Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems

We’ve Got Rhythm; I Have Much Better Poems than This

133 We’ve Got Rhythm for W. P. Woodpeckers drum, but just to beetle time, grub time, burrowing-spider time. Beavers tail-slap in a swinging way, but can’t hambone, can’t say “Abeekabocka bo . . . leeboleebo . . . haaah!“—and snare the zeitgeist of the day. Prairie chickens stomp and whirr like windup toys, but they don’t hear Time’s winged chariot, don’t feel their lives snipped into measures as they cut their prairie rugs. Male whales saturate the seas with their cantatas, but can’t count, “Uno, dos—one, two, tres, quatro,“ like Sam the Sham & His Pharaohs, can’t wow the cows with a fluke-shaking “Wooly Bully,“ then bounce them into bed, which is one way to stop Time’s march, or repeat it anyway. Give gibbons, warblers, bullfrogs their musical due; but don’t confuse them with a metronome. Humans alone can write “Work With Me, Annie,“ then lay down tracks so other duos can doowop in perfect synch. Humans alone break rocks in unison, do-se-do, flip-flop-and-bop, or hip-hop through gunfire across Seventh Avenue. Humans alone can synchronize beating spears with yells that tell those S-O-Bs across the slough, “Your head will cure 134 in my smokehouse, but there’ll be no cure for you!“ The Mighty Clouds of Joy floated my friend out of bed when he was sure he couldn’t stand another day. Only humans see the future’s One Way signs, and knowing where they lead, divide the road into such hip-shaking bits that each bell step and Harlem shuffle on the way is well worth the trouble, worth the time. 135 I Have Much Better Poems than This They start off better: understated, but attention-grabbing as a headline in Hollywood Star. Poignant as cancer-kids, they’re sensitive, mature, compassionate, and ethical, Whereas this poem is self-involved as a clap-stricken serial killer being fitted with a catheter. My better poems scorn all comparisons that might induce cheap smirks. They’re chiseled words: perfect thought sculptures, While this poem is—let’s be frank—a literary whoopie cushion, or at best, a Big Mac with small Coke and fries. If we must compare my better poems to food, they are meals worthy of Escoffier. They don’t hyperextend their elbows and throw out their backs straining for fresh imagery. Details leap from them—sensual, specific—like sardines chased by yellowtail through turquoise seas. This poem may do for an interlude of slit-skirt, push-up-bra, unh-unhunh activity; but its edible panties make you wince. No way you want to wake with it. Each line surprises in my better poems—surprises, yet seems inevitable. In this poem, I flung in anything that crawled across my brain. A desert tortoise crunching arugula, a bougainvillea (San Diego red) wilting in heat, an ant bite on my navel . . . even gas pains don’t go unexpressed. I’m saving my better poems for (why mince words?) a better place. Their endings leave readers both shaken, and stirred to give all their possessions to the poor— 136 To make millions, then found libraries and universities—or quit their jobs and be Alaskan fishing guides—or rush into the kitchen and create hundred-layer cakes of alternating chocolate, plum preserves, and mackerel paste. This poem barely dares to suggest that reading it is worth missing three minutes of the Nightly Catastrophic News and Group-Weep— That it’s better than hearing “Born to Be Wild“ on the oldies station for the millionth time, while you thrash in a cold bed, trying to get comfortable. You should be warm now. Close your eyes. Rest, if you can’t sleep. ...