Jeff Hansen - Fickle Leather

Jefferson Hansen is author of the novel "...and beefheart saved craig" and the selected poems "Jazz Forms." He edits AlteredScale.com

Being Simply Stupid by Jefferson Hansen

               “There is no such thing as language”
                                    — Mark Wallace

Feints & shivers against
a look in your eyes
that says something nasty
or not about a
game we may or may not
be playing.

Saying, “You’re sweating
against the cold &
this place is fun” meaning
whatever the hell she
didn’t know she
meant, I guess.

Thinking about language
is a diversion from
the action between your teeth.

A tongue clacks its way against red skin and white
Lips pop against every last glistening track of attempt
Our ears can go nowhere but haywire
Sound refracts and clatters through the thickness of air

And you can only write
when sleep dogs
your periphery &
you wish against
the spring-loaded
clicks of the keyboard:

someone is watching
you someone is always
watching
you

I talk the game of my deepest forgettings hidden
somewhere in grottoes never marked beneath
mountains long lost inside ribs that
hurt to heave & still do it

I
I want to tell you something
that trips at my
latest last glistening &
I see you outside
something invisible & thorned
I can only speak the echoes
from my lost caverns—
can they clatter
and curve into what
you I think need to hear

Sound travels better in water
molecules packed so closely
banging into your chest
your eardrums

We end where we begin
in water
puckering and putrid
wailing against the drip incessant
whimpering at the erosion of
skin and scale

life gathers and sickens
but somehow, somewhere
you knew to pass the berries
for my sponge cake & 

we smile as unknowing &
dumb as the toxins we carry

nothing else matters but your
lips, your lipstick, your shy
white teeth &, for now,
I hold out for being simply stupid 

 

Jefferson Hansen is the author of the novel …and beefheart saved craig (BlazeVox) and Jazz Forms (Bluer Lion), a selected poems. He is the editor of the Internet arts journal AlteredScale.

the loose hat of the confidence by Jefferson Hansen

the loose hat of the confidence man signifying nothing and everything saying "this is me" and "there is no me, exactly" sits flat on his head like honesty making no effort because it is so true seemingly 

        we can all see 
        into another 
        if we tip 
        at just 
        the right way

                                              all confidence 

                                              tricks 
                                              emanate from
                                              empathy

         a pill smells

         of lavender an herb
         sounds
         of musak

 at a door hat in hand the confidence man goes light and polite asking for what he cannot not receive and giving, oh giving, so much into those gaps where he and you entangle 

we are more 

out of what
we call 
our self 
than in
it

                                        and

                                        like Whitman
                                        we each contain
                                        multi-
                                        tudes

     few actions based

     on principle
     many on
     amenability

sometimes you wear the soft hat and coo and purr your way to a desired soft landing it is part of what we call survival part of what we must celebrate part of what we must guard against

               how many
               selves
               in you
               empathize               
               to gain confidence

                                                    even a samaritan 

                                                    must first
                                                    build confidence

                      the angle 

                      of wind
                      out of a forsaken 
                      alley
                      on the wrong 
                      kind of day

a direct address I didn't need but wanted like I want the burn of whiskey on other wrong days when no faith rises up and the landscape goes flat and threatening

   grandmother worries

   about memory—
   grandson plays
   confidence trick
   talks of forgetting
   what he went for
   when he gets there

                                                  vast con-

                                                  fidence game
                                                 filled with 
                                                 even smaller games
                                                 intricate and unpredictable
                                                 like electrons
                                                 where are they

                  what isn't

                  known only
                  to a degree

                  of certainty

the color of confidence could be orange could be violet beware of magenta and pink others off the spectrum confidence thrives in mixture and our mixed personal humanity—the visible spectrum blinds us to possibility and potential

    ah, but don't

    you wish don't

    you long

    for clarity

                                       an international

                                       crisis when Yo-Yo
                                       Ma plays
                                       around broken string —
                                       who's been 
                                       doing that 
                                       for centuries

    saloon piano

    sticking key
    better play the blues
    the crowd demands
    anyway

the confidence woman tries out one voice then another slips and slides her perception of audience until she modulates just right in history we are the people most threatened by confidence

                the science

                of the focus
                group

                                                 the moment

                                                 you're taken
                                                 glides by
                                                 without
                                                 urgency

      oligarchs

      play conflicting
      confidence tricks
      simultaneously
      all day and night
      to immobilize
      a population

when the attempt goes unanswered like decay and dread when all choice becomes somehow closed the way ahead unspeaking and the man comes talking a fine, fine game

                                                  and what if

                                                  that man
                                                  wants good

                          how about he

                          actually does
                          good

     truth itself

     formed by
     the will
     to believe 
     (Wm. James)

    

Jefferson Hansen is the author of the novel …and beefheart saved craig (BlazeVox) and Jazz Forms (Bluer Lion), a selected poems. He is the editor of the Internet arts journal AlteredScale.

Unorthodox Carpenters, Unorthodox Plumbers by Jefferson Hansen

                                     for my parents, who built the house I grew up in

Forgetting the hum and buzz of the fan. Ignoring the freezer kicking in. Radio news in the background—horserace politics, murders, stories about birdwatchers—drops to the floor before touching ears.

A Harley howling its way down the alley is not just a Harley howling its way down the alley. A morning glory opening to the dawning sun is not just a morning glory dawning. A cockeyed bookshelf is not simply a cockeyed bookshelf, nor is a level table merely a level table.

A table echoes: leaning forward from the green plastic chair to make my first pb & j sandwich over that white table on Columbia Avenue. Yet this table is tan, and was never on Columbia. A morning glory dawns into a bundle of symbols about awakening. I warm to them, however unjustified by the bare molecules. And something cockeyed creates nervousness, even if fully supported.

Worlds coalesce: a surface to place the tape measure, the vacuum in the closet relative to these crumbs on the carpet, a male voice droning out of the radio, slight breeze from the fan, pushing button to turn on vacuum, it sucks and howls, dancing with my arm, my feet, circling the crumbs, knee first aching (why did I hike yesterday?), then ignored.

Hesitancy. Approximation. Guesswork.

We are all unorthodox carpenters, except for carpenters, who are unorthodox plumbers.

 

 

Jefferson Hansen is the author of the novel …and beefheart saved craig (BlazeVox) and Jazz Forms (Bluer Lion), a selected poems. He is the editor of the Internet arts journal AlteredScale.

With My Daughter by Jefferson Hansen

               "Ridin' in the moonlight"
                                                   —bluesman Howlin' Wolf

traveling in car
late afternoon moon
with daughter who has
severe autism,
Wolf doing the
howlin' and slidin'
on the car stereo
& I wondering if
the transmission is
going as the car
heaves & lurches
at every beat
only to then notice
the blur that is
my 19-year-old
slamming
to the harmonica blast
against the backseat
padding "Wang
wang doodle"

           snails crawl against the stupidity of moonlight
           oak leaves wonder at how jazz can possibly be as thin as they
           a gust buffets & riffles my driving & I whoop with my daughter howlin'
                                                                                    at The Wolf

"I'll be arouououououound
To see what you're puttin' down"
because nothing matters now
but this dance
I pop & pull on
the gas as she
rams the backseat
with the ferocity
of developmentally disabled
glee
and tell me
I'm not dancing to
"I'll be your
backdoor man" with
my daughter

another gust and we
hear of "Highway 49"
maybe the one Howlin' Wolf
himself rode up from
Mississippi to Chicago
the night his mother
dropped his $500 on
the floor because
she wouldn't accept
money made singing
for the devil

she makes an
unearthly sound
in her singular language
beyond anything the Wolf
could conjure

           Is that hawk above us looking for a disabled mouse?
           What matters against the edge of an afternoon for a molting garter snake?
           Should I get a tattoo of a guitar & the State of Mississippi?

she bawls
something again outside
comprehension & I
turn to see
her eyes have
reddened
I don't know why
I never know why
and I will die so

          A moment is the irony of the recent past
          Rhythm is the ecstatic attempt to escape this irony
          "To see what you're puttin' down"

Now she moans with
"The Little Red Rooster
too lazy
to crow for day"
and this night everywhere on earth
will go down as
just another night
of banter & bickering
of shooting &
stiffing &
lazing at a soccer
match
and for us—
me, my daughter, &
the Wolf's dead voice
serenading from beyond
the grave—
it will be just another
moonlit ride
just another time
where rubber gripped
asphalt & pushed
with the friction of
its own beat

Jefferson Hansen is the author of the novel …and beefheart saved craig (BlazeVox) and Jazz Forms (Bluer Lion), a selected poems. He is the editor of the Internet arts journal AlteredScale.