Inchoate

The first tool we want from our fathers toolboxes is the hammer
It is a tool of youth, young men bashing the world to shape
We learn first to strike and smash, and then to drive nails
Leaving dents and spikes in everything, and then more occasionally building
Rambling leaning furniture, haphazard sculptures of adolescence
our work shows perhaps talent, but always enthusiasm
blemished with the touch of too much, too fast
Ragged cuts and the clinched nails of inexperience, poorly placed
and at the last turned back and driven over, where some hold fast forever
because boundless energy and small pay can earn anything, but enough time

Some of us never survive their days as inchoate men
and those who do, coming to a quieter place of ourselves
with fuller choice of tools, are held fascinated in sudden moments
by a hammer, and memory of singular approaches to the world
In those moments the wind, even in still rooms, dances our hair
and whispers the names of those we've known who will always be young

Poem Published at Poor Mojo's Almanac(k)

I'm very pleased to note that one of my poems has now been published at Poor Mojo's Almanac(k): "Holiday Poem"

I've been reading Poor Mojo's for a few years now, and am delighted to now be a small part of that wonderful publication. I'm also quite pleased by the timing of this publication, being just prior to Christmas. The poem is drawn from an experience on Christmas thirteen years ago, was written around Christmas last year, and now has been published just prior to Christmas. Great, great, timing all around.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Sleeping, Snorting, Fucking.

This is a bit delayed, as I was waiting for the last of them to run, but I've recently had three pieces published in the lovely journal Sleep.Snort.Fuck.
You may find all three of them here: Morgan Atwood, at Sleep, Snort, Fuck

Or, in order of publication:

Magnum

Measure of Ecstasy

Taste

Hopefully needless to say, given the name of the journal, some content may be considered Not Safe For Work (/Wife/Children).

I feel spoiled to, yet again, have somewhere I really like publish my work.

(These publications also mark an interesting point for me as a poet. I once said all my poetry was non-fiction and this is no longer true. These mark the first success I've had, both in personal feelings about them and publication, with fictional poetry. I say that not to disown the themes or any unpleasantness, but more because I find the revelation of my own process a wonderful ongoing mystery.)

Anna Creek Station

I went to Anna Creek Station
and the dust in the road danced like ghosts
in the wake of motorbikes
On cracked lips I sipped warm water
and heard a distant cry
a drovers yell
overtaken by the small engines whine
Here it was like everywhere
land, long empty of men save the betrayed
and the hard dying so long a livelihood
just memory and bones
In the vast emptiness of the Earths ends
I sat alone and listened to the dying
in imagined calls and the buzz of flies
I sat, so long lost, born outside memory
and spitting dust from the motorbikes

The Complexes of Gehenna

That vast and the black stretches
beyond the weakness of the light's play
A silence of depth, so boundless
as to be a leonine roar of absent sound
These wanton cries of Abaddon, terrible
in their compulsion, and loneliness
Forgotten in the works beneath the stone
where the pipes and tunnels of men run
unto ends where the picked tunnel comes
to ruin in the unknowable definitions
between worked stone and Earth gaped wide
A great work abandoned, and un-wrought
by the smashing weight of miles of rock, tumbled upon
the emptiness of man's will, the hollow drifts
crumbled to water and the Earth's relaxations
One meets the other and disappears into their forces
Whether Earth's own pocket or vast stope
toil and tectonics come to a whole
so far beyond reckoning
Where now I stand, solid footed above the howling
vast and empty rooms and halls
in the complexes of Gehenna

Beer for my Gravediggers

That first cold sip of beer
grave dust dry on your lips
is a miracle
payment for doing Gods work
Heaving the soil onto the hallowed emptiness
each shovelful echoing dully
around the small shape inside the box
The emptiness that used to be a man
After that work, a cold beer is something holy
The can sweating, you roll it's unopened coldness
between dry hands and across your neck
It's cheap beer, but cold
you welcome that rushing hiss and the following
long drink of chilly wetness washing away
the parched, dust dry, cotton mouth
of grave-digging in the desert sun
Filled, you look at the mound you've made, higher,
the volume of a box, than the surrounding earth
The women place flowers, and the men stand leaning
on shovel handles, and old men on their sons
The honor guard quietly away, silver piping rippling
glittering across their blues in the coming-noon sun
as they slip off, duty done, strangers as they came
Rough hands at your shoulder, grabbing, squeezing
You smile, nod, shake hands and drink your beer
A man, alive, standing among men
in the little desert churchyard, tens of miles from a town
Grave dust on your hands, covering your boots
a promise

Playground

Rain washes and pools across the tarmac
beyond the café windows that reflect everything
Staring into the sodium phosphor dark
lights and reflections indistinct against my own thoughts
Behind and outside a car moves, reflecting on the window
a mirage of itself - A ghost through which rain falls
and light shines as it rolls and disappears
the reflection unmade by angles and movement
The water slick, reflecting, blackness remains
constant in the wake of the ghost
I cannot help but think that this must be the playground
of the dead, their ghosts whispering
I look for someone, another ghost
among what is bound to become a crowd
and finding them to remain unseen
I turn, unsatisfied and mourning, back to the table
and the living

Poems from Young Lovers

They were written by candlelight
and emailed across the darkness of fiber-optic wilderness
Received miles from their origin or anything similar
Love poems of a youth barely conceived of love
A conservatism of inexperience and morals
shaped by word, but not by living
loosened by the promise of new touches
Each line on edge, delicately balanced to fall
to the abandon of lust, or illusion of temperament
Hungry mouths shaping each word in the writing
and in the reading, in absence of forming to one another
Pictures accompanying the poems, printed out and bound
for a trip away from their only contact
Inexperienced love demanding the reassurance of paper
carried in place of what couldn’t be carried in the heart
Now to read them, to make a study of her face
lit by candlelight and shaped by mouthed words
is to see a great dam of inexperience across the river of living
The raw youth in the cock of her hip, the set of her mouth
a confusion of movie star emulation and desire
I see what it was to be young, and all the tripping places
For she is my mirror, and now stands a perfect image, a loving line
a museum of what I dreamed to be
when I painted in the dark of things I’d never seen
These poems were written of love with the inexperience of short years
In the flickering false light of candles
before the day, and the harsher light of having to grow up
We exposed love, broke it upon the rocks of our young selves
and finding beneath the husk a bitter meat, left it to rot
A hand bound, marker illustrated, chapbook of youth
and two strong wills, crystalline intellects, striving
against one another
for something that could only be had with age
Our love poems are written to others now
an older, polished, love of adults who’ve attained a knowing
to support the desiring
Mouths hungering for what we now know is as old as the stones
but once thought we’d invented solely between ourselves
and once thought we’d solely destroyed
Until in the good harsh light of day, it was rediscovered

Green Light

Red lights are the worst
after you've dropped everyone off
sitting there waiting
The mindless act of driving suspended
leaving you alone with yourself
and all your thoughts
Suddenly the least of which is if that's a cop

Alone, with the taste of her on my lips
I wish she hadn't
I'd rather be outside looking in
than to be sitting here, red cast
the feeling of what I'm without
carved into my pec by each of her teeth
I'd rather she hadn't kissed me
rather not have been bitten
in every sense of the word
My knuckles crack on the wheel
and ache to feel a destruction beneath their hardness

The opposing light goes red
an entire intersection bathed in the same color
of wait and think about it
And then green, and I am lost again
hiding in the simple act of
"is that a cop?"
and rehearsed lines.

Shiver

The gray of late winter evening had settled,
slipping slowly into darkness
as soft white flakes gently fell, spare in the too warm night,
still cold
They stood in his driveway, breath fogging in the false light
talking of the old hotel where they had evened
and its many ghosts
creaking across wooden floors to dance
before its roaring fires
They stood too long, in their conversation
ignorant to the rising cold
Delaying the parting of semesters end
with talk of LP's and the deserved break
She smiled in the cold
and he remembered love
wanting to run his hand through her hair
loose about her head
like her laughter hung on fogged breath
Her lips bare and wet with talking
promising warmth if only he'd lean into them
They hugged, his head passing above hers in his full height
her cheek on his shoulder, hair brushing his face
Then parting, her smell lingering
in absence of her small strong touch
She smiled at him, waving through the car window
as she pulled out and left
Soft flakes fell, fighting their way to the ground
in the night grown colder
He stood alone in the gravel, and shivered

An older poem, about an even older moment in time, that I rediscovered earlier tonight.

Where does the living go?

Layover, by Charles Bukowski

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men- poor folks-
work.
That moment- to this. . .
may be years in the way they measure,
but it's only one sentence back in my mind-
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.

Bukowski is amazing... maybe more later. I feel another poet post coming on.

Bad Minister

He was a bad minister
Hands deep in the knots of her back
a touch that burned him
he flushed from the collar down
His faith was built in her muscles
a temple of strong flesh
weak and torn below his hands
or was it he that was weak and torn above his temple?

Counting the Stars

He counted the stars
and found them too great
too far distant
and too cold for his love
Maybe they already died
their long traveling light
a long road of lies
Returning to his typewriter
he wrote strong women
wrote the love he had to give
Carving the women he wanted
from the emptiness of a page
For lack of a craft
he wrote mythology
personal and cutting
Until he bled as redly
as he had quietly
for everyone to see
apologies to all those he loved
veiled in his words, a need to be touched by them
in their criticisms and appreciation
He wrote to them
counting the stars
naming them to love
for everyone who would listen
and love in return
But set free his words were not him
and he went to bed alone
Cold in his death
as they basked in the light he'd cast
He went to bed
with the names of all the unseen stars
dancing in his head

Nick Cave - A Darkness Reconsidered

Music is a huge part of my life, though not being able to play any instrument I've always relied on the work of others to bring to me the necessities of expression I find in music. As such I like a variety of artists and musical styles. I do however have a distinct preference for the uniqueness of singer/songwriter combo's across genre's - I find myself more appreciative of the singers who are songwriters and the work they have to offer. Somewhere, one of them, has captured something that at least begins to resemble my mood at the time or the one I am looking to create. Being a poet, I appreciate that the originality of the writing of many of these artists regularly surpasses that of the song-writing coming fro the record labels pop-mill writing think-tanks.
Among my favorite of these singer-songwriter-eccentrics is Nick Cave. An Aussie noted for his darkness and challenging material, Cave doesnt always rub me quite the right way - some of his stylings leave me cold at times - when he does strike a chord with me, he strikes it quite well. A large bit of his work, both with his bands the Bad Seeds and Grinderman and as a solo artist, is quite important to me. In a lot of ways for its darkness - This in an area in which I am more comfortable than many - but also because he has an ability to see both darkness and light as indivorcable parts of the same whole. That, more than many things, is important to me in art. But Cave is not all darkness and foul-mouthed, blood stained, rants at the world. he has a depth of understanding and lyrical ability beyond just darkness, or just the contrast of dark to light.
On top of this, Cave is a talented musician, a unique vocalist and a fantastic songwriter. His lyrical ability as a writer is often second to none - No one else I have heard writes song's like Nick Cave. Very few other writers of any ilk are as deep, and draw on such diverse influences as Cave. who can draw on the Bible, Milton, American folk traditions and modern crime reports all in the space of a refrain.

Hallelujah

Lyrically and musically this is one of my favorite Cave songs - It is powerfully evocative, a strong image of place is conveyed in bot the lyrics and the music, and it features some of the best Cave writing around - "My piano crouched in the corner of the room wit all its teeth bared"

500 Miles

Cave also has a small obsession/inspirational attachment to American folk and blues music and does some very nice renditions (covers is a stretch, as he tends to take the raw thing and make it his own) of these songs. Although his version of Stagger Lee leaves a lot to be desired, his 500 Miles is one of my favorite versions.

So lonesome I Could Cry

Cave has also worked with a variety of major and influential musicians, singers and writers. He appeared on Johnny Cash's American IV album, after having covered Cash's The Folk Singer previously.

Cave, for all his debauchery, violence and drunken revelry offers up some surprises from time to time as well. For example, his introduction to the British publisher Canongate's single volumn copy of the Gospel of Mark. An odd turn from the surface impression of the man via some of his lyrics, this introduction only further confirms Cave's depth of knowledge and vision behind his songwriting.
Introduction to the Gospel of Mark, by Nick Cave

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson (1867 - 1922) was an Australian poet and writer. One of the most well known writers of his day in Australia, along side his contemporary A.B. "Banjo" Patterson (who I will have to write about some day as well), Lawson has become much less read in recent years. I came across his work quite by accident.
His ideas and sentiment are, needless to say, a little different from what has risen to the top in modern Australia. Lawson was a nationalist, and advocated in his writing for a strong Australia, and armed Australian populace. Some have cried foul, calling his writing's fascist or racist - These twits fail to realize that Lawson did not come from a world of government enforced equality, half-caf soy chai latte's, and celebrated diversity, he came from a much rougher, hard-scrabble place and time. I see him far more as a grand example of settlers attitudes on national strength and defense in the colonial years of Australia.

Poems of Henry Lawson

As Far As Your Rifles Cover

Do you think, you slaves of a thousand years to poverty, wealth and pride,
You can crush the spirit that has been free in a land that's new and wide?
When you've scattered the last of the farmer bands, and the war for a while is over,
You will hold the land – ay, you'll hold the land – the land that your rifles cover.

Till your gold has levelled each mountain range where a wounded man can hide,
Till your gold has lighted the moonless night on the plains where the rebels ride;
Till the future is proved, and the past is bribed from the son of the land's dead lover –
You may hold the land – you may hold the land just as far as your rifles cover.

EveryMan Should Own A Rifle

So I sit and write and ponder, while the house is deaf and dumb,
Seeing visions "over yonder" of the war I know must come.
In the corner - not a vision - but a sign for coming days
Stand a box of ammunition and a rifle in green baize.
And in this, the living present, let the word go through the land,
Every tradesman, clerk and peasant should have these two things at hand.

No - no ranting song is needed, and no meeting, flag or fuss -
In the future, still unheeded, shall the spirit come to us!
Without feathers, drum or riot on the day that is to be,
We shall march down, very quiet, to our stations by the sea.
While the bitter parties stifle every voice that warns of war,
Every man should own a rifle and have cartridges in store!

How the Land was Won
The future was dark and the past was dead
As they gazed on the sea once more –
But a nation was born when the immigrants said
"Good-bye!" as they stepped ashore!
In their loneliness they were parted thus
Because of the work to do,
A wild wide land to be won for us
By hearts and hands so few.

The darkest land 'neath a blue sky's dome,
And the widest waste on earth;
The strangest scenes and the least like home
In the lands of our fathers' birth;
The loneliest land in the wide world then,
And away on the furthest seas,
A land most barren of life for men –
And they won it by twos and threes!

With God, or a dog, to watch, they slept
By the camp-fires' ghastly glow,
Where the scrubs were dark as the blacks that crept
With "nulla" and spear held low;
Death was hidden amongst the trees,
And bare on the glaring sand
They fought and perished by twos and threes –
And that's how they won the land!

It was two that failed by the dry creek bed,
While one reeled on alone –
The dust of Australia's greatest dead
With the dust of the desert blown!
Gaunt cheek-bones cracking the parchment skin
That scorched in the blazing sun,
Black lips that broke in a ghastly grin –
And that's how the land was won!

Starvation and toil on the tracks they went,
And death by the lonely way;
The childbirth under the tilt or tent,
The childbirth under the dray!
The childbirth out in the desolate hut
With a half-wild gin for nurse –
That's how the first were born to bear
The brunt of the first man's curse!

They toiled and they fought through the shame of it –
Through wilderness, flood, and drought;
They worked, in the struggles of early days,
Their sons' salvation out.
The white girl-wife in the hut alone,
The men on the boundless run,
The miseries suffered, unvoiced, unknown –
And that's how the land was won.

No armchair rest for the old folk then –
But, ruined by blight and drought,
They blazed the tracks to the camps again
In the big scrubs further out.
The worn haft, wet with a father's sweat,
Gripped hard by the eldest son,
The boy's back formed to the hump of toil –
And that's how the land was won!

And beyond Up Country, beyond Out Back,
And the rainless belt, they ride,
The currency lad and the ne'er-do-well
And the black sheep, side by side;
In wheeling horizons of endless haze
That disk through the Great North-west,
They ride for ever by twos and by threes –
And that's how they win the rest.

Service, of a Rough and Tough Society

I’ve had a volume of Robert W. Service poems, an old “Best Of” paperback, for quite some time. Used to be, I would pick it up from time to time, but would rarely read more than a few, already familiar, pieces. Then one morning, I picked it up and just started reading and came away as impressed with a body of work as I ever was with a few more well known selections. Service was a voice, not unlike Kipling, that was sophisticated enough to deal with the whole array of human affairs, in simple eloquence.

"The only society I like is that which is rough and tough - and the tougher the better. That's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people.” Robert W. Service 1874 - 1958

http://www.robertwservice.com/

The March of the Dead

The cruel war was over -- oh, the triumph was so sweet!
We watched the troops returning, through our tears;
There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet glittering street,
And you scarce could hear the music for the cheers.
And you scarce could see the house-tops for the flags that flew between;
The bells were pealing madly to the sky;
And everyone was shouting for the Soldiers of the Queen,
And the glory of an age was passing by.
And then there came a shadow, swift and sudden, dark and drear;
The bells were silent, not an echo stirred.
The flags were drooping sullenly, the men forgot to cheer;
We waited, and we never spoke a word.
The sky grew darker, darker, till from out the gloomy rack
There came a voice that checked the heart with dread:
"Tear down, tear down your bunting now, and hang up sable black;
They are coming -- it's the Army of the Dead."
They were coming, they were coming, gaunt and ghastly, sad and slow;
They were coming, all the crimson wrecks of pride;
With faces seared, and cheeks red smeared, and haunting eyes of woe,
And clotted holes the khaki couldn't hide.
Oh, the clammy brow of anguish! the livid, foam-flecked lips!
The reeling ranks of ruin swept along!
The limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody finger tips!
And oh, the dreary rhythm of their song!
"They left us on the veldt-side, but we felt we couldn't stop
On this, our England's crowning festal day;
We're the men of Magersfontein, we're the men of Spion Kop,
Colenso -- we're the men who had to pay.
We're the men who paid the blood-price. Shall the grave be all our gain?
You owe us. Long and heavy is the score.
Then cheer us for our glory now, and cheer us for our pain,
And cheer us as ye never cheered before."
The folks were white and stricken, and each tongue seemed weighted with lead;
Each heart was clutched in hollow hand of ice;
And every eye was staring at the horror of the dead,
The pity of the men who paid the price.
They were come, were come to mock us, in the first flush of our peace;
Through writhing lips their teeth were all agleam;
They were coming in their thousands -- oh, would they never cease!
I closed my eyes, and then -- it was a dream.
There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet gleaming street;
The town was mad; a man was like a boy.
A thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet;
A thousand bells were thundering the joy.
There was music, mirth and sunshine; but some eyes shone with regret;
And while we stun with cheers our homing braves,
O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget
The graves they left behind, the bitter graves.

The Tramps

Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God's land together,
And we sang the old, old Earth-song, for our youth was very sweet;
When we drank and fought and lusted, as we mocked at tie and tether,
Along the road to Anywhere, the wide world at our feet --
Along the road to Anywhere, when each day had its story;
When time was yet our vassal, and life's jest was still unstale;
When peace unfathomed filled our hearts as, bathed in amber glory,
Along the road to Anywhere we watched the sunsets pale?
Alas! the road to Anywhere is pitfalled with disaster;
There's hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so!
As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master,
And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe,
We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere,
The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years ago.

The Men That Don’t Fit In

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

Josh Ritter -

I ran across Josh Ritter a couple years ago with his song 'Girl in the War', and today got a yen to hear it again - Ended up on YouTube looking up more of his stuff. He's really good - Go, explore.

Blank...

I loved you, till
in the whisper of a wind
I saw the boundaries of heaven in your face
and the voice of angels was accented and dull

One, in the Afternoon

Its like this afterwards
they go into themselves
their quietudes
depressions
and screaming isolation

The two on the couch broke up a week ago
wrapped upon one another now
since the early morning
On another of the five couches
in this run down pad we love to call home
another one calls his deepest, always weeping wound
lets her run the crude knife through him once more

I ready myself for lunch, breakfast… something
with friends who weren't part of all this
washing the beer stink off
no time for a shower
quick cold water, toothpaste
cleanest dirty shirt

12 hours ago, we'd already been going
for eight hours of beer and booze
going broke and speaking brimborion
on slurring lips
and we didn't go down until six hours later….

In The Waiting Morning

I sat in the late day warm winter sun
Flask in hand
smoking
Back pressed against the radiant wall
of old adobe
Smoking away things never had
swallowing the truth
with rye soured by steel
and not liking it any better than the cool fresh air
Idyll, or idol, are never idle
and I’ll never be so lucky
Eyes closed and through lids overcome
with the welding-heat yellow-white of sun
making its lonely arc, ever heavenward somewhere
ahead, in the waiting morning