at last.
On the Day of Recovery
(© 1998 James M. Davidson)
I’m taking pleasure
in the small things
I put a new wheel on my bicycle, and I like the way it sings
I’m a bullet through the lifting fog and the leaf-cut lines of the sun
It’s the second time I’ve been late this week
It’s the first time I’ve felt lucid in a month.
And the bridge over the
railroad
Is the top of the world.
JJ’s on the press,
and the big man burns the screens
I go out to the trailer and I wake up all of my machines.
And the cardinal on the
railing
Is a good sign dressed in red.
If you throw me down,
I bounce;
Put me to sleep, I come awake;
Fold me over, crumple me up;
Eventually I remember my shape.
I switch off the four
amber lights
Close the door to the darkroom and lock it up for the night
There was a time when I was winded, laid out flat and dry
But now the world’s back to normal;
I’m sort of back to having a life.
And the litter I’ve
been trailing
Is picked up and put away.
If you throw me down…
Down
(© 2004 James M. Davidson)
Predisposed to be alone
And I fail my friends out of reckless hibernation
It might be selfish, it might be nothing
It might be my new bad habit.
My hands are still cold
from yesterday
Walking in the cemetery’s gray
I don’t know anyone there.
Walking between the rows of headstones
Thinking about all the Sunday clothes
Underneath the plastic flowers.
Under the roof of the
great white advantage
Expectation and possession lock me down
I know I’m lucky, I know I’m guilty
I’ve been let down a bit too easy.
My feet are still tired
from every day
Walking in the same-old-shit parade
Where the money’s too much like medicine
Though the agenda’s fraught with ghosts
Still I hang around for another dose,
Waiting for louder warning.
Down,
Down is just a dagger to the visitor
Down doesn’t share its victims with company
Or leave on a desperate request.
I wish I could wish these
ills away—
An impossible task in this sunken state
Where all advice just hammers the nails right in.
I wish there was more than science,
But the way of the world’s in the way of believing
There’s any option other than waiting it out.
Down…
I’m waiting on
a letter.
I’m down;
I’m waiting on a letter.
Road to Ruleville
(© 2004 Robert N. Brown)
I bought me a bottle
of Spanish wine
I’m gonna be in Ruleville right on time
With a pocket of memories
I’m driving away from the setting sun
I’m bottled up tight like a fifth of rum
You know I hold my pain quite jealously
Chorus:
This blacktop two lane is long and straight
The Mississippi Delta seems to shake
Like my shoulders when I cry
Like my shoulders when I cry
I must have been a boy
about nine or ten
When I learned the smell of my daddy’s gin
Upon his breath so sweet
A blazing sky and no shade in sight
A duplex small and a swollen eye
We had the A/C to fight the heat
Chorus
Feeling fine now some
time has flown
My landscape’s flat and my money’s blown
I got a plan made for two
Some shining strings a buzzin sound
A reverb tank and a note that’s round
Now all I need is you
Chorus
Baton
Rouge
(© 2005 Richard J. Crepeau/James M. Davidson)
Six dark hours, twisted in my sheets
Wrestling over whether I should drop the dime
And speak about your crime
It guts me, and it robs me of my sleep.
I saw you out in the woods near my home
With a man transfixed by your smile and honey hair
Completely unaware
Of how you would be leaving him alone.
You beat him with that baton rouge
Until the life had left his frightened eyes
That big red stick had done its work,
And you sank to the leaves and you cried, cried, cried, cried.
I’ve had my eye
on you since we were young
And even though I should expose your fatal flaw
Love beats out the law
No betrayal can trip across my tongue.
It’s a chump’s parade of men I’m
jealous of,
But to you a man is just a man, alive or dead.
In your troubled head
Is there room for mercy or love?
You beat them with that baton rouge
Even though you know no reason why
That big red stick has never missed
And when I try to sleep I hear you cry, cry, cry, cry.
Philco
(© 2004 Robert N. Brown)
Utah Fitzsimmons was
15 years old,
when he first plowed a field
A double-buster in hand, a lot of work for a boy,
a sly grin was his shield.
With the levee behind him the only hill in sight,
a place for him to rest his eyes
With a graveyard below, packed with white people at rest,
cracker jacks without a prize.
Utah is old now, his
TV sits outside,
And I the young smartass, that Philco I wanted to buy.
He worked for a lady,
a woman of means,
and every night his wife would feed him cornbread and beans,
She gave him that TV for spare time he had,
but Desi & Lucy, they seemed kind of mean.
The land did not love him, nor the people
who paid for him to raise their crops
So he stayed while the others sold out for the train,
he’ll talk if a visitor stops.
Utah is old now….
Linville
Creek
(© 2004 James M. Davidson)
Down from the Tennessee
Valley Divide,
West-northwest on the Tennessee side,
From Bingham Hill and down a piece,
Things are happening on Linville Creek;
White sky brightens over
Grassy Knob,
Apple trees blooming in the morning fog,
Redwing blackbirds beginning to speak--
Things are happening on Linville Creek;
It’s all downhill from here.
Two old paint horses
walking through the mud,
Three cows drinking from an old bathtub,
Tomcat weaving through the summer weeds--
Things are happening on Linville Creek;
Black fence rolling up
the side of the road,
Airplane flying from a mailbox post,
Old Christmas trees hitting 25 feet—
Things are happening on Linville Creek.
It’s all downhill from here.
The wind dies down as
evening comes,
The hillsides are blinking with lightning bugs
Yellow dog heaves a sigh of relief
Things are happening on Linville Creek;
Dark sky holding up a
crescent moon
That’s shining on the footsteps of Daniel Boone.
Stars coming out, people going to sleep--
Things are happening on Linville Creek;
It’s all downhill
from here.
The Luddite
(© 2008 James M. Davidson)
Dozers & loaders & shovels erase the terrain
They carve out the coal and remake of a mountain a waste
Where the machines have spoken
Digging the devil's token
What the machines have stolen
Won't be growing back
The water ran black from the tap into his great-grandmother's sink
No one came to explain
No one paid
No one fixed anything
The blasting and rude repacking
The walls in the basement cracking
Then when the flood camer rolling
It all went down
When the last bale was piled on
He covered his head in nylon
Put all of his blackest clothes on
And packed his pack
As he shouldered his fireworks through rubble and mud
His red light split the night into shadow and blood
He set the tubes, lit the fuse, and flew staggering away
When they blew, how they blew
And the new dark became his new day.
The plans of the malefactors
Didn't count on the counteractor
Backlit by the burning tractors
Returning medicine
Leaving the land he grew in
At the end of his great undoing
Ruin begetting ruin,
One battle down.
So he made up his mind to kick out all the teeth
Of the beast and its priests
And their wretched
Machines.
Until...
All the machines are broken...
And Now for the Good News
(© 2008 James M. Davidson)
In the fading of the evening light
In the middle of an uncertain life
With the seven hours gone
Working the wheel, the wire, the hammer, the hill, and the stone,
With the coaching and the talismans, and still
You are wet to the bone
The bodyguards of the breakneck pace
Kicked you out of their crew
Here's your chance
To stand up straight
And embrace
This good news
You're sleeping
to compress the time
You're leveled out
And glassy-eyed.
The bodyguards...
Here's to the misfits and the loners,
The comediennes and the stoners.
Love to the lost philosophers,
Love to the maidens of honor.
I honor you.
Oh, how I would lift you up
And carry you home.
C'mon, let's go home.
Still Life With Cake
(© 2010 James M. Davidson)
The class clown is out of practice
All his lines come a minute too late
the journalist is out of questions
She is shocked to be in such a foreign state
The rate of change changes just enough...
It's hard to say where it all sped up.
The photogrophers hide out in the corners
Finding and freezing their fractions profound
The storyteller sweats in the spotlight
Even though he is purely background.
Sidelined and superfluous--
The special guest is a total bust.
(Down in flames.)
There is no finer way to go.
The interpreter who once was golden
Quickly recognizes his mistake;
He sees the awkward interloper
Hunkerin' down on his piece of chocolate cake.
The cool command is “Kill, kill, kill!”
There’s no reward for standing still.
(Beat the clock to a pulp.)
There is no mercy to mete out.
There is no favor; luck’s run out.
There is no later; there's only now.
We
penetrate the city’s
ring of slight decay,
Past the record store and the museum for model trains;
I am hoping for a brief audience
With the lesser-famous of the famous residents.
Vicious crush on a voice—
The siren and her beautiful noise.
The wicked spikes on the black iron fence
Make the posted keep-out signs redundant.
All means of escape
Foiled by the ornamental gate.
And in the swimming pool,
Chlorine burns the eyes;
A body is made buoyant,
In the morning light
It wakes me up, gradually,
But it doesn’t help me know, where to put my feet;
All the lessons I skipped
Haunt the late hollowness.
Bones are fragile and the evening is hard;
My friend lies between two stationary cars;
The night is full of moments beautiful and strange;
But I am saddled with the things I cannot change.
Rotten fruit in my gut—
I try to purge, but I can’t force it up.
And in the hospital
Waiting room,
Reading last year’s housekeeping literature,
The diagnosis looms.
It wakes me up, deliberately,
But it doesn’t help me know when to plant my feet;
And all the lessons I skipped
Haunt the late hollowness
I promise—let’s
promise—
To climb out of it;
Here’s the hand, here’s the driver, and the sack;
And all the elements converging;
All the arrows pointing home
Still point to home.
 |