PISTOL PACKING POETS

Yesterday I renewed
Without hesitation
My permit to carry a concealed weapon.

It’s gotten more explicit.
It now reads:
Permit to carry a concealed pistol.

I paid $42 to exercise my right,
$10 extra because
The previous permit had expired.

You never know when some overwrought poet
Will feel like getting shot,
As the Rabbi Simon once reminded me:
Verlaine shot Rimbaud.

If I had a dollar
For every time some crazy poet
Walked into a reading or otherwise
Waved a pistol in my face,
I’d have 4 dollars.

from Slash and Burn (Blue Begonia Press, ltd. ed., handbound, 2001)

MAMA LOSEN AND PATRI SPEKT

Poetry is written in Mama Losen;
Editorials are written in Patri Spekt.

Home from the ordeals?
How about some biscuits and gravy
A little pillow for your head and a brief nap.
Maybe a bath and a new shirt.

This shirt will have some lace at the collar
A bit too frilly for the army perhaps
But your mother is taking over here
And if she is dressing you up like a girl
It’s only because she is trying to make you
Appealing to a girl.
The girl next door to be exact.

It won’t take many of these home cooked meals
To have you longing for combat again.

Life around the house is simply too challenging.
Putting the lid of the toilet seat down
Taking the clothes out of the dryer
Knowing which clothes go into the dryer in the first place.

Pounce upon a time when war was the cure for this nonsense.
Now this nonsense is the war
And everybody’s homeless.

from Lucintite™ (Butcher Shop Press, chapbook, 2002)

SEARCHING FOR MITSUHIRO
(MITSUHIROSAN O SAGASHITE IMASU)

Mitsuhiro Tanaka San and Kenji Takahashi San
From Yamate High School in Yokohama
Spent two weeks with our family
Last year in April on cultural exchange.

Among the many presents they gave Natalie
Were two small cotton bears
Which she named after them.

Walking on the western shore of Wallowa Lake
During a break in the Fishtrap Writer’s Conference
Natalie fell asleep in my backpack and let go of,
Lost Mitsuhiro as he fell from her relaxed hand.

Searching for Mitsuhiro
By backtracking the route
Served only to remind me of all the other
Mitsuhiros I’ve lost and how excited I had been
To have two, however temporarily,
Young Japanese “sons” in my house.

I’m told there is a tradition on Children’s Day
In Kyoto when the parents of aborted and miscarried fetuses
Visit the temple to light the candles and bless the little Buddhas,
Bibbed or aproned and made of stone,
That they’ve enshrined to honor them.

The musical poet Bill Shively said,
Moved by attending such a ceremony and
Observing the love lavished on it,
“The unborn children are doing ok.”

I draw comfort from the saving grace
Of being father to three beautiful daughters,
One more perhaps than the law, traditions, or
Some people’s economics will allow
Me to be made rich beyond comprehension and
Forever humbled in their love.

Even as I go on Searching for Mitsuhiro
(Mitsuhirosan o sagashite imasu)
And find myself looking
Into the eyes and faces of every other young man or boy
I see or meet for clues to what being the father
Of a living son would be like, (Ghepetto)
Bringing those feelings to the surface of a
Gut wrenching complexity one more time.

I see again also the faces and feel the hands and
Cherish the love and affection bestowed upon me
By the necessarily nameless young women who went on
To abortions and miscarriages after spending some
Good times in my arms.
I dissipate into an invisible cloud of
Helpless shame and embarrassment.

Might one of them been my son?
Which I’ll never have as I go on
Searching for Mitsuhiro (San o sagashite imasu)
In my memory and imagination,
Finding only fragments of my self in failed relationships
Still lost with a small cotton bear
Curled up by the trail and dimly reflected
In the faces of the dozens of young men and boys I help
Us to understand all of our children are
All of our children
And deserve our undivided attention and
Unconditional love.
Mitsuhiro san o sagashite imasu.

from Across the North Pacific (Slough Press, 189 pp., 2002)

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