TIME

 

 The bus broke down in Brokentown

I didn’t see a soul around

We packed our gear and wandered up the road

With curtains drawn or painted on

Plastic grass to make a lawn

And SUV’s that threaten to explode

 

It’s best to test the climate here

Where all the freaks have disappeared

And mine subsidence threatens all the homes

We’ll take the stage and play our song

They’ll chase us off before to long

But we’ll return like gardens to their gnomes

 

It’s time to use those tiny tools again

Time for spools of silver thread

For weights of glass and brass and lead

Set them up along the seam and then

It’s time to use those tiny tools again…

 

We crossed the San Palalo line

Our morning-jugs of apple wine

Were empty by the time we got to Hope

Nothing growns in tended rows

save ash-like dust that coats our clothes:

“It hasn’t rained in thirteen years, ya dope”

 

And so we reach to seed the coulds

We play our instruments too loud

We bring upon one mother of a storm

It never lets up coming down

And all the kids and livestock drown

“This happens every time that we perform.”

 

It’s time to use those tiny tools again

Time for silver notes to sing

To strike the pick and bend the string

To find the music waiting where and when

It’s time to use those tiny tools again…

 

We made our way to Santa Fe

Procuring objects on the way

We pulled into the fair to tend our wares

And moving product by the score

We somehow ended up with more

Than five of us could carry up the stairs

 

And so we set the pile ablaze

Was seen for miles and burned for days

We left our treasure glowing on the shore

The bus held all we’d really need

Just space for gear and room for speed

We drove on ‘til the morning was no more

 

It’s time to use those tiny tools again

Time to speak in pantomime

And make the taut skins talk in rhyme

To find in rhythm lines without the pen

It’s time to use those tiny tools again…

 

We played our last show by the sea

The end as it was meant to be

The ocean came and swallowed all we knew

It claimed the bus and all the gear

Everything just disappeared

I left the stage with water in my shoe

 

The band was gone but I went on

I drifted out of town at dawn

I sold my book of poems for a dime

I never really lost a thing

They’re with me every time I sing

And truth is that I’m singing all the time

 

It’s time to use those tiny tools again

Time for voices all to rise

To join my own and fill the skies

It’s time to join the chorus now, my friend

It’s time to use those tiny tools again…

 

TIME copyright2009 jason r mink

NEW BIAS ON MAIN STREET

 

The Handsome Two in MYSTERIOSO
faded marquee reads
Empty theater seats watch the light unspool
listen to the soft kiss of film as it hits the floor
Today’s faces aren’t made this big any more:
our stars small enough to fit the palm of your hand

On the avenue new booths sell old books
Leather memories
171, a page saved with a letter
“My Dearest Harriet…”
Old words take on new meaning
A world made real in the reading

New Bias on Main Street
in sympathetic collaboration with a machine that does not understand me
We speak in code, eroded notes
A new way of not doing things right

Active participant in a passive argument
in a rusting car waiting for Gene
Abundant sea rushes to meet me
In the heat of the beach, no trees,
what was our ambition just ashes on the sand

He learned to use a metal detector in ’42
but a nickel’s a damn sight better than a land-mine in his eyes
Seagulls follow hopeful, a morsel in a shell
She made a gift of it, the nerve-root
and left it on the beach
Some things you can only find by not looking

New bias on Main Street
people who I might once have recognized now anonymous
New noses, new causes
a caucus of strangers on the march

A mute chorus of suited men
notes unnoticed like a whale
4 AM shine-on by passers-by: “My, what a lovely song in the moonlight!”
No one knows the tune but
they whistle it everywhere

Gene leaving
on a boat, in a jet, going home
He left a note in a bottle and heaved it into the sea
I got the meaning but still wait for the words
trading my ticket home for more time

New bias on Main Street
It’s easy to start but harder to let it be
These threads that we gather about us so tightly
sure look pretty set free on the wind

 

copyright 2009 jason r mink

deadbeatDYNAMO

 

1. Zip-a-tone poet voyeur through the curtain, uncertain of just what it is he is seeing.

Moment by moment it comes into being, grows and goes before it’s too old, god fucking like two dogs trying to kill one another.

No brother, no bother, clone poet taking note from the other side, conspiring to hide what is left with the Father.

Imperfect solution, it fills the lines, veins, makes the remains something nearly the same.

From vacuum facsimile gran’ma tells how to extract the tulpa with wax mask and ash.

2. Tone poet under the lash, tries to manufacture passion for the work; “double each action” was the instruction on the note that exploded; in slow motion the words sank like a stone.

Who knew?

The way it dripped was in code, he noticed.

The droplets froze, showed him the inside of a more-noble line, his design but minus the lies.

3. Ghost poet stole the index, hustling for meaning or a smoke, anonymous amongst street corner hoes and stoplights.

A cop waves for him to go, a morning talk show host raps over Bosnia photo montage and his blind deaf and dumb audience fall out of their seats clapping, laughing as a blast rips the room in half.

Taxis pass without passengers looking for gas and

ramen noodle student gets the news his bill’s come due.

4. Politico poet broken open with a blow to the head, goes down to a chorus of “BUY ME ANOTHER ROUND, BOYS.”

Toothless queue in established patterns, sad hatless gentlemen if you knew you’d remember well.

Each votes and has a hole punched in his ear, are then collected like ticket-stubs and cast back out onto the street.

And when meat is murder what is starvation?

One man, one hungry nation fighting for scraps in the heat, collecting high society piss in glasses to toast to success.

“Truly we’re blessed.”

5. Corn-pone poet follows the carrot, dragging a cart without wheels.

Children kick, squeal, the smell of his shit and their stink co-mingling with the straw,

blisters bursting back, the line of riders stretching around the block.

He goes in circles, fingers splinted to hold the pen,

A carny slow-butting a cigarette on his behind to keep him writing.

6. Foe, poet’s own gone unsown.

Sooner than expected daylight ends.

Odious notes, impossibly-small notations in the margins, this day’s work.

Modest as it always is, it was before and

thick clots of meaning fall away when you shake it.

So don’t shake it.

7. deadbeat poet, spoke in the afternoon, spinning rusted rim-span sinking into the river.

His, a ode without a notice, pre-supposed as just a piece of flotsam up from below.

Bursting he rose, deadbeatDYNAMO from the undertow, pulp imposter, poseur impossible, poverty author breaks the surface to take a bow.

Mute, mooted but nonetheless true, a new page is torn from the book.

Sinking he stirs the sediment, what there is of it, intimate; who can tell what was art from what’s trash on the water?

deadbeatDYNAMO copyright 2009 Jason R Mink