Some Old Poems, by Robert Basil
Briggs Room Reading
Stanford University Spring 1984
Hi there, everybody.
This August I was sitting outside the Student Union reading To the Lighthouse.
It was a spacey day, and out of the store comes this little kid
with a woman I presumed to be his Mom. The woman had three chocolate bars,
and she gave the child one half of one. The Union bees were waiting for him to open it.
They had already crawled into my coke can, too intent on sucking sugar up
to sting me when I waved at them.
The woman gives the child her chocolate bar and she walks away, and I might have seen her start eating,
but reading all day made me too tired to turn my neck, so I just heard her unwrapping.
Then the child said the first two lines of my poem.
I was blown away by the beauty of his words and how they represented in haiku implicitness
the perfect tasty union of mother and child. Then the child said the third line of my poem and
that changed everything. Because the words that are my poem’s second line were misspoken.
The child was about four. And he meant to say something else, that, in order to say,
he had to add a couple of cloggy syllables. What before had been sweet
now signified a kind of craving I knew more closely,
and I guessed that the woman was probably a sitter,
not a Mom. The last three lines are mine.
“Sweetness Alighting”
“Me and my Ma
are chocolate.
Choclaholics.”
Always
a ways
away.
--
This next poem was conceived while working the graveyard shift
at a Mighty Taco on the east side of Buffalo. The key situation of this place:
Everyone I had successfully avoided on the streets for the four years prior all came in to buy food after drinking.
The poem is about Deb, the junior assistant manager.
“Deb Says She Will Lose Weight Soon”
Your thighs are capsized canoes.
But this is bliss.
My maya and your maya.
You lean over my lap.
The handiwipe is in the sink.
And your breasts are encyclopedias.
They are heavy.
They are stiff.
Never been used.
World Books.
We scrape the red right off our faces.
--
The first book of poetry I purchased was Wordsworth’s collected poems, near Edmonton, Alberta.
I was working on famous Al Oeming’s Game Farm literally dawn to dusk, shoveling shit into the pick-up.
I memorized the first sections of the Immortality Ode while trying to spot the buffalo who had the runs.
Because once you saw the runs you had to report it and then watch for it to happen again
so you could shoot a dart into the animal and give it medicine. This was the only part of the job I liked.
“Under Wordsworth”
“There was a time
when meadow, grove,
and stream” –
filled my genderless eyes
with steam
and with blood.
I kicked mud
but being spry
didn’t eat
mud.
Vapor sleeves slid up
the waterfall’s drawers
hobgoblins.
I plopped in
the hole the splashing gored
and stayed there
perky
until I heard my friends
coming, throwing
twigs at the hanging
pine cones.
--
This is a poem about a wimp from my childhood, Mickey Higgins, who was large but weak, who nonetheless had a large and strong dog, named Arhumba.
Arhumba bit the ear off Dirky, my best friend’s dog. This poem is not about that particular incident.
“Remorse Years Later”
Those boxing gloves
Given to Mickey Higgins
Made him even easier
To beat up.
--
I wrote this poem the morning my first day working at Xerox,
a morning that marked the beginning of me getting back on the stick,
said my Ma, who was driving the car. I was looking out the windows
and recalled that scene in “Taxi Driver” where Travis drops an alka seltzer
into the glass and, a Zen trainee, absorbs himself into its patternless plop and fizz.
“Rural Red Light”
He goes through it. We sink.
without bubbles.
Our samsara waits
on Fairport's nirvana.
A spent strawberry field
and mushy yellow cambium
religion.
--
Robert Creeley and Lou Reed seemed to take on a greater significance for me
after I left Buffalo and moved to Palo Alto and lived in an apartment complex called “Tan Village.” California!
Only when I returned to Buffalo did I discover that the place was owned by a man actually named Mr. Tan.
I.
“Proof ”
lines drunk with nouns
shingleboards
or any kind of play
of the night
or noon
Live with
II.
“Lou Reed is Saved in Newark”
(after Lester Bangs)
“WANTED LOU REED
DEAD OR ALIVE
(what’s the difference)
for transforming a whole generation
of young Americans into faggot junkies.”
and how much does it
cost
to leave
here?
Oh
sweet nuthin’
sweet Jane –
unroll,
rock your hearts.
--
This is pretty much the first poem I wrote. I wrote it in Nevada, 1979:
East of Reno, on the banks of Interstate 80. I stood in one place for 25 hours
with a sign that said “HOME.” Normally this was a fabulously successful sign.
Three cars emitted “Ohhhhs” that were split by the Doppler Effect
as they locked their doors. Although I was hitching alone, I imagined myself
with my brother, Christopher. When I rolled his boy-scout sleeping bag out
I started having desert hallucinations. I overheard four people
arguing at a table that had a red and white checkerboarded cloth on top of it.
Then I heard the A side of Tom Petty’s “You’re Gonna Get It” album
and understood and remembered all the words for the first time.
Me and my brother started to dance.
“Two Days in One Place”
The Reno truckstop is behind us
and Christopher’s halo and frantic rap
have unraveled and scattered
into entropic bits of benzedrine psychosis.
Morning is still early rinsed orange
but my sneaker treads are melting.
Mindlessly I roll
my dewy down bag just right.
My brother sucks breath from this skinny roach
and sends melancholy streams of smoke
skidding across seed-heavy heads
of ochre desert weeds.
I console my brother.
“Two more of these black ones
will wring what’s left
from your dopamine glands.
“So be happy.
And take my place by the roadside
and thumb till noon.
Dance where the roads merge.
“I am just one yawning fucker.
Tonight, brother, we are going to brush our teeth in Cheyenne.”
-----------------------------------
Tequila Mocking
“Tequila Mocking”
Shudder again Basil, at your success
Better pleasures will surely follow
And alter your odor
So another shudder
It all seems to be there now
What you have wrecked has been moved away
Between lunch and nighttime chocolate
Fred found your blonde tequila
It was in a bottle it was on a table it was in
Another neighborhood
Private language exposed.
“My Drive Home”
Driving home from the Main Street tequila store
it hit me that this love
I am now suffering is not
a new kind of love remember
what you wanted to give the woman I wanted
to be her friend. She is married and has two young sons.
Promiscuity will save me from this
before virtue does. Should I put a hymn to her
here? What should it contain? Her hair
when it is parted down the middle & right now
also my fear, that I would flood the one
who would alleviate my loneliness – my love
restrains itself from its object, her
shoulder, eye, her hood & her nod,
hymen, toe,
hair & ear.
“Tequila Man”
I will sleep where the dog sleeps.
“The dog sleeps under my bed.”
The kind of guy you never get friendly with,
“the kind of guy you miss the most.”
I closed my eyes
“to see you”
near the coffee in my cup
“and saw you”
on Bailey Avenue
“with a cup you cut with white tequila.”
“The Shine”
I have walked up another hill
Hated its perfection
The brown shine of its beauty
I have lied to your perhaps you know when.
But it must be
Never merely
This and here
Shutter tomorrow’s
Minding, kiss
All four lips
And keep this
As you have It.
Love and
Glow of gut.
With the endurance of tequila
I have found no reason to move
My small wares to Budapest
For rage does not enhance reason
Though it feels necessarily human
Like a vice, or an eyelash.
Your music, honeypie, was the new necessary.
It was good as bone on a wet day.
First bone, final wet day.
Just that you smack it
Can I crave my
only body now.
"Tequila Morning"
I.
After four hours I’m up, & I smell
like tequila & piss & that too smells like tequila, & my teeth tequila, underarms are
my favourite & best, like tequila & also
you. My dreams one wash of you, that’s all,
I can’t believe I am alone right now or how much I talked just in order to
avoid letting you know you have given me
the quote unquote world & such coolness cost me! Who drove me here?
Running puff puff puff four no-shirt
sidewalk miles, my lungs will love me forever
& I smoke to spite them but I get thru my run hit the park for pull-ups but there’s two kids
swinging on my set & two others sprinting beneath them like maniacs in a queer kiddy game of near
collision. I check out the world.
Bark pieces are in between my toes (which smell like tequila) & all Moms
seem old today, wearing lots of coats.
But I know that this morning you too awakened with your cat, perhaps,
on top of you, but also I’m embarrassed I’ve taken this long
even to know
I haven’t been able yet, to say,
just what there is,
I mean, here. Hi there.
II.
I started by wanting to say I
was going to sit here
all night until I said it.
But it hit
me
the impossible
task
I had set
for myself
was to sit here
& all night
until I did it.
------------------------------
Running with Ish
"Running with Ish"
- Run –
The orphan.
The family.
The neighborhood.
The striding.
The Sunday.
The foods.
The beds.
The porches.
The restaurants.
The generations.
The off-time.
The marriage.
The hammock.
The payment.
The working.
The abortions.
The dresses.
The soirees.
The twins.
The musicians!
The air inside.
The lovely try.
The team member.
The biggest race.
The red present.
The cot-winners.
The good sinners.
The take-home meals.
The three watchers.
The faith-healers.
The one, one male.
The taste of yum.
The lovely look,
Around the arm.
Atop the mom,
The sweat and goop.
The crack alight.
The motel room.
The rented car.
The near-deaf teen!
Money for time.
Soup for you.
Match for me.
Television for us.
Ideas for travel.
Kisses for sleep.
Blows for change.
And room for everybody.
Help for us.
Sins for that.
Locks for legs.
“Out for good,
oh, for shame.”
Tears for effect.
Shoes for parties.
Hands for holding.
Rolls for noses.
Air for outside.
Cotton for comfort.
Extras for leaving!
- Back –
Two divorced men,
the desire to write.
the night within Palo Alto.
The music too loud,
the wear of masturbation,
the vodka in coffee.
The friends in Buffalo
trust of the past,
the surprising poem.
Pissing in the backyard,
the patience they all have,
the tape Ish listened to.
The brother’s brother,
the inhabited apartment,
being on to something.
You are not in jail,
clothes in the dryer,
Saturday is different.
Elsewhere I think,
telephone one’s son,
the lovely landlord.
Loud all these years,
unified isn’t it,
it made the driveway.
Increasing ugliness,
the friend is immoral,
too dead to speak.
Unaware of this again,
Karen Carpenter is back,
gossip gives birth.
My joy is yours,
the kiss on the arm,
two first names.
Finally got it down,
anything in bed,
Christmas and holidays.
The alarming arrival,
words in the morning:
what blood got.
It should catch you:
It was hard to say:
You don’t re-
member a lot
of it,
of spray on our ceiling.
“Clean As a Whistle”
The completed sentence
to stand alone
away from all
things. Away from
a way to
complete a lone
sentence. The standing
thing away alone.
---------------------
Bailey Avenue Buffalo Poems
"Prelude to a New Career"
Today is finally our day
To write poems whose lines
Are exactly of equal length
When written in longhand
And without enough weapons
To show I
Can put up with your
Pages and pants. Did I say,
“Just love?” Yes, a mere
Coquette, just
Stretched, to make it, to
Pack it,
Toward our night, our
Soiree, your thin opalescence,
Your men, wee bones, the pelt
Of our beer, when broken
Throughout, by straws.
The next movement from
Epiphanies is the worst:
Cut clogged sod
Wadded in mouths before
The end. I can’t stand it.
Oh man: Are your dad’s hands like yours?
Are those dungarees heated
In holy water, near
One Mouth in Twilight?
I am not guilty of that, but
Of this:
An interrupting move
And reading a lot, about them,
Like wanting to find one:
Libya’s bee going backwards
Manoeuvring the steering wheel
While other poets wriggle
Lamb embryos over the balls
Of that god.
Must I guess this,
sniffing like a glug in a mug?
Their eyes peer down
Yanking an underwater
Circle down into the dumb,
Nearly deep enough to pleat
Our clavicles, dent our
Temples.
To avoid the bends
It becomes habitual.
“The Advice”
Miscegenate for world peace!
Veneration should never find
Blood allied with gratitude.
Your loves will be time-zones apart.
Scorned men explain
Neither sleep nor insomnia
But remember the clothes they kept on
To keep their love perfect.
And under
Wonder
Mood
Lies
everywhere.
“The Lasting”
Love is its own aversion therapy.
It is a harsh toke from a big bong
where favorite flavors find their connotations.
And even our sweeter vacations
(Sweetie!)
never lasted this long.
“The After”
Cold coffee does not necessarily
Got bugs in it.
A large town can be a safe place.
But to your friends there
I was just a subject of interest
And we were momentarily the case.
Everyone I did not know wanted to
Talk about it.
Motherfuckers!
Generalizing
Primary human feelings
Is a questionable act.
“The January Drive”
I decided not to hit the Pink Flamingo tonight
& didn’t turn off at the liquor store on Elmwood
which I had forgotten was there
across the street from the doughnut store
wine was at home
and I might relax for tomorrow –
Who should move in this
place who should take
my son’s room where can I buy
a bed and how big
must it be,
how big must it be
for a four leg fit
to finish the bottle
and cap the pour
legs lip just yours.
“The Memorial Day”
pink bloom
from a pair
you borrowed
“The Funny Valentine”
You yearning honeybun
Sad eyelash honeybun
You make me cry in my heart.
Your hope is laughable
Unphotographable
You see your favorite work of art.
Is my figure less than Greek?
It’s my soul, ‘s a little weak.
When you open it and seek
Is it smart?
Don’t change your thing for me
Let yourself sing to me
Bye, yearning honeybun, bye.
Each love’s sweet funny day will die.
“The Romantic Song”
Count those kisses
And let tonight
Forget tonight.
Feel your back and when
Rain covered our car
Where are your roaming lips
When they are near the words of love?
Break your breath
Before that note dies
And bring your hands near
Sweet honeypie.
Oh hang back and then
Wave fire at far stars
Where are your flat eyelashes
When they are near the one you love?
Break your breath
Before the note dies
Bring those hands near
Sweet honeypie.
Where are your roaming lips
When you are near the words of love?
And where are your light eyelashes
when you while the one you love?
“The Deaths” (a gloss on lines by Jack Spicer)
No love deserves
The death it gets.
The same should not be said
For the lover, or the other.
“The Brief Candle”
I’m going to fuck your brains out.
And keep them out!
She is going to fuck her brains out
And keep them out,
And he is going to fuck our brains out
And keep them,
*Period*
(as they say).
-------------
These poems originally appeared in sometimes-different form in Tequila Mocking (1992) and Running with Ish (1995).
Copyright 1992-2002 Robert Basil. All rights reserved.
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