The Pope Family

 

Fable

 I’m bleeding like a king,

The stuck pig said.

 

CPL

 

I thought I was really something

When I got a call from

The Connecticut Poet Laureate.

I bragged about it to an old girlfriend

When I was drunk at a high school reunion.

Then he called me again a little later

When I was supposed to be reading

The Lord of the Rings to my kids.

 

After that his calls came once a week.

I told him I thought writing poems

Was compulsive like gambling,

That I wished I could stop.

He wasn’t listening.

He was thinking about

The next poem he was going

To read to me or whether

He’d remembered to ask

If I’d gotten him a reading in NC yet.

 

I knew all his poems,

But I was disappointed

In how he read them,

And I had tried to schedule a reading

But no one else was impressed

By the Connecticut Poet Laureate

No matter how much I built him up.

 

This went on for seven or eight years.

Sometimes my oldest son

Would answer the phone

And tell him I wasn’t at home

Or we would let the call go

To the brand new answering machine,

And listen to him read a poem

Or talk about how much the Mohawks

In upper state New York loved him.

Then he would stop because

He didn’t really know

What to say to a machine.

 

The Connecticut Poet Laureate

Went for a while without calling

And I wondered if he was okay.

Then he made a New Year’s call,

Just after the Bush-Gore

Supreme Court election.

He hated republicans

And made sure to tell me so.

He’d lost weight, quit drinking,

And felt the best ever,

Except about that

Goddamn election.

We are in some shit now

He told me.

Just wait and see.

I agreed and agreed and agreed.

 

A week later another friend

Who also knew him called

And said he’d died,

Heart attack caused by

The election.

The tedious conversations were over.

The nasal Yankee voice.

The violent coughing fits,

The thirty minute soliloquies.

 

I tried to remember

If I’d ever told him

That his poems saved me

When I was in my 20s,

That he was a genius,

And everything he thought he was.

I don’t think I did.

 

My brush with the aggravating

Nearly famous was over,

And I already missed him terribly.

Every time the phone would ring,

I’d sigh, then think, well,

If anybody could do it,

It would be the Connecticut Poet Laureate.

 

 

Photo from George Mitrovich's Baseball Notes (George and Tim w/ Tony K) available from Red Hawk Publications

 

Animal House

 Animal House

 

Diggs and his twin Dirt bag

Occupied the porch at the house

Next door on Columbia Avenue.

They were Belushi style frat boys

Jock strap softball pants

Matching cowboy hats

They drank bottled Budweiser only

As they were connoisseurs

Of the domestic hops market.

There was a popular gay bar

Just beyond the rat houses

On the far side of Columbia

And it was their sport

On spring Saturdays

To jeer the drag queen weddings

Hurling extraordinary insults

They were after all business majors

And infield chatterers deluxe

I listened from my depression era porch

The Riverside Shakespeare in lap

A big bottle of black caffeine capsules

Nearby me Lord when I heard

The voice of one of my English profs

From beneath an elegant bridal veil—

Oh you boys! Oh you boys!

A hundred yards away

The nasty Tar River

Floated the latest suicide

Past May’s Beach and the sand pits

Toward the Pamlico Sound. 

Hoe Boy's Reality Show (2009)

 

Hoe Boy's Reality Show

 

From his house the farm land sloped

toward the river beyond,

past water towers to town,

and at night, the horizon

bloomed the yellow white story

of the highway, its business,

anonymous and pure here,

and he hardly thought of the

barn, black and yawning, loose tin

on the wood shed, fences that

needed fixing, displeasure

or regret, and even this

first chill wind, rustling through leaves

brooked no uncertainty for

him; unworried, he rocked till

a star fell across his wish.

Hoe Boy Vacation (2009)

 

Hoe Boy Vacation

 

The day is a gorgeous sulfurous yellow.

He trains his rifle on a surfer,

sights a gull as it dives toward a gray wave,

lays the weapon on the glass deck table

and sips a peach flavored energy drink.

A man on the radio talks about a bailout,

about a new law that makes it easy to sue,

about big houses that nobody can sell.

He doesn't wonder what happened

to his wife, his job, his children.

This is the vacation he wanted.

His eyes follow two female joggers

down the edge of the packed sand,

barefoot, lime green bikini bottoms,

soaked white t-shirts.

He wipes the rifle barrel with a towel,

thinks about writing a book—

aims over the heads of two children

building the castle of their dreams.

Tornado Watch

 

Tornado Watch

 

The new house sits on a mud hill

Crows in the neighbor’s black walnut waited

This afternoon, watching the fig bush.

Trash cans tied to garage door handles,

Maples, crabby half broken old men

Hold the wind whip off the farm house.

The new house has a sign on the door,

Bold 32 point letters saying something

In Spanish about electricity.

Just outside the farmhouse

You can hear the theme song

To The Big Bang Theory

Through the front window

The blue wave of a big screen TV.

Every dead rock n roll drummer

Returns as August thunder

That follows the river of weather,

Their call and response working

The division of lightning.

 

The Rodeo Clown

 

He wants to write something so, what is the word,

Visceral, yet fractal, that the reader, upon finishing

Has to put it away in a place he hopes he will

Forget it, but he cannot and must return to see

If his initial feelings were accurate. He wants

To give an exorcist some work to do, he wants

To wake disgusted with himself and what he

Has done, to scatter his life in the process

Like the dust that God held in his hand

On the fifth day, or the rolled dice found

Or a winning hand of cards left face down

After the Rapture. He wants to write his

Enemies’ ground up bones, the water

He will pour the powder in, the ladles

He will lift to feed them their dead.

 

RACE PLACES  (where I ran in foot races back in the day)

 

Conover 4

Boone 2

Morganton 5

Valdese 3

Lincolnton 2

Hickory 11

Newton 12

Cherryville 2

Linville 7

Banner Elk 2

Shelby

Granite Falls 4

Lenoir 4

Weaverville

Bryson City 2

Andrews

Concord 3

Drexel

Claremont

Kingsport  Peter Githuka set a world record for 8K that stood for six years

Long View

Spencer 3

Troutman

Lake Norman Park 2

Oakboro

Louisville

The Nobles Next Door

 

The Nobles Next Door

 

The guys next door

All had girlfriends

And settled futures.

They were business majors,

Pre-meds or dentals.

They had names like Russell

And Robert and Richard.

When they talked to us,

They looked off

Toward the sky,

Nodding indifferently.

They wore flip flops

Or boat shoes,

Flowery disco shirts,

Or Izods.

We were outclassed

And they knew it.

They cleared their throats

When they entered

Our drug den.

Their girlfriends

Who were all

Going to be nurses,

Accessories,

They didn’t dare

Bring them.

 

Melancholy

 

Where am I in the grief?

Turning the book pages,

Lifting shirts from hangers.

 

Hold he gauge to the calendar.

Count the faucet drips.

Watch the dog grow lonelier.

 

Memory is a ride

On the golf cart

Around the field.

 

Five years, ten years, fifteen.

The sun bleeds into the mountain.

No mill worker, no mill whistle, no mill.

 

Grief passes like the water

Underground, tugging at

The water in me