Poems Below the Line
Assorted B Sides 1997-2012
Terry McCarty
Copyright 1997-2012 Terry McCarty
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book (except for excerpts quoted for reviews)
may be used and reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission from the author.
Dedicated to my wife Valarie.
Table of Contents:
Writer’s Block Explained—Version 3
Hostile Acres
I’m Afraid of Dennis Miller
The Pickup
Notes from Employee Below-the-Line
Metaphor
Learning How To Swim
This Is the News
Poem for DW
For Our Cat Sinead in Tustin Tonight
I Didn’t Find It
Folk Music As Wooly Mammoth
Found Poem from Blurbs for Recent Brendan Constantine Book
Poem for Scott Wannberg
Extras on the Beach
Painting Brown Leaves Green
Illinois
Play That Broken Record
Try To Walk Unafraid
Poem Using Imagery Some Poetry Editors Might Not Like
Remembering Rodney King
New York City Subway Serenade
My Sixties
Growing Hair for the Wind
About the Author
Writer’s Block Explained—Version Three
Stare at the blinking cursor.
Watch it pulsate.
Count the number
of cursor blinks
in a sixty-second time period.
Retrieve stopwatch from desk drawer.
Count the number
of minutes it takes to stare
at the throbbing cursor
before self-hypnosis takes place
and you enter a land
where something surreal
may occur
to generate verse
filling in white space
on a computer screen
where a cursor flashes on-off-on-off
and waits patiently
for something to make it move.
Hostile Acres
I help till the soil at Hostile Acres.
Almost everyone carries a gun except me.
Tried to learn once.
Almost shot my big toe off.
Some people came looking for work the other day.
Didn't take long until the hired hands began talking:
"They're taking our jobs."
"How do you know whether or not they're American?"
"Make them carry IDs."
"What about injecting digitized guest-worker chips under their skin?"
"Let's just tattoo a citizenship barcode on their forearms."
And so on and so forth.
Then a few shots rang out.
This is what I heard a few minutes later:
"It was a lone nutcase with a gun."
"The nut's still alive."
"No, he's dead for sure."
"Thank God we can carry guns in public for protection.
The maniac got dropped
and we just let him bleed out."
"There was a little boy caught in the crossfire.
Don't know who shot him.
Don't know how he got hit."
Next day, we heard the President
on the field radio
saying that, at the very least,
automatic weapons should be banned
from use by the general public.
A chorus of disapproval:
DON'T TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY!!
NO GUNS, NO SAFETY!!!!
WE'LL BE KILLED FOR SURE!!
HE'S NOT OUR PRESIDENT!!
And so on and so forth.
Then I heard a round of gunfire.
The radio was destroyed immediately.
The overseer yelled:
PUT AWAY YOUR GUNS!
And we went back to work
tilling the soil at Hostile Acres--
except the sounds of our own voices
voicing the beliefs
we don't need education for
because we know how right we are in our guts.
I’m Afraid of Dennis Miller
I don’t want to get off on a rant here,
but I had a nightmare just recently.
In my dream, I saw former comedian Dennis Miller
walking down State Street in Santa Barbara
wearing a sandwich board saying
NUKE IRAN AND NORTH KOREA
BEFORE THEY NUKE US!!!
and selling sealed-in-plastic paperback copies
of General Douglas MacArthur’s autobiography.
I’m old enough to remember when Dennis Miller
was actually funny.
This was when he was the fake newsman on
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’S WEEKEND UPDATE
and hosted syndicated and HBO talk shows.
At that time, he poked fun at all kinds of absurdity--
whether it was from the Left or the Right.
Then, Dennis came out of the political closet
and became a rabid Republican.
He likes to say it was a result of 9/11.
But Dennis was already lusting for the favor
of George W. Bush and his acolytes
after the 2000 election.
And now he holds court on Fox News
(motto: We Distort, You Decide)
preaching to the angry-and-resentful converted
like a slightly more jovial carbon copy
of that master of fairness and balance-Bill O’Reilly.
“Hey, Dennis!” I yell out.
“I remember when you referred to
Tammy Faye Bakker
as The Stepford Hick on SNL.
Now, you’re making nice
with the religious right. What happened?”
Dennis scowls and his face turns the color
of a Red State.
“If you say that again, I’ll sue the fuck out of you!” he hisses.
“I’ve got a reputation to protect!
Besides, pal, you sound as impotent as Woodrow Wilson arguing
for U.S. involvement in the League of Nations.
By the way, you wouldn’t be interested in a
JUST SAY NO TO KOFI ANNAN button, would you?
Of course not, you’re just another brain-dead liberal
who won’t listen to the Truth!
Get the fuck out of here
and go crawl up Howard Dean’s ass,
why don’t you?”
I take the hint and start to walk away.
But I now hear Dennis singing a parody
of an old rock-and-roll song in an off-key,
malicious-drunk-tormenting-bar-patrons voice:
BOMB, BOMB, BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN!!!!
End of nightmare.
Fade to black.
The Pickup (a mood poem)
on a soundstage in santa clarita,
a movie crew is busy filming
what is known as a pickup-
a portion of a scene
that needs to be reshot
to the director’s satisfaction.
It’s the final week of production-
the time when pickups
are often filmed.
the mood on the set
(an interior of an apartment)
is surprisingly lighthearted.
crew members tease each other
in a good-natured manner
as the shot is being set up.
the prop woma
n carefully
sprinkles stage blood on the floor,
making sure she replicates
the trail of bloodstains
that appeared in the scene
as originally filmed.
She accidentally dribbles
some of the stage blood on
her right shoe.
The camera assistant sees this
and renames her “Bloodfoot”.
Everyone laughs.
the first assistant director
calls for a second team rehearsal.
three stand-ins take their places
on the set.
two extras playing corpses
lie down on the floor.
the extras of their
precise positions
in the original filming.
the rehearsal begins.
the star’s stand-in
carefully imitating the star’s
trademark mannerisms)
enters first.
He takes photos of
the two corpses.
The other two stand-ins,
playing detectives,
enter the room and
eject the star’s stand-in
after a brief scuffle.
The first assistant looks
at the director and the
cinematographer and asks
“what did you think?”
all of them agree that
the rehearsal was good
and it’s time to bring in
the actors-THE FIRST TEAM.
the first assistant relays
an order into his headset:
“We’re ready for a first team
rehearsal. Bring the star in.”
the other actors come in first,
then the star (surrounded by
personal assistant, hairdresser
and personal make-up artist)
makes his entrance.
the pickup is rehearsed,
then it is filmed and printed
in no more than three takes.
the atmosphere remains relaxed.
the crew members-
for all the disharmony,
occasional firings,
strategic alliances
and other tensions that
took place during the previous
ten weeks of production-
are now emotionally equal to
a group of high school seniors
taking it easy during
the final week of school
before graduation comes
and everything changes.
Notes from Employee Below-the-Line
some colleagues angry and/or exasperated,
employee fearful of being terminated,
says nothing else
sick with fear and anger
later collapses
of days of stress and exhaustion.
a convenient stress reliever
for coworkers
tries to upgrade
his level of competency,
but mistakes continue.
“In the school of life,
I flunked adaptability.”-
takes day off,
calls his therapist,
returns to work
some coworkers inquiring as to his health;
others stare bayonets into him.
visit to office medic
who got an "A" in adaptablitiy
makes him determine to adapt
and stop worrying:
“What are you going to do, kill me? Everybody dies.”-
line written by Abraham Polonsky for BODY AND SOUL.
End this poem
with a description of the sunrise.
People love an image
that’s cathartic-
like the car being pulled
out of the swamp
in the final shot of PSYCHO.
Metaphor
put my eggs into a basket
which used to be sturdy and strong
but as the years went by
the basket weakened with age
and eggs began to fall
onto the ground
gathered a few eggs
and found they stayed intact
save for a few hairline fractures
other eggs smashed
to varying degrees
on hard concrete
and couldn't be saved
especially the ones that
looked like 24K gold
but were actually plain old eggs
with gold-painted shells
searched for a basket
to put my remaining eggs in
and discovered
they don't make baskets
anymore
Learning How To Swim
This morning, I feel timid.
I’m standing on the water’s edge,
watching as you swim towards
the middle of the ocean.
You’re a wonderful swimmer.
I can’t help but admire’
your proficiency.
I never learned to swim.
All I can do is dogpaddle.
By now, you’re 30 yards from shore.
you beckon me to leave the
comfort of dry land
and join you.
I give in to your entreaties
and begin to cautiously
dogpaddle towards you.
The ocean becomes rough.
I feel the undertow.
I swallow what feels like
a gallon of saltwater.
I begin choking.
I call out to you
in a frightened voice.
it looks as if I’ll drown.
you look at me and smile.
“don’t give up,” you tell me.
“I’ll be right there.”
the water becomes colder.
I look at you as you swim to me.
I look at the shore.
maybe I should swim to safety.
Before I can act on that thought,
you’re by my side,
throwing your arms around
my neck and giving me
the most intense kiss of my life.
at that moment,
I decide you’re the one.
there will be no problem,
no crisis,
no seemingly insurmountable
obstacle,
no storm-tossed sea
that we can’t face together.
This Is the News
Local amusement park hosts stars of network soap operas.
Cut to informative interviews on how they like visiting
Southern California.
Police pursuit (aka car chase) starts in Brentwood
and ends in Orange.
Cut to anchors who offer
clueless coverage of the chase itself.
There’s a runoff election
in the San Fernando Valley.
It’s a boring story-
let’s show footage of a dog
eating ice cream instead.
It’s July sweeps-let’s show off our station’s
investigative reporting
by having the $8 million anchor
harass a drug dealer
in MacArthur Park.
A supporting actor on a TV series
dies of a drug overdose.
Let’s tease the story by
withholding his name; maybe
people will think the star died.
A talk show legend dies at the age of 79.
Let’s be outraged over being misled
into thinking he died at home
instead of Cedars-Sinai.
Consumer reporter covers corruption
at a car dealership in El Monte.
He’s free to be tough-the dealer doesn’t buy ad time
on the station.
Movie reviewer gushes over
Summer Blockbuster Sequel
for almost two minutes.
He used to be tough-now he loves
almost everything that’s released.