Road Music, and: Levis

Road Music

a set for Josh Maust (1978-1999)

There could be a dog
off-leash.

There could be a bike.

There could be a kid
chasing after a soccer ball.

There could be a car.

There could be a click
in the chest.

There could be elk
in the trees.

There could be a car.

There could be a bottle
and a bottle and a bottle
and so on and

there could be a car.

There could be a shim
in the steering.

There could be a bubble
in the brain.

There could be boxes of
belongings
stacked in a garage

and someone you won't be
running into

anymore....

*

There could be a pig
squeal of brakes,

stench of burnt rubber,

skid marks on asphalt
like soot smeared

under a sharpshooter's eyes.

There could be a car.

There could be a telephone pole,
a double yellow line.

There could be a car.

There could be a bridge
and the black ice
a bridge wears

like spandex and what
floats under the bridge

you don't want to see....

*

There could be a car

and there could be
anyone in it: you or me
or the three mangled angels

assigned to forge elegies
in the blacksmith shop
of the ear. Listen.

What do you hear?

A car backfiring
in the distance

like a rimshot?

A siren moaning
on the outskirts
of sleep?

Maybe the zither
of hangers undressed
of their shirts and trousers?

Then the ratchety music
packing tape makes
laying its little road....

*

There could be the idea
of a car and you wouldn't
be able to pass it.

There could be the memory
of a car and it

would tailgate
with its hi-beams lit.

There could be the absence
of a car and so
you'd have to imagine:

wind-brush on crushed
metal, impossible
jigsaw puzzle of glass and

there, in the ditch weed,
look, a boot

twisted at the ankle....

*

There could be a car

and there could be an elephants'
graveyard of cars and

you could go there,
any night,
with a hammer and a crowbar

and try to make them sing....

*

Or try to make a poem
about a car
and you could revise

the poem....

*

I wish I could get into the car
a poem, that brief
embarrassment to silence....

In a poem,
the car could stop.

Levis

You see, you must descend....

- Larry Levis, "Carvaggio: Swirl1Vortex"

How deep do you want to go?

There is a lake in the brain
and a hole in the lake and you can take

your time thinking about death.

If you think about it.

Also, there are those who will not acquit....
Which is not

a sadness, really,

but a souvenir of sadness:
a tear inside a thimble

inside a dimple of glass:
a paperweight.

And the hole has a name.

*

Souvenir, from the Latin: "come to mind" or
"come to aid" and either way

you can take your time

polishing the splintered desks
in the empty schoolhouse

Memory is custodian to.

Memory: working nights with its cartoon
lunchpail and stained thermos

and closetful of chemicals and brooms

and you know it's true Memory lies
routinely just to stay in practice,

and has no references,

and takes whatever work it can get.

*

Levis is dead and
so I am writing this poem

in the fashion of Levis?,
which is work

akin to performing the labors of Hercules
as a musical,

if you think about it -
that's how puerile and insolent it is

and believe me,
I think about it.

It takes me deeper
and the only work I can get

is shoveling shit in the King's stables,
whistling....

*

Who will come to aid and how
deep do you want to go?

In all the stories of drownings
there are those

who stand by the lake weeping,
wringing their hands and rending their clothes and...