Around 8:30 pm at night, sometimes, some nights, I’ll take half a gummy and watch a sport on television while writing. Usually, baseball or tennis where nothing happens fast, until it does. The droning of the announcer saying, “It’s a full count, it’s a pay off pitch.” Or the bopping of the tennis ball back and forth as the players grunt rudely.
From time to time, I’ll write poems to a group thread I’m on with several friends. I find it very entertaining and am grateful to have a silent audience. Maybe they’ll read it, but for me, that’s not the point. It’s shooting arrows into the darkness to simply enjoy watching them disappear.
My friends who make art have a stream that runs through their work. I recognize it. I’ve copied it. The next work based on the last. A word, a color, an odd theme. Cement stepping stones sitting loosely atop a gravel path in the backyard leading to a dirty bird bath.
I’ve been reading Grapes of Wrath the last several months. Reading 10-30 pages at a time, now and again. Maybe longer if I hit a good spot. I don’t think people realize how funny this book is. The dialogue is so foreign and earthy. One long, hard time.
Anyhow, I started writing random poems based on a few key elements and kept expounding in a way I thought Tom Joad would write poems. If Tom Joad were alive today.
The key for poems like this is to not spend too much time on it. There needs to be an unwrapped gift waiting on the concrete of a hot, 2 car garage.
After I Get Off Work
I drive by the Second Baptist church
And shoot a hole in it
With my middle finger
With my sun visor on the side
I pull in
Buy a couple bags of ice
Emergency Ice
And start living
Settling back into my freedom
Like a bowl of stormed dew
Brewed from abandoned baptisms
Draining into the gravel
Thinking about
Moving back home
To Port Aransas
And starting my baptism pool
Cleaning company
Go out on my own
And start living my life
After I top off
I play
The Texas Lotto
And tag the gas station pump
After typing in my zip code
To remember where I come from
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so free
As I do right now
With these two bags
Of ice
Not even broken up yet
Staying up late
Selling turkey chicks
To an open field
Painting airplanes
at 5am
Dumping shock into the baptism pool
And burying armadillos
Behind the ghost patch
Where the shadows
Wait
For someone to replace
Their names
Practicing secret handshakes
On a full tang knife
Thinking about growing pumpkins
For the first time
Again
And running off into the woods
With a rehandled hatchet
Walking down to the boat ramp
Where they are replacing
The warped telephone poles
With the windows down
I walk down to the boat ramp
When I’m alone
So I can appreciate the lake
In peace
I got two bags of ice
So I pray when they make me
In places
I don’t feel comfortable
In the clothes I’m wearing
I’m just
I’m just tired of working
All goddamn week
Having to walk around
Trying to buy a fuse
And working
I wanna sit by the lake
With two bags of ice
Looking out over the boat ramp
Forever