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Mudlark 01b (Swoyer)
MUDLARK No. 1 (1995)
ISSN 1081-3500
Copyright (c) MUDLARK 1995
Editor: William Slaughter
E-Mail: mudlark@unf.edu
URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark
__________________________________________________
A DOZEN OF THE OTHER
by DAVID SWOYER
Contents
The Midway
A Portrait of Marriot Bradden
The Visitor Came One Morning
Beer as Religious Art
Rime for a Chicago Cow
Hardly To A Sheba
Forest Song
For a Friend Having His Tattoo Removed
The Viewing
Dying Near Easter, 1969
Collision
The Beginning of a Frog's Chorus
__________________________________________________
THE MIDWAY
The circus trucks stretched out along the highway
like a crystal rosary of headlights
Animals in the rain
bearing on their backs
the dark prayers
of side-show freaks, mechanical rides, and bingo tables
Nameless animals
creeping into the city
to unpack their trained faces in a grove
displaying their elixirs for the eye and nose,
bleeding fingers and tongues,
selling tickets to cotton-candy pardons
In a breath of neon
all the tales of clowns and lions
scrawled on the walls of backstreet houses
weren't marked like the tattooed woman
Rose-titted, battle-butted woman
cuddling her snakes
(Once I saw the boa
that lives in the large pocket
of her pink satin dressing gown
He eats the unraveling deer
from the tie-belt end
and pins back the stars
of the frayed pocket lining
to see out)
At Chez de la Femme
(like so many others
we are all working together)
my eyes tear at a stripper's diaphanous red silk
Her jeweled g-string gleams
making me squint
I am fascinated by the art of exercised hips
bumped and ground into shape
worn smooth and shining as tumbled rocks
I see your thoughts
a barker's call
"Step right up
See the fantastic two-backed animal
that dances all through life!"
Sweat fingers my skin
telling of other wet moments
in your arena
I am a jumping lion
clawing at the firehoop
you raise so well
burning burning burning
taunting me to growl and lunge through
(What an act!)
None of my words could match your finale
your naked raw expression
Not knowing anyone could sleep so still
that night I dreamed of fakirs
loving salt in the gash of memory
A PORTRAIT OF MARRIOT BRADDEN
Riding on a Pepsi truck
from Christmas to Wauchula
There are the memories of the dolls
we loved on Oak Street
and hamburgers I ate rare
in their kitchens on cold nights
Then the King's horses were unstabled
and we rode like the dock fires
to the rafters of the port sheds
But we learned to love necessities
with the Primitive Baptists
though it was never twelve o'clock
when we stopped by the roadside
the yellow susans got pissed on
And the old men with vinegar jugs
stood there too
laughing so hard they spit
though it was never twelve o'clock
when the mockingbirds caught up
the gold straw from the strawberry fields
I loved the rain-soaked backs
of the hogs and motorcycles in Mulberry
like noon with overlapped hands
I reckon death is not kinder
but spring hasn't bothered since
THE VISITOR CAME ONE MORNING
in the fog
that hangs the morning
with wet bedsheets
stained and old
on a thousand lines strung
Over the harbor
flew eight gray gulls
hunting fish in the fog
Gray gulls
cursing the hour
in black
In black
she came
a queen carrying linen
lavender-smelling
From the door to the porch
she came
to leech my soul
She layered impasto pleasantries
sat with me and talked
For it was love
with seams sewn by a tailor
In several places the cloth
pierced with a single needle
thread broken once and knotted
But not much could be said
the porch too damp
to speak of
arrogant sunfish streaking seas
or brittle stars
that wave the moon around five shaky arms
And so
Oh no
I was brought home in a florist truck
She laughed not knowing
Why
it was true
between yellow mums
and big very pink roses
for a funeral that was postponed
I was laid
where I could hear
begonias singing lullabies
As she sat
I got cramps from her onion soup
and the leeches failed her
Then
when she had to leave
she left by the window
making heavy wrinkles in the shade
The fog lifts
off the cobblestones in the puddles
yet the wise leave gifts at my door
BEER AS RELIGIOUS ART
Standing here I am a fountain
signing the lawn with my fountain pen
I am a fountain because of beer
standing by the hedge
Busch unto bush
(amen)
Beer has a will to make us all fountains
a dream of wet parks
A god turning men into dogs
leg-lifter
leg-sniffers
letting piss fall
letting lying dogs
lay
Yet I am different from the park statues
I don't piss from my eyes or toes
(though I may piss to my toes)
I could not will not piss all day
Marble-filled heads confuse plumbing and fixtures
Beer knows them distinctly
the shortest distances
And a kindly god
even if you don't make it
even if your zipper sticks
even if you soak your pants
Don't worry
Beer doesn't stain
You could be soaked with rain
(Is rain the urine of angels?
Remember that when you run in the rain
Close your mouth!)
But watch for the cops
The fullness of beer is beyond them
They would have you burst or drown
Now Oh Lord this emptiness is wonderful
Without ballast I could float away
Beware
The eagle has flown the stars are out
If you can't find me in the morning
search the skies
I am empty and complete
RIME FOR A CHICAGO COW
She had a difficult fire
a three alarm blaze
(that blasted siren)
But when it was out
I rolled up my hose
glad to be a volunteer fireman
HARDLY TO A SHEBA
Oh, my love
Let us meet in grocery stores
behind the avocados
behind the pumpernickel
Let us meet in laundries
I shall wash my dirty underwear with yours
purging TIDE
cleansing ALL
Let us go to drive-ins
You will know my love
by my popcorn
by my Musketeers
I will float you in Coke
clothe you in naugahyde
Oh, my love
What song of songs did Solomon know
that, too, has not crept from me
like tarantulas off banana stalks
FOREST SONG
(a poem on the necessity to practice voice)
"Such love as the high gods know
From whose eyes none can hide,
May that never be mine,
To war with a god-lover is not war,
It is despair."
Aeschylus, PROMETHEUS BOUND
I watched you
grow full of suspicions
making guesses weigh more
get too large
A forest of tall-grown ghosts
whispering their stories
Lost in the trees
Daphne, too, is not what she seems
The birds that nest on her branches
never suspect that she
bark-covered
refused the love of a god
becoming virgin laurel
You said
I sing you know
Oh, I know you sing
like a bird, I bet
but not for me
not to me
Then you walked away
toward the trees,
sprouting leaves.
FOR A FRIEND HAVING HIS TATTOO REMOVED
Many men have tattoos
hearts with banners much like yours
I hear tattoos are hard to get rid of
hanging on arms like old girlfriends
But yours has no flag to wave
is blank
No mother
no rosey, or stella
no fleshy commemorative
I LOVE YOU
to a one night stand
as sailors are known to put
even, on their chests
Just waiting unclaimed
without dedication
(Oh, such a line to tell the girls
I'll put your name there in the morning
And laugh all night in what they gave)
That's not like you
wearing a heart too colorfully
Already your arm must be lighter with it half gone
Again naming love without decoration
THE VIEWING
(after leaving local draft board #25
and learning a close friend has died
in Viet Nam)
"Who dies now anywhere in the world,
without cause dies in the world,
looks at me."
Rilke, SOLEMN HOUR
Like the sand, silent and discrete
I've met the clowns in the desert
watching them
choke old vultures with laughing somersaults
and dig coarse tombs
burying them face down
on mirrors painted with flying swans
making them stare with wide open eyes
at their own imaginations and bald heads
without preference
Proud jackals
eat salamanders and the stars over Egypt
parading the carrion
by the pyramids on black horses
Dead eyes have stared at me
snapping shut like steel traps
biting into my live skin
with cruel names
I envy the scavengers
being able to eat the dead
and make it alive in themselves
While the body is fresh
even now I sow wheat
deep rooting wheat
on his grave
to pray with the crows
DYING NEAR EASTER, 1969
The stink of a fawn
too small to get through winter
killed by anti-burning
snow
not yet melted from the carcass
Bones defrost from skin
making double crosses
After the cold war the killing heat
the burning photographs
of singed bodies
in plastic bags
heading for home
piled in double crosses
Jesus Christ
was not a general in World War II
but think
how long Eisenhower was spared
the miracle of death
If a prophet were alive
Today
we would know
no suffering in Biafra
Whose black mothers
surely love their children
enough to miscarry
The peace
of Easter lilies
force-bloomed
as one sterile image
white and august
Like nuns in summer habits
black and white are the pages
I tear each day from the calendar
and think
of Chuang Tzu saying
There is nothing
older than a dead child
COLLISION
Friends
friends coming to my room
have smoke in their hair like hot wax
the odor melts from their heads
Someone has burned
old newspapers with the leaves
Outside my window
the wind mixes the paragraphs in a new order
Never read
Dido's wish rises
from this burncan
behind a trailer park in Montana
Aeneas is coming
Aeneas is coming apart at the seams
on the tailor's lap
The load of ancestry
carrying his father from Troy
On my back, too
I struggle for love with this clumsy Trojan
The spinning needle
cannot tighten around one thread of thought
on the subject
To build cities
I have broken stones
tasting their centers with wheels
Looking for water
I have shut out the light--
eating Leviathan with stanchions of meshed fingers
solid in the bedrock
Beneath all this matter of fact
is the broken fire of bridges
Bridges for the traffic of words
threads over the water
separating us like islands
Fire carving up
the back of night
the spine of raw nerves
cold against the walls of the hospital
pale iris leaves
As if somewhere
above the roof will bloom
large purple flowers of smoke
when I come out
When I come out
I return to the bridges
Burning
with the idea that we can be
strangers again
THE BEGINNING OF A FROG'S CHORUS
Flickering
stars of fireflies
In a cotton shirt pocket
a warm spring night hazy
with tree frogs coaxing each other
by frog-brain in sticky-tongued air-sacs
awakened for singing
mating's open mouths
catch one after another small stars
In a meeting of platitudes
know where the satyrs have gone
before meaning
meaning what they said
The goat-footed men who loved
the mad women who knew
nothing
but through wine and raw meat
When focusing
the sky as a robin's egg
a sleeping god's face is outrageous
in shrinking words
There was The House of Atreus
right off the road
and we went in
to have two or three beers
until someone sang out
I've eaten
two or three sons in my life
and I intend to eat a few more
Maybe even serve some
The fight began
Some people are never satisfied
to be thrown out in the night
Don't shake your head
When Venus is denied
she rattles the back stairs
smashing your face on each step
Much like the rocks
of the rock and roll solo
One instrument is as good as another
to push around
for the rest of your unfinished business However
be careful
Love can roll backwards crushing your skull
During a storm
frogs can sing simply
for the joy of water
suddenly
a plague of barking dogs kissing air
begging honeyed bread
the pastry of hell
heaven hasn't the ingredients for
The frogs
shut their mouths at the closeness of fear
The strongest urge
moves one harmonica in the wind
It goes off alone
to cry in song
Remember me, remember me
Find communion in eating my tired stars
__________________________________________________
A-NOTE
David Swoyer is a painter as well as a poet. His paintings hang in
both private and museum collections. For twenty-five years he has
been a museum curator and presently works in that capacity at the
Museum of Arts and Sciences (MOAS) in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Swoyer is a Viet Nam veteran, "whose disability has not made him
independently wealthy but has given him a higher regard for
excursions to Canada." From "A Glitch in the Parable," a poem Swoyer
has not yet abandoned: "The time that remains depends / on the
distance left to fall." The DOZEN poems Swoyer has abandoned in
MUDLARK No. 1 have their language lives in that remaining time.
__________________________________________________
COPYRIGHT (C) MUDLARK 1995
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