Sunday morning, a sign
west of St. Louis says JESUS
all uppercase the way
a traveling evangelist says it in three
syllables when he’s working
the crowd up to an altar
call. On one side of the road,
a towering promise
of adult entertainment
in a pleasure dome —
on the other a sign says
next exit eternal life.
The road is lined with lights
flashing a warning that
the whole place could go up in flames
if you’re not careful. And even though
you don’t need to be reminded
after a week of triple digit heat,
the marquee on a Baptist Church
assures you hell is real
and you remember
revivals where a pitchman
who said he worked for God
could beat the whole crowd down
into submission, turn them
at just the right moment
and close the deal,
and you think in the middle
of America you’re in the middle
of a damn tent meeting and you hope
Oklahoma is a little closer to heaven
but you’d bet your life the difference
from one coast to the other is
nowhere near three sigmas,
so you can’t call this a discovery yet.
Category Archives: poetry
Keys to Insanity
His keys speak to him. They say, “Stay home.
Bad things happen out there.” They know
he won’t listen, so they wait for the morning
his alarm forgets to go off; the day he’s running
late for a primo tee time or a meeting
with the boss, and then they decide to hide.
They dive deep into couches, slink off tables,
sit hunched on pushed-in chairs, burrow deep
into piles of dirty laundry. They muffle their jangle
in winter jackets with pocketed gloves, lay low
in stacks of mail and newspapers, squat in the corners
of book bags and briefcases. These keys are clever,
so he tries to sneak-up on them, crawling on his belly
with flashlight shinning, hoping to catch their glint
under beds and sofas only to find their doltish cousins
— lost coins and ball points. As hope slips away, he petitions
St. Anthony, who still preoccupied with Amelia Earhart
and Jimmy Hoffa, never helps. Bereft, the man simmers
to a boil, frothing he screams, curses; pillows and shoes
take flight. A cyclone forms; his wife, kids, even his dogs
take cover. As he rages, he hears the keys mocking him.
Eventually, he surrenders and takes his wife’s set
to the hardware store to be cloned by a mad scientist
with a maniacal laugh who for a joke cuts into
their soft tin the genetic code for agoraphobia.
meditation on a theme of Sam Baker
That all
the water is
sparkling seems
undeniable
in this light.
Sudden rain
takes the edge
off Oklahoma
heat at sunset.
There is music
in the rain, in
the red
horizon, in
the red dirt, in
the hands, in
the voices, in
this body of friends,
remembering.
Drink it all in
you must be present to win.
An Evil Turn
Coming back from Corpus,
having just signed a contract
for a new job, I was heading
back to Waco, when I hit straight
line winds and torrential rains
in a boxy Astro van with worn tires.
I’d like to say that as my van
spun like a top on I-37
I saw my life play
like a Hallmark movie:
my wedding night,
my children’s births,
but all I saw was taillights
then headlights then taillights
until the van hit the grass median
and then a tree. I’d like to say
that when the van began to roll
I thought of loved ones and friends,
but the only thought that came
was “I wonder if my life
insurance is paid up?”
sunrise, north canadian river
it’s not hot
yet, but sun
is heavy
with inevitability
like the voice
on the radio yesterday
knowing heat
a matter of time
here now
rain not likely
Yellow Cottonwoods
There’s heartache in these lines
cracking through once-hard ground
crumbling to course dust.
Sadness drifts here
beneath these yellow Cottonwoods
where old men sit
in distorted circles – a parlor
for the ornery and rejected –
where a can of beer
accompanies a well-worn story
told with fading bravado
fear swallowed in slow gulps.
These grains of river sand
dry in wind, sifting
through time, piled around toes
of shuffling boots, legs
dangling off a tailgate
or sitting awry in a chair
whose fabric is stretched
past the point of brittle.