Man’s World—Shaker Boulevard, 1970

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“I guess people have to go through whatever their time requires

them to go through and if they can see it as inspiration, you know,

fine. But I'm not taking no blame for it.”

—George Clinton

 

Bobby Camel, ‘cause he smokes Marlboro‘s

– we’re just like that, that’s how we are—

in his old Bentley with the wood dashboard and leather seats,

brown-crinkly cowhide, white peeking through like somebody’s skin.

 

We work at a high-end clothing store on Shaker

owned by the Jewish guy, Geller. He’s a pretty good dude,

dresses to the nines. I’m 16, stock shirts,

sold a $20 tie once ‘cause everyone else was occupied.

Boss give me a nod, and “How can I help you?”

 

That tie so smooth on my fingers I thought it

was Jane Fonda’s skin. Cash register cool

like a junction box, like swingin’ a bat.

 

Sometimes I’m in the basement. Quiet down there

stacking shirts. Just me and my thoughts,

crinkling sound of that stiff plastic really the only thing,

thumb-dent near the pocket as I lay them down to sort the colors,

then feed ‘em to a slot like mail.

 

One afternoon Bobby takes me and Del out to see his car.

It was old Rich, but man… Something else, like looking at another country.

Then back inside the store-dark, those shirt colors so pale

You almost don’t know that’s purple/this is pink.

 

Went to see the new Bruce Lee movie last Saturday

and saw him there, Bobby and his girl.

Place packed, The Colony, and in walks this one white boy

to that sea of dark, “a tableau” Miss Watson would call it.

 

I love her. In her class we read “Sonny’s Blues”

and that old story ‘bout some guy who goes looking

for “the unpardonable sin” — but never finds it.

What the hell kinda story is that?

 

The breeze comes in, the breeze goes out.

Customer always right. And the future looks

like a pair of shiny shoes heading out the door,

down the sidewalk till you can’t see it anymore.

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Learning Blue

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You can still powerhouse baby, on the riverside.

— Robert Johnson

 

It took me years to learn to play the blues.

“Play hard!” my friend said. “That’s the secret.”

He meant lean into the strings with a strong hand

Like you’re trying to pry boards apart,

Break a lug nut off a wheel. That hard.

“And it’s all about phrasing,” he added.

 

So I leaned into the strings

Like they needed a whooping,

Like they were razor wire

That hurt me, like my heart pumping 

Into one finger, thumb stressed behind the neck,

A whole cupped hand

Wavering like river water—a sorrow

I couldn’t hold anymore, and I let it out.

 

The people I love are gone,

The road filled with misery and love—

Like the mixing of oil and water,

A guitar of hissing oil hitting a hot pan,

Like fried everything piled on a bone-white platter.

I couldn’t tell if it was an angel or a demon playing

Or something else altogether. But I knew

It was me somehow, or some part of me,

A picture in a cloud frame on someone’s mantle.

I played my guitar like it was death,

Like it was life, like it was the only moment I had left

In this beautiful moving picture.

 

 

Throw the Rulebook Out

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Nature is the source of all true knowledge.

—Leonardo DaVinci

 

 

My friend Eddie wore loafers, no socks in the middle of winter. It’s like Diogenes sleeping in a barrel in Athens and building a whole philosophy around it. When you take a physical thing away, you create space. When you create space, you can think. I thought people were good, and then I walked a while. I had this idea once in my 20s looking at the end of a street rolling down a long hill into a field. I thought I could keep walking down this road and never come back here. You can always do that, look down the street and think you could walk and keep going, beyond where you are now with no return. The rulebook is like a hand you can hold. Do you want to hold it? Seems like we do for a while, and then we want another rulebook or no rulebook at all. Diogenes kept nothing; Eddie abandoned his socks. That shiny ox-blood leather, the beef-rolled straps across the tops were surprisingly warm, and it turns out your ankles don’t feel much cold at all. I tried it, the shoes and sleeping by the side of the road. They were right. There is something liberating in it. And liberation was what I always wanted. I think in the long run we believe in this because it’s easy, easier than facing it, whatever it is. In our myth, there’s a hurricane we are always running from. Its name is self or history, but its body is carried on our backs or on top of our heads like baskets of water. The Golden Rule is one thing. The Silver one says, “Treat yourself like a child learning to walk or ride. Teach the thing it can’t imagine doing, that silver moment the bike is let go and you float on nothing but the seat, the handlebars, your body, and the wind.”

 

 

That Same Whirling Motion of the Thrower

 

 

In Ohio,

maple trees send their seeds

down on the half-wing of

a pale bird,

 

that same whirling motion

of the thrower, moving with a flutter

so dry, it crackles beautifully

like a dream remembered

 

for the first time in years.

A boy is twirling

near two spring maples. His arms

fling out, he is listening

 

to the whistle of an ancient sling

flinging stone or seed,

it doesn’t matter. Inside,

someone yells, What’s all

 

this clutter?   Even as he moves,

honestly, he doesn’t know.

Inside of us, there is a

coiled spring that compresses and

 

is released, and again that same

motion, until years later

he will walk down the street

winding a sweater in circles

 

above his head, whirling with

the turn and with the seeds

in Ohio, again and oh,

again.

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*  Originally published in Four Quarters, Vol. XXVII, No.3, Spring 1979

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Caesura

 

 

At four in the morning the streets in Cleveland

 break up and roll themselves away

 

only to be planted again by the front wheels

 of cars rolling downtown at daybreak. No one

 

sees it, but I know it happens that way.

 There are people I used to work with

 

who would call thoughts like that crazy. Maybe

 they are. But I need to explain

 

the sex workers on Carnegie, the gun in every

 other locker at the factory where my friend works,

 

the body face down in the lot where I saw it

 first. I knew a black man, fifty and

 

strong as an ox, who tore down his painting

 from our locker at Christmas. It was

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beautiful and someone made him take it down. He tore

 it from the wall in pieces. Some answers

 

are hard to get: places don’t mean much anymore and

 the smaller pains in a lifetime—

 

small because they weren’t yours or they happened

 long ago— fade away. But I know

 

there is something wild beating in our hearts and

 sometimes it gets out, you can almost hear it.   

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*  Nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Joyce Carol Oates and originally published in The Ohio Review, Fall 1986