Harlem,
Montana. Just Off the Reservation
We need no runners
here. Booze is law
and
all the Indians drink in the best tavern.
Money is free if you’re
poor enough.
Disgusted, busted
whites are running
for
office in this town. The constable,
a
local farmer, plants the jail with wild
raven-haired
stiffs who beg just one more drink.
One drunk, a former
Methodist, becomes a saint
in
the Indian church, bugs the plaster man
on
the cross with snakes. If his knuckles
broke,
he’d
see those women wail the graves goodbye.
Goodbye, goodbye, Harlem on the rocks,
so
bigoted, you forgot the latest joke,
so
lonely, you’d welcome a battalion of Turks
to
rule your women. What you don’t know,
what
you will never know or want to learn--
Turks aren’t white. Turks are olive, unwelcome
alive
in any town. Turks would use
your
one dingy park to declare a need for loot.
Turks say bring it,
step quickly, lay down and dead.
Here we are when men
were nice. This photo, hung
in
the New England Hotel lobby, shows them nicer
than
pie, agreeable to the warring bands of redskins
who
demanded protection money for the price of food.
Now, only Hutterites out north are nice. We hate
them. They are tough and their crops are always
good.
We accuse them of idiocy
and believe their belief all wrong.
Harlem,
your hotel is over-named, your children
are
raggedy-assed but you go on, survive
the
bad food from the two cafes and peddle
your
hate for the wild who bring you money.
When you die, if you
die, will you remember
the
three young bucks who shot the grocery store up,
locked
themselves in and cried for days, we’re rich
help
us, oh God, we’re rich.
Talking Night Again Up the Rattlesnake (for Lois)
You in flamenco dress
and I, up from the sticks
for
the moment, talk this night a good way.
The pines really do
whisper, we say, and that bunny
you
claim is gone for a habit behind the woodpile.
We should own this
place on a rainy day
when
frogs are blue and the creek chokes
a
pool with twigs and charms the kids throw in
for
luck. Back a ways, a town is
disappearing
to
the tune of Zorba the Greek. When you dance,
I see your mother
disappear. I know your past
is
just polite. And I know a game we play
or
wind in time could make you free.
Some say a rented
night at Rock Creek, the lovely
ranch
we don’t believe, the rusty freight trains
whistling
to friends without background,
could
go against this love an awkward way.
If we shut our eyes
and believe this night
will
end, the ranch will vanish and all tears
lead
logic home to stay. That mountain,
abandoned
to
manic storms and stars the fish avoid,
becomes
flamenco in the talking night.
.
(Untitled)
I’m going to pick up
a pencil
and
write a poem now.
This paper couldn’t
imagine
its
strange fate.
Those birds outside
don’t realize
they’re
being used,
although
they seem to be
chirping
louder today
and
the worms they collect
are
fantastic beasts
crazy
for the taste of young dogs.
My first line will be
a dilly.
Diilly, dilly.
