in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”
December 24
She’s mending the rain with her hair.
She’s turning the darkness on.
Glue / switch!
That’s all I have to report.
Horse Race
July 19, a dog has been run over by an airplane,
an act that brings into this world the energy
that transforms vultures into beautiful black
race horses.
Yes, the horses are waiting at the starting gate.
Now the sound of the gun and this fantastic race begins.
The horses are circling the track.
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
When you take your pill
it’s like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.
After Halloween Slump
My magic is down.
My spells mope around
the house like sick old dogs
with bloodshot eyes
watering cold wet noses.
My charms are in a pile
in the corner like the
dirty shirts of a summer fatman.
One of my potions died
last night in the pot.
It looks like a cracked
Egyptian tablecloth.
Gee, You’re so Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain
Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.
I want high school report cards to look like this:
Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A
Computer Magic
Writing Letters to Those You Love
A
Finding out about Fish
A
Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
A+!
The Nature Poem
The moon
is Hamlet
on a motorcycle
coming down
a dark road.
He is wearing
a black leather
jacket and
boots.
I have
nowhere
to go.
I will ride
all night.
The Day They Busted the Grateful Dead
The day they busted the Grateful Dead
rain stormed against San Francisco
like hot swampy scissors cutting Justice
into the evil clothes that alligators wear.
The day they busted the Grateful Dead
was like a flight of winged alligators
carefully measuring marble with black
rubber telescopes.
The day they busted the Grateful Dead
turned like the wet breath of alligators
blowing up balloons the size of the
Hall of Justice.
The Harbor
Torn apart by the storms of love
and put back together by the calms
of love,
I lie here in a harbor
that does not know
where your body ends
and my body begins.
Fish swim between our ribs
and sea gulls cry like mirrors
to our blood.
The Garlic Meat Lady from
We’re cooking dinner tonight.
I’m making a kind of Stonehenge
stroganoff.
Marcia is helping me. You
already know the legend
of her beauty.
I’ve asked her to rub garlic
on the meat. She takes
each piece of meat like a lover
and rubs it gently with garlic.
I’ve never seen anything like this before. Every orifice
of the meat is explored, caressed
relentlessly with garlic.
There is a passion here that would
drive a deaf saint to learn
Stonehenge.
In a Cafe
I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread
as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking
at the photograph of a dead lover.
Boo, Forever
Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.
IN WATERMELON SUGAR
Writing 21
BOOK ONE: IN WATERMELON SUGAR
In Watermelon Sugar
IN WATERMELON SUGAR the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I’ll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.
Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar. I hope this works out.
I live in a shack near iDEATH. I can see iDEATH out the window. It is beautiful. I can also see it with my eyes closed and touch it. Right now it is cold and turns like something in the hand of a child. I do not know what that thing could be.
There is a delicate balance in iDEATH. It suits us.
The shack is small but pleasing and comfortable as my life and made from pine, watermelon sugar and stones as just about everything here is.
Our lives we have carefully constructed from watermelon sugar and then travelled to the length of our dreams, along roads lined with pines and stones.
I have a bed, a chair, a table and a large chest that I keep my things in. I have a lantern that burns watermelontrout oil at night.
That is something else. I’ll tell you about it later. I have a gentle life.
I go to the window and look out again. The sun is shining at the long edge of a cloud. It is Tuesday and the sun is golden.
I can see piney woods and the rivers that flow from those piney woods. The rivers are cold and clear and there are trout in the rivers.
Some of the rivers are only a few inches wide.
I know a river that is half-an-inch wide. I know because I measured it and sat beside it for a whole day. It started raining in the middle of the afternoon. We call everything a river here. We’re that kind of people.
I can see fields of watermelons and the rivers that flow through them. There are many bridges in the piney woods and in the fields of watermelons. There is a bridge in front of this shack.
Some of the bridges are made of wood, old and stained silver like rain, and some of the bridges are made of stone gathered from a great distance and built in the order of that distance, and some of the bridges are made of watermelon sugar. I like those bridges best.
We make a great many things out of watermelon sugar here—I’ll tell you about it—including this book being written near iDEATH.
All this will be gone into, travelled in watermelon sugar.
Margaret
THIS MORNING there was a knock at the door. I could tell who it was by the way they knocked, and I heard them coming
across the bridge.
They stepped on the only board that makes any noise. They always step on it. I have never been able to figure this out. I have thought a great deal about why they always step on that same board, how they cannot miss it, and now they stood outside my door, knocking.
I did not acknowledge their knocking because I just wasn’t interested. I did not want to see them. I knew what they would be about and did not care for it.
Finally they stopped knocking and went back across the bridge and they, of course, stepped on the same board: a long board with the nails not lined up right, built years ago and no way to fix it, and then they were gone, and the board was silent.
I can walk across the bridge hundreds of times without stepping on that board, but Margaret always steps on it.
My Name
I GUESS YOU ARE KIND OF CURIOUS as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.
If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.
Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was a game that you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.
That is my name.
Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is my name.
Perhaps you stared into a river. There was somebody near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.
Or you heard someone calling from a great distance. Their voice was almost an echo.
That is my name.
Perhaps you were lying in bed, almost ready to go to sleep and you laughed at something, a joke unto yourself, a good way to end the day.
That is my name.
Or you were eating something good and for a second forgot what you were eating, but still went on, knowing it was good.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was around midnight and the fire tolled like a bell inside the stove.
That is my name.
Or you felt bad when she said that thing to you. She could have told it to someone else: Somebody who was more familiar with her problems.
That is my name.
Perhaps the trout swam in the pool but the river was only eight inches wide and the moon shone on iDEATH and the watermelon fields glowed out of proportion, dark and the moon seemed to rise from every plant.
That is my name.
And I wish Margaret would leave me alone.
Fred
A LITTLE WHILE after Margaret left, Fred came by. He was not involved with the bridge. He only used it to get to my shack. He had nothing else to do with the bridge. He only walked across it to get to my place.
He just opened the door and came in. “Hi,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “Just working away here.”
“I just came from the Watermelon Works,” Fred said. “I want you to go down there tomorrow morning with me. I want to show you something about the plank press.”
“All right,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight at dinner down at iDEATH. I hear Pauline is going to cook dinner tonight. That means we’ll have something good. I’m a little tired of Al’s cooking. The vegetables are always overdone, and I’m tired of carrots, too. If I eat another carrot this week I’ll scream.”
“Yeah, Pauline’s a good cook,” I said. I wasn’t really too much interested in food at the time. I wanted to get back to my work, but Fred is my buddy. We’ve had a lot of good times together.
Fred had something strange-looking sticking out of the pocket of his overalls. I was curious about it. It looked like something I had never seen before.
“What’s that in your pocket, Fred?”
“I found it today coming through the woods up from the Watermelon Works. I don’t know what it is myself. I’ve never seen anything like it before. What do you think it is?”
He took it out of his pocket and handed it to me. I didn’t know how to hold it. I tried to hold it like you would hold a flower and a rock at the same time.
“How do you hold it?” I said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.”
“It looks like one of those things inBOIL and his gang used to dig up down at the Forgotten Works. I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said, and gave it back to Fred.
“I’ll show it to Charley,” he said. “Maybe Charley will know. He knows about everything there is.”
“Yeah, Charley knows a lot,” I said.
“Well, I guess I had better be going,” Fred said. He put the thing back in his overalls. “I’ll see you at dinner,” he said.
“OK.”
Fred went out the door. He crossed the bridge without stepping on that board Margaret always steps on and couldn’t miss if the bridge were seven miles wide.
Charley’s Idea
AFTER FRED LEFT it felt good to get back to writing again, to dip my pen in watermelonseed ink and write upon these sheets of sweet-smelling wood made by Bill down at the shingle factory.
Here is a list of the things that I will tell you about in this book. There’s no use saving it until later. I might as well tell you now where you’re at—
1: iDEATH. (A good place.)
2: Charley (My friend.)
3: The tigers and how they lived and how beautiful they were and how they died and how they talked to me while they ate my parents, and how I talked back to them and how they stopped earing my parents, though it did not help my parents any, nothing could help them by then, and we talked for a long time and one of the tigers helped me with my arithmetic, then they told me to go away while they finished eating my parents, and I went away. I returned later that night to burn the shack down. That’s what we did in those days.
4: The Statue of Mirrors.
5: Old Chuck.
6: The long walks I take at night. Sometimes I stand for hours at a single place, without hardly moving. (I’ve had the wind stop in my hand.)
7: The Watermelon Works.
8: Fred. (My buddy.)
9: The baseball park.
10: The aqueduct.
11: Doc Edwards and the schoolteacher.
12: The beautiful trout hatchery at iDEATH and how it was built and the things that happen there. (It’s a swell place for dancing.)
13: The Tomb Crew, the Shaft and the Shaft Gallows.
14: A waitress.
15: Al, Bill, others.
16: The town.
17: The sun and how it changes. (Very interesting.)
18: inBOIL and that gang of his and the place where they used to dig, the Forgotten Works, and all the terrible things they did, and what happened to them, and how quiet and nice things are around here now that they are dead.
19: Conversations and things that happen here day to day. (Work, baths, breakfast and dinner.)
20: Margaret and that other girl who carried the lantern at night and never came close.
21: All of our statues and the places where we bury our dead, so that they are forever with light coming out of their tombs.
22: My life lived in watermelon sugar. (There must be worse lives.)
23: Pauline. (She is my favorite. You’ll see.)
24: And this the twenty-fourth book written in 171 years. Last month Charley said to me, “You don’t seem to like making statues or doing anything else. Why don’t you write a book?
“The last one was written thirty-five years ago. It’s about time somebody wrote another book.”
Then he scratched his head and said, “Gee, I remember it was written thirty-five years ago, but I can’t remember what it was about. There used to be a copy of it in the sawmill.”
“Do you know who wrote it?” I said.
“No,” he said. “But he was like you. He didn’t have a regular name.”
I asked him what the other books were about, the twenty-three previous ones, and he said that he thought one of them was about owls.
“Yeah, it was about owls, and then there was a book about pine needles, very boring, and then there was one about the Forgotten Works, theories on how it got started and where it came from.
“The guy who wrote the book, his name was Mike, he took a long trip into the Forgotten Works. He went in maybe a hundred miles and was gone for weeks. He went beyond those high Piles we can see on clear days. He said that there were Piles beyond those that were even higher.
“He wrote a book about his journey into the Forgotten Works. It wasn’t a bad book, a lot better than the books we find in the Forgotten Works. Those are terrible books.