Exit Strategy

Photo:  Still life.     David Graham

Well, it's been a lot of fun, driving this TRUCK for the month of May.  Thanks again to Hal Johnson for the chance to feature some poems by poets close to me, along with a scattering of my photos.  And thanks to anyone who has stopped by, with or without letting me know about it.  

On my final day I'm afraid I am going to indulge myself by posting a small sheaf of poems I wrote myself (always remembering Robert Creeley's favorite post-reading query, "are those real poems, or did you write them yourself?").  

Don't know if the following are real poems, but I did write them myself.

See you around.

A Weed Among Weeds

In a past life

I was a farmer’s field, and my wife was the rain.

                  --Brent Goodman

My wife is the rain, I say:

she covers my fields each spring

with the needed solution. Just

because it's predictable

doesn't mean it isn't miracle.

So my wife is a miracle,

I say to the sky, as if I could

conjure a great amen from

the wind, but of course I cannot.

I found my wife in the sky

so long ago it feels like

a story, I tell the clouds

as they drift, dissolve,

reappear above the tree line.

So the clouds have no comment,

nor does the fire in the west

singing its usual song tonight.

And my wife sings in languages

I cannot even speak, but I love

to lie in bed listening as pans

clatter, the kettle boils, and she

quiets the panicked phone

just by talking to it, slowly

and carefully, as you would

gentle a frightened dog.

I'm just a weed among weeds

and lucky to rise a good inch

above ground most days, wavering,

bending, trembling.  I'd like

to be the rain sometime, I say,

and of course she says You are.

--David Graham

Photo:  "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower"     David Graham

Not Sure What

Long ago I realized I could never think

very hard about customer service, propriety,

matching colors, gas mileage, or pardoning

my French.  I'm not proud but sometimes

annoyed at the world for reasons even I

don't follow.  It's hard to share a world,

as every toddler knows.  Die early and avoid

the fate, Frost advised, and I think he

probably meant it.  Kind of a jerk, he was,

but so is your uncle.  Even as a kid I read

more books than I knew what to do with.

I've been trying to cut back lately, but

everywhere I find questions posed,

answered, beautifully evaded.  Yes, I love

theme-and-variations, but often have to  

wonder:  what's the theme?  All I see

some days are variations, rich and hard

to read as a pot of lobsters.  When you don't

remember something, speak loudly,

someone once said, I forget who.  I said,

I forget who!  Oh, I suppose I'm proud enough,

but guess I don't much feel like talking about it.

Cigarette smoke curls in musical air, never

quite vanishes even while vanishing.  I take that

as an emblem of something, but not sure what. 

--David Graham

Photo:  Old Business.     David Graham

Love is some movie you've seen before, but

--after Richard Brautigan

Love is some movie you've seen before, but

you fell asleep before the ending.

Love is either that wicked great dream you had

instead of the true ending, which was sweet

and delicate as a caterpillar sneezing

in the basement,

 or else

it wasn't like that at all, and involved

George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson

loping through a shopping mall that's on fire

with gunshots from all directions and glass

exploding into beautiful disaster in orange air,

or maybe love is the alternate ending

that you have to get the DVD extras to see,

the one where George Clooney can't stop

laughing, take after take, when he tries

to recite a poem to dear sweet Scarlett,

and even after he finally nails the poem

and puts a take in the can, nobody

in the test audience liked that ending at all,

so they changed it to something

probably really lame, so you were right

to fall asleep and dream your

breathtaking dreams after all.

--David Graham

Photo:  Realism.     David Graham

Against Whitman

-- I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?

Today I woke without a hero

in my head, not even Whitman

who usually brims my pockets

with jingly treasures, sweet breath

swelling laundry on the line,

but today just seems a big gasbag

heard at a distance on a tinny

carnival P.A., drifting in and out

with summer's sourest breeze.

Contains multitudes, yeah yeah yeah;

sings the body electric, sure,

whatever; hears America

singing, well, duh!  Walt, we just

don't need you anymore, now

we've got cable, we've got

radial tires, we've got Google.

But thanks anyway for your

transcendental cloud-puffy beard,

your Jesus eyes and too-friendly arm

draped over my shoulder

up and down the Broadway bus line.

I really do appreciate your

Wal-Mart vastness, it's just that

we have Instant Messenger now;

we have reality TV, Disneyworld,

the Apollo moon photographs

of our great rolling earth

postering our living room walls.

We have laser-guided missiles,

email, disposable diapers,

electric wrenches, Valium,

closed captioning, adhesive tape,

time zones crossed by jumbo jets

filled with businessmen with

cell phones and laptop computers;

we have the interstate highway

system and grocery aisles thick

with kiwis, curry, and arugula.

What could you possibly add to that?

Or to the kid in Sunday school

who gives his Christ a posse

of gangsta disciples to guide

the ascent from emptied tomb

to graffiti-tagged heaven,

all of those Bible boyz packing

serious heat and draped

like Christmas trees in bling,

all rising, democratically,

toward the great big satellite

in the vanished sky, Walt,

and who could stray from that?

--David Graham

Photo:  Chicago Sky Puddle.     David Graham