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When I was still in college and writing poetry for
the radical underground newspaper - Sunflower, back in the sixties, I published a poem
called Rain along with a short collection which was featured among works by some of
my older Richmond poet friends. We were supposed to gather at a local night spot for a
reading after the paper came out that week. I was sick and couldn't make it, but the
stories I heard about it were mind boggling.
Lester, a swashbuckling beat generation poet
(now, turned real estate king and Shockoe landlord) chose to read for me that
night. The poem was called Rain. You have to see the poem to really appreciate
this, the title is huge, most of it written with a Japanese brush. Lester
decided that the size of the lettering should equal the decibel level of the poem. They
said you could hear his opening "RAIN" for three blocks.
RAIN / SUBJECT MATTER
pub. Sunflower Press 1969
The
difference between
WHAT I FEEL ABOUT RAIN
AND THE STUFF
THAT COMES DOWN
OR HOW I WOULD
WRITE ABOUT THEM
AND THIS POEM
is the same.
Morning Air
Soft cloud of morning air;
watery sheen rubbed everywhere.
Along a street of purple lamps
the meters lean in broken dance.
THE RAIN SETS DOWN ON STAVES
(Originally
Pub. September 1994, Indelible Ink,
Chicago, Il)
In the hundred thousand notes of constant rain
a few folk's windows open to the challenge,
compose with ears such as they are
touched by fragile associations;
simply pelted rooftops above schoolboys,
or a toddler's insolent tapping of tin lids.
Rich melting pools play out the year's
mellowed compositions
with variance of pitch and swing
that age by deepening downspout timber;
key changes like summer to autumn,
a switch of rhythms and surfaces.
The rain sets down on staves a range of lotions
too complex to wet the watercolors of the ear;
textures that are stroked behind the eyes
are appetizers designed for sulking;
what the blue notes do for emotion,
this tension does for memory.
Up weather slick streets the lamps
curl into cool shimmers disengaged
from any quantum lonely mechanics
a photon science might lend to a half empty space,
in my restless reinventing of rain ripple, go signs
of an unrelenting soul that man himself put here.
To end these wavering events,
and all predictable streets I might intersect,
the rain settles down to enact
some pointless rondo, reaching
for a moment in physics that resounds
with joyful noises dropped on metal.
The rain sets down on staves mere blots
like birds in utility wire notation,
or leaves stuck in tuned hollows across earth
where oak leaves chime with cymbals;
not unlike the wood gray wind I go with lately
where I'm the only composer who just listens.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN DRUNK HEAVEN
I climbed that TREE IN THE STARS,
met up with more corruptible gods AND NYMPHS.
Immense ash tree named Yggdrasil,
WHOSE WONDROUS ROOTS AND BRANCHES
HOLD TOGETHER THE UNIVERSE,
Odin was the head god, got drunk with the locals.
When he had enough he stared with that one,
old, withered, blue eye and said,
"FUTHARK".
They chiseled his remarks on STONES EVERYWHERE.
Branches, like nerve endings,
heaven's antlers in the air,
were popular in HELMET WEAR.
ONE BRANCH LEAD UP TO ASGAARD,
BUT NOBODY WENT THERE.
Destiny was rigged,
all were barred from heaven
til the final battle
of GOOD VERSUS EVIL,
and the money was on evil.
THE BEST A MAN COULD DO
WAS FIGHT HARD AND DIE WELL
WITH SWORD IN HAND
and hope to end up in Valhalla,
sitting at endless tables of eternity,
DRINKING TILL YOUR BRAIN
FLOWED OUT YOUR EARS.
When things got soggy over there,
the run-off settled over the years
in a place called Urda's Well,
guarded, as any keg SHOULD be,
by the goddess Frigga.
DRINK IN MODERATION FROM THE WELL
AND ALL KNOWLEDGE WOULD BE YOURS;
but Frigga loved temptation
and bade you guzzle more
til every memory faded.
We've all spent
the core of an evening
outdrinking that old boor.
So much for background,
it's time to tell my story.
I WAS A VIKING
ONCE UPON A TIME
WHO FOUGHT HARD
AND DAMN NEAR DIED
DRINKING FROM THAT WELL.
Rain Haiku
Seating dinner guests
rain begins our serenade
playing the downspout.
NIGHT WALK IN SPRING RAIN
Low sky hovers gently, a brownish underbelly
rubbed by humors of the city.
A vented sewer main mixes airy offense
with trace perfumes of fruit trees.
THE WAKING ANIMAL OF LIVELY INTEREST IS AROUSED.
Like nails tapping the ground, the houses in a titter of spring rain
each echo a one note theme:
A PROGRESSIVE RONDO OF QUICKENING PULSE.
My nightly thinking is underscored by a tag-along,
restless, other breath,
that damn Dalmatian from the house around the bend.
HOT AIR AT MY HEELS, I BEGIN TO FEEL NEUROTIC.
When I was five I used to think a wolf had licked and broken
a stretch of colored bulbs that lined the covered walk
so I would dread the long trek home.
Am I the one pursued
shadowed by returning wide-eyed wonder,
curled with hairs of the beast?
My laps around the circuit bring me back to rounding mantra,
patty-cake of footsteps smacking the rainy road.
I look up through wolf tails vertically aligned on spruces
racing upward in perfect perspective, pins and needles in this old face.
With ride-cymbals tingling, the dance accelerates,
and I am suddenly seduced by crescendos of downpour.
Spring has found me wanting to hide among spruces
where nothing can pry loose a child's bad memory,
WHERE UNFAIR SPRING
WITH ITS WONDROUS WOLVES
CANNOT LICK ME;
but, to need me now,
toes tapping in tremulous events
so close to home has meant
that childhood and I unite
in chill bump chance,
a revelation that runs with the panting sky
till a porch resounds but whose dance never ends.
jimmy's poetry
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©Jimmy Warner 2000
Jimmy Warner's Wild Moon
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