Friday, January 18, 2008

A Poem

Ladies --
I ain't got a poem about a band, but I did write this here one about our old friend Coyote. Also, I think the bad should meet halfway, by which I mean oHIo.


COYOTE IS DEAD NEAR EXIT 202 IN OHIO.

A semi blows by, lifts the ginger hair of his tail to show
white fur closer to the skin. In a Kentucky Coffee
tree bending over the power lines perches a red-tailed hawk.
He keeps a solid watch. Somewhere near here waits his mate.
I want to see her. It’s Christmas Eve.
This morning, the hens greeted me at the barn door,
clucking and pecking along, checking my bootlaces
for grain dust, while our four goats
cried from their pen in the corner, climbing up the woven wire
gate, little beggars. It’s just past Full Peach Moon –
walking home on Christmas night,
I will see a shooting star. Mars and Orion
share a little patch of sky. I’ll reckon you won’t believe
what I’ve seen, though I see it more every day -- beauty lies
down in layers. I done saw it perched in the Osage Orange
over the gob pile on Captina Creek. Coyote is dead
and we all are next. Every evening I leave the goats
crying in the corner pen, the hens shuffling their knuckled toes
roost-ways into their coop. I’m glad I’m not the morning star,
living thirteen years in eight. I do recollect the snow.
I do stop along the interstate, not to bury Coyote, but to brush
my hand against his perfect, stretched out paw.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Who cares about our band?

I have been trying to get the members together for a practice
since last February, when it was decided over India Pale Ale that we should begin.
We were inspired by our collaboration on the tavern countertop,
by the way T-Bone could set up an almost click-track effect
by tapping the base of her hand on the tabletop,
by the way Possum managed the orchestral arrangements,
by T’s appearance in publications of note, which seemed to suggest
he could parlay this wordsmithery into some raw fuckin’ lyrics.
I would do whatever, play a little tambourine, a little kazoo,
keep things unexpected with the addition of marimba.
But despite that one practice in Leon’s basement,
and the sweet poster Leon made for our show that never materialized,
we never recorded any tracks, we slouched toward each other
with too little interest on that March practice evening,
and found that without beer our band was a failure.
Our imaginations had been too large pants
our shriveled voices and kazoos could not fill.

IF WE WERE A BAND