Poetry
The Cornered Poet
to my endearing and enduring wife, Shuko
Preface
The Cornered Poet is a selection of poems dating from 1980-2020. They were often written in clusters and therefore contain enough unity to be presented in groups developing a bi-thematic continuity. Poems employing associative ambiguity mixed with self-absorption and disdain are presented in oscillation with those embracing a calming, nostalgic view of nature.
The opening poems are about the writing process itself exposed in a quest garnished with complaints,
“It’s not hard to find shit to gripe about
everywhere, over there
here right in front of me.” (Drawn Shades)
The search is made more difficult by continuing conflicts with aggressive computers, distracting middle-aged pains, a bad attitude, and gin.
“The end of the week, 5ive o’clock at last,
gin in glass,
pinched nerve in right shoulder,
pondering punctuation.” (Just past)
"Feeling lousy, laid out
drinking too much
&
there is plenty of
all day left ---.) (Drawn Shades)
In the poem A Step Back, there is a brief reprieve from the previous struggles. A renewal of spirit is found in the arrival of Spring. Here,
“In silver light,
a poem looks blue
and stars are song, ----“
"trees push, exhale -
perched birds release and blow away."
And in Quiet Peace
“This is Spring morn early and winsome,
white dogwoods salting forested openings,
a breeze softly blooming, awakening a private shudder.”
More pleasantries follow, but with
Ruminations
“Each moment cancels.”
A sudden change occurs, as loss of youth, a failing memory, despair, depression, and fear of death are explored in Losing My Mind, This, and Entropy, then further obnubilated in
Night & Death
“I try not to tell myself
about the end –
life peeled away.”
and Monkey of Substitution where the speaker’s life becomes,
“---the carnival life of a monkey
whose richer thoughts are poems,
dreams awakened – quickly forgotten
whose death is life unlearned.”
In Leaded Glass, “Depression has its own weathered beauty.”
Finally, Death Held Close is written in memoriam to the tuberculosis ridden composer, Frederic Chopin.
The next poem, Harry Knew, provides an alternate view-transition to several poems of man and nature conjoined. A philosophical paragraph about the perception of time, titled Mythical Moments, follows. It is a program note that I provided the Musica Trio for the premiere live performance of my composition, Mythical Moments for violin, cello, and piano. A studio performance featuring a different ensemble of performers may be heard on the CD Tendrils - PARMA’s Navona label, and on Youtube.
From this point, nature reigns with a series of poems composed in the 1980s.
And completing the Cornered Poet chapbook is the poem, Postlude from 2020 – a last glimpse of process, time and illusion, death, and wistful nature - finishing with,
“------- a precious suspension
of no regrets and no expectations.”
Byron W. Petty
Contents
Introduction
Modern Haiku
Poem of Contentment
Modern Haiku
Just past
Drawn Shades
Complaints
Delete me
A Step Back
Quiet Peace
No pretty poem
Spring
Ruminations
Losing My Mind
This
Entropy
Night & Death
Monkey of Substitution
Through Leaded Glass
Death Held Close
Harry Knew
Ohio Wandering
Gold in the Eye
Mythical Moments
A Past Now Present
Poems from the 80s
Then Lightly
From Above
Nightcap
A Slow Modulation
Gold in the Air
Epilogue
Two Scrolls
Chinese Autumn
Fallen Leaves Philosophy
Last Haiku
Postlude 2020
½ Penny in Time
Introduction:
“Night is long and breathless before the day.”
Modern Haiku
So few words
Risky to repeat.
Poem of Contentment
Poets are sad shufflers
pulling adjectives from deck’s bottom
rearranging the obvious.
Emptying words in the abyss.
Content to sip chardonnay Friday morning
while scratching poems at 10:54 AM
less content a minute later---
the chardonnay is cheap and who do I kid?
An itch you scratch in good faith – a poem will betray you.
Thinking a poem begets the poet,
I attempt to laud myself with future accolades
by avoiding run-on sentences, excess punctuation, the words and, or, but,
or, clarifications and explanations of but in particular, or and for that matter.
Friday is not improving.
The chardonnay is cheap and losing its chill.
Poems encircle me in redundant mockery.
Should have started with Champagne,
would have gone to my head quicker
rhymes would flow, corks would pop.
All wines are adjectives by nature poetic.
All poets, winos using adjectives
to pair nouns and verbs
with floral scents, fruits, nut-like hints –
classical notes with a smooth finish.
-------
Even the gin is not working tonight,
lost in permanent pause.
Spellcheck is underlining
my failure to comply.
Second guessing used to be all mine.
Now I retrieve humiliation as a download
in more words not my own.
Finally, a poem.
Oh baby,
it’s a trippin’ world out there
sugar-honey-bunch ---
left or right
it’s not all right
without you!
all about degrees ---
slicin’ the angles like a paper cut, baby.
Modern Haiku
Poetry
Subject to Revision.
Just past
middle age,
time out front
racing away with the Universe.
The end of the week, 5ive o’clock at last
gin in glass,
pinched nerve in right shoulder,
pondering punctuation.
Thought of new Gin-ku,
“Pond full
fornicating frogs
many ripples.”
So, it’s the end of the week –
hard to maintain a healthy point of view;
easier to surrender,
but for that you need a flag and a belief.
So, the week is done and screwed.
Keeping the weekend real
the middle-aged man is on the run,
finish-line receding.
New-ku,
“Lost time
ripples
empty pond.”
Drawn Shades
Feeling lousy, laid out,
drinking too much
&
there is plenty of
all day left ---
--- scanning through email inquisitions
in search of
go here
go there
undeliverable mail
a poem of words to find somewhere
floating in this barrel of sour pickles.
---------
It’s not hard to find shit to gripe about
everywhere, over there
here right in front of me.
Bad moods are
seductive, viral
a watch what you wish for contagion
a bad morning
waiting for noon
and today’s first
last call.
--------
This new poem
is
just
Bursting
with
Bluebirds.
I feel relieved.
The pain is no worse than usual.
Complaints
are poetry too.
People complain too much;
poets not enough.
They say, “Noah’s ark had
two complaints of everything,
which is why
we have so many now."
Delete me
I’m a word hound
caged & howled
in wordless Hell
& Pointless Punctuation.
I’m the coon of night
staring yellow-eyed at scribbles.
Poems like apparitions recede
in fogged moonlit valleys.
--- by day I’ve got nothing.
Earlier poems
resurface
refurbished.
words subtracted
like a pen out of ink
etches an indentation
to be investigated.
So many
years I have
wasted
writing trivial
redundancies
for others to read;
but couldn’t
think
of
better to do.
A Step Back
In silver light,
a poem looks blue
and stars are songs, and vibrating strings, and horn quartets,
flutes in fading light.
The tide of night taking a step back.
------------------
Following the drama,
purple shadows spurred across mountainside and field;
trees push, exhale –
perched birds release and blow away.
The air in wind is cold, restless.
Distance whistles a chill in my ear,
twisting through Spring’s bel canto,
presto, presto,
presto, presto, presto---
not yet.
-------------------
In a brief moment
the sun rises.
I bend gently
to its arc, following.
At a curvilinear distance
the moon rises.
Each night a red pagan ritual.
Each morning a new sun --
red, then yellow, beckoning.
Quiet Peace
This is Spring morn early and winsome,
white dogwoods salting forested openings,
a breeze softly blooming, awakening a private shudder.
This is spring night dimming the horizon,
tree lines blurred & backlit fade as clouds grey to dark,
a quiet peace, a settling of all.
No pretty poem
this,
with sun setting,
slanting shadows,
green fields bluing along hill’s tree line;
with
skipper-flies’
short journey
between
daisies
&
pink impatience.
With that certain quiet
of evening,
of last calls for mates -
small flocks searching roosts.
With the first tree frogs, the first katydids -
insects floating translucent patterns -
fireflies lighting night’s black palette and score.
Spring
is early and warm this year.
The local cows are at it,
humping in cow vernacular.
The young bulls grunt
sex
sex
sex
The old bulls grunt
food, sex
food,
sex,
food.
Priorities change with age.
Ruminations
Each moment cancels
Losing My Mind
Gone
and
disappeared is a
real place
where
things
go
we
can’t
find.
Dreams disappear first
in a twisting
jerky
descent,
the next memory already fading.
Things go
where things
go
in a jerky,
twisted descent
down
& down
till at the very bottom---
This
is where the night clings
and thoughts are spun in dream-predicting desires.
Close your eyes --
describe yourself to me,
your most uncomfortable self.
The larger theme, all the variants –
your incongruous side,
your inner drifting away.
I want to know
the specific moment
when and how
the regrets and guilt
form
that icy liquid melting depression
that only ever partially ready
sense of anxiety, swelling.
Describe it carefully –
your
fluttering, stuttering,
shifting thoughts
swirling
falling
sinking
drowning
black bleak thoughts –
of time running out
swallowing the inevitable nothing you can do
nothing at all ---
Entropy
for one & all!
How youth does pursue,
nagging us with then.
Are memories enough
to make the past real?
When the earth spins
the sun sets;
the tears of day
create the beauty of night.
Everything takes time.
Time takes everything,
like a mad dog
that
only
sees
a straight path.
The
tree
doesn’t
fall
far
from
the ground.
This
is
how
I
imagine
you,
from dark inside
a dark place
old & weary.
I try
to
dig
the
hole
deeper
till
I am
buried
in confusion
with you.
To make the past real,
did you imagine me?
Day, Night & Death
Trying to find the right moment
to tell myself
the truth about then.
About that time
the door opened
&
the window shut
&
the light was a fire painting the night red,
raising the moon-howl-pagan.
Elusive truth.
The door shuts,
the window opens on a formless night.
Trying to find the right moment
to tell myself lies about the pain -
a root buried shallow
knobbing up & through.
I try not to tell myself
about the end -
life peeled away.
Monkey of Substitution
Another dreary day
wasting time
like it belonged to me,
trying to stay this
side of embarrassment
where optimism goes to die.
Another day,
much like yesterday
this de-ja-vu feels familiar –
here I am
second-guessing
the second time around –
still puzzled, yet enamored with time.
Time should be measured
in firsts, not seconds.
In the beginning
was not second.
Another day
trying to find the way out --
trying to get out of the way –
depression pooling into deep reflections – mirror to mirror.
Mine is the carnival life of a monkey
whose richer thoughts are poems,
dreams awakened – quickly forgotten,
whose death is life unlearned.
Through Leaded Glass
Depression has its own weathered beauty.
Like a mournful motet
heard through leaded glass
it slowly saturates
and stains with simple harmonies.
Death Held Close
I cared for you in ways I cannot, should not express.
Your music was more and you were more.
Just as you were new, I was new,
and we a forever pulse.
But the old Nocturne held death close,
the winds of night taking your breath.
You became the artist as tragic hero -
leaving behind broken spells,
and lightly touched memories of tender notes.
(for Chopin)
Harry Knew
He knew that night would come,
dancing dreamily to glossy strings and horns,
a Moon-song sung full throat.
He knew that day emerges only slowly and unannounced –
shy of disturbing night.
Slender is the song of day and fat the night sky!
He didn’t wonder – Harry knew.
Ohio Wandering
Waters press against the mountainside –
such strange preoccupation with granite,
an Ohio wandering, west of the divide.
River-call,
eternity awaits this moment and the next.
Time-dense desires deposited in place,
clay thoughts upon the never-finished.
Clouds over the river valley echo
wet dreams of rain-bleached rocks.
Mountains duplicate distance.
A flute sounds muted notes through gathering mists
repeated through muted valleys.
In time, now is the clearest path,
blown across new beginnings, beaten on the drum of seduction –
knowing where to go then as now,
it catches us off-course, behind the curve.
Light from a thousand sparkles
glinting like a magician’s eye –
invisible and blinding afters and befores –
flute-whispers in the current.
Gold in the Eye
Mountains are everywhere in 1897.
A granite stampede 600 miles north,
Alaskan waters drip cold sheets down rock-faced flats;
break-away boats shoot rapids, straight & lucky
carrying crates of champagne and 20-buck berry pies.
They sing, “Gold in the eye, in the sky, empty pockets cry”
and other hits: “Dawson Bound” “Klondike Mike”
“Can’t go back when there’s no one there.”
The brave know Windy Arms passage awaits – where dreams are scuttled and lives obliged,
and a Yukon bath could be your last cold thought cleansed and swept down-river.
So much lust for it all!
Whiskered gents pan for color and wait turns at the rocker-box.
They sing, “Here is not now, just then escaped -
With gold in my pocket, I’ll buy my girl a locket -
My wife’s back home and she don't miss me -
My girl’s right here - surely she will kiss me.”
Mythical Moments
(Program notes from the world premiere of Mythical Moments for violin, cello, & piano*)
“I spend a lot of time thinking about time and our perception of it passing, stretching out, or compressing. We attempt to measure it, define and clarify it with our observations. In our daily world events create time for us. At night, time flows in dreams waiting to awake. We apply adjectives to time: a bad time, a good time, a memorable moment in time. And we have memories of these moments, assuming their reality while imagining future events. We even take time to create elaborate stories about past events that never took place. These mythologies, could they become real?
There seems to be a consensus about the accelerating pace of society – a need to keep up, a sense that we are behind. We live longer but world-weary sooner. Music can focus or suspend time “in the moment.” In Mythical Moments there is a feeling of nostalgia and a concern that something is about to happen, something we might miss. I feel it too. Is it possible we all share mythical moments?” Byron Petty
(Mythical Moments for violin, cello, and piano, 2005 may be heard on the CD, Tendrils – Navona Records and Youtube.)
*See Score at bottom of pages. below Short Stories.
///// //////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\
A Past Now Present
Poems from the ‘80s
Then Lightly
for the floating day
the field spread out in all directions -
one giant sun-slick.
for rolling hills
edged with fence lines, green and overgrown -
lightning-struck trees against pale blue skies.
for mountains
higher and farther away -
echelon of hawks in silent glide.
for the full moon
that dominates -
a thin parting in wane.
Then lightly.
From Above
From above,
a needle of pine
trails a slight figure disappearing in the brown grass.
As the background dulls,
the last wild flowers are more brightly seen
and heavy-rounded mushrooms become powder for the wind.
Nightcap
In Fall deer gather
and blend with October’s afternoon.
Squirrels raid alder trees by the stream
shaking dried catkins onto water’s swirl.
There is a moment,
when wild iris and Fall shadows merge,
cool air settles by the stream,
mountains grey and fade,
stars arrive in pairs,
nomadic constellations appear.
A Slow Modulation
---together we went to the field,
you carrying a small basket - my straw hat on your head.
---in the scattered morning mist,
we lay beneath a Sycamore against ground ivy and grasses,
against prickly round buttonballs.
---sitting quietly together,
I could think only of muted violas
and the blue-green side of your face.
Gold in the Air
Basho once traveled the muddy trail –
sandaled steps sliding around the curve.
Woods behind, he saw the sun
green on rice fields and willows –
yellow on birds flying between paddies.
gold everywhere
gold in the air
gold sprinkled on thatched huts.
“Soon it will rain again,” he thought.
Epilogue
In Japan the sun is a square hole
in a flat round coin held to the eye.
Dappled through thickets of bamboo,
it reappears on the ground
looking like slices of dried pear.
Two Scrolls
She stands alone.
Her thoughts sifting, still and beneath notice.
Only feet touching the snow
so cold it does not melt.
--------
It is early spring.
Birds fly from tiled rooftops
to scattered patches of bamboo.
Willows along the river bank
are the color of green tea in a white, kaolin cup.
Suspended in the distance, villagers cross a bridge.
Ma Yuan, painter – 1190 - 1224
Scroll I: Lady Mystic in the Snow
Scroll II: Spring Landscape
Evening in China
(The moon at dusk
cradles a fragment of constellation,
pale sliver on a silver scroll.)
Fallen Leaves Philosophy
“To be raked into a pile with the rest
is why I say prayers to the wind
that I might be blown
to anywhere else.”
Last Haiku
In the end,
empty words.
Postlude 2020
½ Penny in Time
Bad poems,
words to dust.
If only I spent more time,
paid better attention ---
probably not.
Time is not mine.
Yours?
Who would read this?
Who has time?
---for a hole in a bucket where the inevitable next drips?
Things happen there while I am here.
I like that.
The possibility of important events elsewhere quickens the imagination.
If only I were there.
But,
things happen here while I am there.
--------
Do moments between thoughts count?
In those betweens, does a fragile peace reign?
In those synaptic releases
time future does not hold the past
and present time, the largest of illusions looms:
a black metaphor,
a slipped counterweight
tracking quickest at the bottom.
Death only slows for the dead.
--------
For now, the rain is a gentle accumulation
dripping green through fallen leaves,
rusted familiar yellows,
and tarnished reds of Autumn flattened.
Remember that glorious flight in sunlight fleeting,
a precious suspension
of no regrets and no expectations---?
The Cornered Poet
c. 2022 Byron W. Petty
Short Story
Booster 2021
Last week, Sherry and I headed out Rt. 64 W. to a faint little town – Clifton Forge, VA, formerly Jackson’s River Station. Scooched in the Alleghenies, teetering the edge of West VA, Clifton Forge is a one-street town. Even the town’s grocery has but one way in and one out. Next door stands an aging pharmacy, lit in dying fluorescent, flickering a sickly, yellow hue over the stingy bogoesque, buy two get one half off bargains.
We were there for our Covid boosters-by-appointment and ahead-of-schedule. With no one up front to greet us, we checked the rear prescription counter – one of those old, elevated altars where white-clad deities purvey ominous concoctions.
From further back a voice, “Have a seat and wait—.”
We spied an offering of three, ¾ sized metal-hard folding-chairs squeezed so that the back of one would touch the back of the next. We stood instead – arms dangling, then folded.
Eventually a young lady, early 20s, emerged from the restricted recesses bringing loosely concealed needles and vials. As we took our diminutive seats, she proceeded to kneel before us upon the worn, unsanitary carpet, tread upon by unimaginable assortments of shoe-borne diseases. With a glance in the opposite direction, I bravely volunteered Sherry to go first. Leaning in off-balance, our young shot-giver was forced to act quickly.
“Wow,” Sherry exclaimed, “I didn’t feel a thing!”
Shot-giver replied, “Thanks! I just got back from my honeymoon yesterday and gave my first shots.”
My expectation of a painless experience was in jeopardy. She grasped my shoulder pinching a flap of freckled age-slackened skin, rolling it back and forth several extra times – JAB!
“Sorry, I don’t like the way your skin puckers, just a minute, I’ll get another needle.”
“Hey, I objected, “did you inject the vaccine!?”
“Certainly not sir, I only stuck you.”
“Oh that’s great I thought, how comforting.”
I was mulling over my dismay when she returned with another dose loaded.
Brimming with youthful confidence born of her extensive expertise, Shot-giver let loose a successful yip of accomplishment, “That should do you!”
As we left the pharmaceutic pall, I turned to Sherry, angry and growling, “Both shots hurt like hell!”
c.2021 Byron W. Petty
APPLE CREEK
The woods are deep with thick morning fog. Invisible critters shuffle autumn leaves, stepping between the muffled sounds.
Apple Creek, I call it, is running full from last week’s rains. I am happy. I keep to myself; so does Cider, a black cat with one eye patched white. We stay to ourselves together, sharing the one-level secondhand shack with its add-on rooms, the result of unexpected children. All this luxury on ten acres of overgrown, nearly worthless land – just the way I like it – name’s Robert James Southwright – call me R.J.
I’m from around. Grew up, most people do, began shinin’ at an early age, lots of corn shine, fruit in the fall. My early education fell from the sky like a dark cloud, full but refusing to dump. When I got a little older, I married a girl younger and had a boy. My wife, Tildy, found out about better places and set out to explore them – with an “other.” The boy, she left behind. His name is Tony, only now he is a man with his own boy, and I hide from them both. Tony followed my lead in the shinin’ business only he wasn’t so smart – got caught and did two years. His boy continued both traditions, but only managed six months in county jail.
The only “time” I ever did, was time itself. I grew old and finally qualified for S.S. checks, though puny ones since I didn’t pay-in much legal tender. Tony would show up with a fifth, get me drunk, leave some meager groceries, beans, more beans, coerce my signature and sneak my check away. He won’t find me now, not here!
Apple Creek forks as it enters the property, spreading a winding y across a small field before entering the wooded bottoms – just the right security for my shin’in. Between the shack and field are five well-aged heirloom apple trees – three green, two red. The wet summer and fogged-in mornings left an abundant crop, and this old shack even has a root cellar out back. I’ve downsized now, at my age, three twenty-gallon runs – sixty gallons gives me just about enough. I indulge a fifth every day ‘cept Sundays. That day is for two fifths and hymn singing, only I don’t know the words – or tunes – just hum somethin’ up from the air.
I should mention Cider’s contributions – smart cat. I named him Cider because he governs the mash, the apple cider before stillin’ it. He always knows when it is right; rubbin’ the pot meowing, then yowling, and if that doesn’t get my attention, watch out – hissin’ and scratchin’ is next – smart cat! Cider is nine years old with all nine lives left – more than me.
I found this deluxe hide-away by chance, just passin’ through, lookin’ around. It is a bit out from a nowhere town, down a county country road. The drive up to the house is a good ways – dirt with a scatter of gravel and potholes. The shack angles the drive. It fits. Life is quiet. I am happy, you can ask Cider.
Days push along the nights. Life is quiet, usually. Trees slant shadows across the house. But late the other day, Cider heard somethin’ out there. I cracked a look through the door, saw two figures dressed in black suits comin’ up. They were almost here already. Why!? They had no business here, nobody did. No time for me to mull, I stood back from the door and didn’t move. Knocks followed. Then more, a pause, more, pause—. Finally, it seemed they had left. More knocks! The back door – they had circled around back! I picked up a big, crooked stick I kept for lost souls – ‘cause that’s what they would be if they didn’t get out of here soon! Quiet. Then quieter, a long pause. Still, I waited. When I settled down and patienced out, I opened the front door – they were gone. There on the ground lay a strange, lined pamphlet. “Jesus is your Savior, it said.” Signed, Church of the Blacksuits. Seemed odd. Cider meowed.
But I keep a solution in hand, so to speak – an old tin tasting cup I used for my trade. Shine always tastes better in this cup – I thought as I filled to the rim. The day had stopped pushin’, it was draggin’ instead. I wandered from one window to the other. Was that another suspicious sound? I quickly went out the back door and around to the side closest the woods. Standing with my back against the shack, like a spy or a mugger ready to pounce, I one-eyed the situation. It was a whole car-full this time; a man at the wheel and a bunch of teenagers dressed like some sort of Hollywood gangster film. I panicked. What if they knew about my still, what if they wanted a cut? I was out of the business except for my own stock. They knocked on the door just once, then pounded shaking the hinges till they were ready to fall off. One was yelling at the others, stirring ’em to do their worst. They ran all over the yard cussing, breaking anything that would break, pissin’ wherever they liked. The man in the car honked again and again. At last, they strutted over to the car, filling the seats with their anger as the elder drove off.
I stood there; my back glued to the wooden slats. What the hell was that about!? This was turnin’ into a two-fifths day on a Wednesday. Better make sure my cup runneth over.
I just began to calm when I heard a car fast approachin’. I went inside and locked the back door – and what was left of the front. Sure enough, another trespasser – in a Plymouth Fury III four-door; the kind police used years back. I could see two cops inside. That was enough for me, I slip-shimmied out the window and ran through the meadow – away from the still – up the hill along a ridge were large boulders, enough to hide myself. From there I could see down to the shack. Two uniforms surveyed, inspected, discussed. After a while, they tacked a piece of yellow paper to my door and left. It was full dusk now as I edged my way home. The paper was a warning about a teenage gang in the area with a request for any information. At least they weren’t on to me and my enterprise. And surely this was the last invasion.
Again! Why me!? This is not makin’ me happy!!
Another car, this one expensive, one of those family SUV things comin’ along slow-like, haltin’, and startin’ again. I decided to face this one head on, protect my property, my peace. They pulled up some 20 feet away, still lookin’ unsure. The driver, a woman, got out and opened up the back. She gathered in hand two little children, both girls. This I guessed I could handle; I had my ire up when they reached the door.
“Trick or Treat,” the girls yelled together.
They were dressed like little angels, they were. I was astonished! The whole day had been one great and terrifying confusion. What a place I had picked to make my shine-home! Cider yowled dashing past.
“Hello little angels, I said, as sweetly as I could summon.”
“We want candy, they answered, again in unison.”
“Well, we have a problem there, I don’t have any candy, but I can give you some delicious apples from my Apple Creek Farm.”
“Candy!” “Are they candied apples–?”
“No, ‘fraid not, but they taste pretty good. You can have as many as you like.”
There was disappointment on their faces as the mother grumbled,
“Take the damn apples!”
Max the Scar
Now this! This shifting phenomenon layered across the night, almost incandescent, glowing ghosts of fog moving in thick, then thin gestures crossways to the empty highway. It was mesmerizing and dangerously seductive – the play of roads edge in the one headlight, the passenger side veering right, suddenly jerked away from the old 50’s song hissing on the radio. Nine, ten hours – mapped center lines through four states. Was the gas gauge low or stuck beneath glimpses of the Missouri moon. I wondered, are we fog-creatures – phasing to invisibility as we leave society to die alone, in the mist where meaning is magically transformed?
I rolled into town around 2 am under night’s bleak, dark blanket. The lot was nearly full, but quiet at this ratty motel edged with spot floods pointed at the front office. Inside, the clerk pulled on a nearly empty pint of whisky before filing it behind the counter.
“Ten bucks extra for late-night parties of one, he said.”
“Yeah, like hell, I menaced back —you want ten bucks, well there’s no time like never!” I had my own pint patiently waiting my attention.
Morning split in two, light splicing across the far wall. It was near noon as I dressed and cased the closest diner down and across the street. “Breakfast special – lunch not so much,” read the sign. An honest appraisal I guessed. Bacon thick cut, eggs over once, and corner-cut toast – your choice of imported Alabama-style grits or stewed apples. Last call before lunch menu. “Tips if you want to leave by the front door—!” read another sign lettered in worn gold print. A necessary encouragement I reckoned.
I had been in this town before, in fact, two years of adolescent angst – nineth and tenth grades of high school – before my parents split up and split town leaving me the one spliced against the wall. Well time moves on, so did I – wasting time like it belonged to me for over four decades. Mostly east-coasting, taking part-time jobs when I couldn’t ‘cook a scam.’ That’s what we ‘in the know’ called it. I had ambition you see – I was an itch on society yearning to be an itch on the universe. I was a drifter. In Germany, they have a nicer phrase – “der geselle” – the journeyman, and I was of German-Dutch descent.
Right now, I needed to escort my vintage, winged chariot to the local garage, easy to find – on the corner of every small town. This one had a Sinclair sign, the one with a Brontosaurus smiling after a lunch of Jurassic greens – now turned brown gold. I hadn’t seen one of these signs in years, the last time was at the ’64-’65 World’s Fair in NY City. I was up from Baltimore – a little collection errand for the boss. I remember most the parking lot – 10,000 cars, half just like mine, a nightmare of fins leftover from the 50s. The Sinclair Oil Co. had a huge exhibit with all kinds of life-sized dinos, and they were giving away coupons (one per family) for free gas. I saw the exhibit once, but entered several more times, until I began to look familiar. Anyway, that was the last hurray for Sinclair – defunct by ’69.
It was hot – no need to say humid, a given. There was a large fan – broken, and a small oscillating one pointed at the working corner. Above, on a steel beam 12 feet up was a small boom box piping local am-radio from Kennet, the biggest town in Dunklin County, MO – central bible-belt, amen.
“Have you got a minute, I asked?” The fan oscillated.
“Yeah, busy now – wait – no smoking.”
I tossed my cigarette outside, then noticed the sign next to the door, “Don’t smoke in my garage and I won’t shit in your car!” I waited. Ten minutes, twenty. He was buried under the hood, a headless body wavering in the humid tide of the South. Finally, he turned half my way –
“What’s your problem?”
Me, or my car? I have a perpendicular problem – I don’t like to walk.”
I had his attention. He left-eyed me and glanced at the license plate.
“Not from here —.”
“Not now.”
“Oh, so what about the car?
“Not from around here either – it needs a right headlight, new front tires, and has a slow oil leak. Can you get to it today.”
“No, busy now – leave it around the side.”
“Till when?”
“—when it’s fixed, he huffed.”
“Old ass, I thought, dinosaur of the south. The South is a scab time scrapes open over and over – one of these days —.”
Today, another grey sky, and we take what we can with a sigh. Seems I would “be around” in this small town of my past – Dunkinpo. They say, never burn bridges behind you – blow them up! Well, someone rebuilt the bridge – here I am – again – in the Bootheel of Missouri, a small, square appendage bounded by Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas – the Missouri river, west – the Mississippi river east and Iowa flat to the north. I came down from the northeast on Interstate 55 S. to 164 W. to the back-roads ambling S.W. of Gobbler below and east of Senath above Hornersville about 10 miles east of the St. Francis River border to Arkansas. The name, Dunkinpo, is derived from a German/Dutch two-word collision, not mentioned in polite company. Strictly speaking it is too small to be town, but Dunkinpolars don’t like the terms village or “unincorporated community.” There is a main street – no named side streets, the obligatory dry-goods store, diner, a two-room library, and the one-man garage sign show. The closest post office is in Hornersville, population 620. Hornersville has a middle school and shares operations of the Senath-Hornersville Sr. High School, which I marginally attended. Hornersville is south and Senath heading north with Kennet another 10 miles further. Kennet is the big city – a place of trouble and corruption with hotels, theaters, and liquor stores. More than 10,000 people live in Kennet – thanks to a migration from the smaller surrounding towns and unincorporated villages. And here I am – again!
It was hotter, no need to mention humidity. I decided to edge down the shadier side of Main Street to the library where a window air conditioner offered sanctuary and books offered solace. It was here I had discovered the rest of the world. Looking through the shelves, I spot books with my name still on the checkout cards. Here is Oscar Levant telling me of late-night debaucheries at Hollywood parties. The booze and pills shared with Judy Garland and wit-battles with the likes of Groucho Marx. The times of depression spent in Mt. Sanai mental health ward, committed there by his wife, June, ‘for the good of all’ as he put it. Also, whimsical tales of his recitals across the country as a concert pianist. He was in high demand for both his musical abilities and Hollywood reputation. Oscar was a regular cynic on the TV show Information Please and appeared in more than 200 movies! And here I was – here, nowhere! One observation of his I always kept close was, “It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.” —what an apt prediction, how did he know? More discoveries were French names like Camus and Gide, the darkness of Huysman’s Against Nature, short stories and philosophy by Jean-Paul Sarte – literature with a different outlook than locally expounded.I even took to calling myself Jean-Paul in the morning mirror. As I look at the cards, I see my name alone on these volumes. How did they ever get here – fate, for me alone? Certainly no one else ever read them, or they would have been summarily removed.
I wandered further into the second room. Still pressed against the wall in a back corner was a chewed-up, wobbly legged wooden table with a two-speed turntable for playing records – either 78 rpm or the modern 331/3 kind. Back then, taking cues from Levant’s book, “A Smattering of Ignorance,” I found two conductors to call my favorites: Leopold Stokowski and Fritz Reiner. According to Levant, Stokowski conducted with a choreographic, bare-handed approach, the other, Fritz Reiner, used a microscopic beat attached to a small baton. I would imagine these motions as I listened to a world of sound not common elsewhere in my life. Beyond all that I could imagine lay my discovery of the German composer, Mahler! The little library contained just two recordings, on new 331/3 speed records – his first and fifth symphonies. The first was titled “The Titan.” The fifth propelled one’s inner self into the deep universe beyond. When I listened to these, I made sure the headphones were tight. I felt there must be something forbidden about this music, at least in Dunkinpo. This modest sampling of higher education would have to suffice – I never needed nor finished school. I left Dunkinpo at age 15, but I had the libraries of a nation, or at least the East coast, to nourish my intellectual cravings and salve my autodidactic disease.
Ruminating is circular, back alleys and hideaways, sink holes of the weary and worn, best to swallow these black holes before being swallowed. I looked over towards the front desk – a familiar face now lined with wrinkles emerging, the brilliant sun blinding from behind – an angelic apparition of the bible belt?
“Max!?”
“Yes, is it you Angel?”
“It’s all me!”
She was a little plumper than before, but in an enticing way. Her given German name was Frieda Engel – Engel being Angel in English and I came into this world, Maximillian Abendroth. ‘Max of the Night’ they called me – Abendroth meaning evening or dark.
“What have you been doing – these passing years?”
“Nothing really.”
“What kind of nothing?”
“The kind one can’t verbalize – like painting without crayons or dancing diagonally. Only, I can’t dance – my toes cramp a polonaise while my legs boogey.”
“But you must work – to eat?”
“I hold no special regard for work, or those who labor. Sweat is what connects us to the beasts. While others work hard, I only work lightly. I aspire though. I would like to live a poetic life of obscurity, settle into a comfortable poverty – diligently represent the bottom of society – ah, we can only dream.”
“Hmmm, wonder, what should I think about that?”
“Wonder as you wish, everything just is anyway, or only someone else’s opinion.”
“Quite a relaxed take on life, Max. Seems to me you were more anxious – back then, and I definitely remember more cursing.”
“Well, I have mended some of the lower fences – I only curse on Sundays now.”
“So, no church—?”
“—too many like-minded folks in one place for a drifter, the collective you know, and if there is a God, he will never find me in this abyss anyway.” It’s a big and bigger universe with time an eternity and events the scarification of time – without them, no time. I am but a scar on time.”
“Oh, so now it’s Max the Scar – instead of Night? Very dignified indeed! Well, I suspect you have had enough of the diner – why don’t you come around to the house, seven or so, dinner and drinks – tips included.”
It was a short walk to Angel’s, as with everywhere in D-Po. I followed my memory up the gravel lane to the stone walkway and up the slight grade to the house – one of the finest homes in the county. Angel’s family had a long history in Missouri, back to the 1830s when Daniel Dunklin became governor of the state, hence Dunklin County – founded in 1845, a year after the Governor died. The Engel family were German immigrants. They were knowledgeable about growing wheat and their farm prospered, quickly expanding with the help of enslaved workers. At the turn of the century, when the boll weevil destroyed Arkansas cotton crops, there was a surge of cotton growers into Missouri. The family rented out parcels of land to sharecroppers and became wealthy. This much I remembered from my one anxiety ridden visit – to meet Angel’s father.
The night air was a humid mesh lowering the sky, the scant flickering of a few early stars filtering through. A hedge of rhododendron lined both sides of the walkway and large elephant ears of several varieties garnished the front of the house. Guardian Magnolia trees flanked the front lawn, their duties distinguished by a century of service.
I slowed my pace, taking in the grand old house – a folk-styled Victorian, late 1850’s. The covered porch, trimmed out in turned cedar balusters, extended around the side of the two-story house with an additional morning porch located on the second floor above the entrance door. Two brown brick chimneys exited the roof line, with one more just visible offset to the far left. This was the Carriage House, sturdily built sometime after the main dwelling. The entrance to the porch was placed directly in front of the door in a welcoming fashion with a double-headed, brass dragon knocker. Before I could knock, Angel occupied the doorway, though I never saw the door opening – more apparitions?
“Guten Abend Max, enter please, this way.”
The low ceiling hallway was dimly lit with archaic bulbs giving off an oxidized yellow hue. This suddenly opened to a beautiful space with 12-foot ceilings and a brilliant chandelier – what a clever and dramatic effect, created by lowering the entrance. The floors were finely kept polished hardwood. Off to the left, a staircase echoed the exterior porch with fluted poplar spindles and sporting an ornate finial. There was a locally quarried stone fireplace enhanced with floor to ceiling pilasters.
“Come along Max.”
The hallway continued, now at full height, with an equally large room to the right where Angel’s Blunther Grand was displayed. Here the lighting was better, focused on the keys of the brown piano. The décor was less formal, curtains drawn against the heat, a small Persian carpet beneath to balance the sound against reflections from the hard wooden floors.
“You still play?”
“Certainly, I studied for years – I teach now. I even have students traveling from ‘big-town Sennet,’ where they have studios and music clubs – and instructors with degrees. My piano was built in 1936. It’s two sizes up from baby grands! That the same year, Blunther built one for Hindenburg – mine has survived. And those estranged half-brothers, Brahms and Wagner owned Blunthers – so did Mahler, and your favorite Liberace.”
“Hey, no need to be so cruel – you know it’s Mahler I worship. The weight of his Adagios alone would crush a little town like this.”
“Yes, but nearly no piano music by him for me to play.”
“Well then, play me something hazy. You know, I came in around 2 am through heavy fog and saw the strangest lights.”
“Have you forgotten – the Senath ghost lights?”
“Yes, I guess so – I came in from the northeast – Senath is northwest of here.”
“People see them over between Arbyrd and Synath – where county road C and US 412 meet. I’ve heard there are some out in western Missouri too, near Hornet – Spooklights, they call them. Happens all around the world, in places with high humidity. Here is a hazy piece for you – Reverie by Debussy.”
The music began to rise and fall gently in her left hand joined by a descending melody, single notes at first. The rocking left hand stretched across the bottom of the piano, sweeping the keys while the top line was now full with octaves. This transitioned to a close four-part harmony, the texture hymn-like but there was no church in this music. Now Debussy closes, the theme returning buried in the middle, breaking the accompaniment in half – then into fragments from before — then a vanish–. She was still, her heart quiet and mine satisfied. Finally, the trance was dissolved with a new suggestion.
“How about something to lift the fog, something less hazy – sparkling?”
She opened the heavily tapestried drapes, the play of sunlight on water gushed through the air propelled by a palatial fountain – dashed from her fingers, her hands dipping in the water, tossing it up and outward –
“Jeux d-eau I exclaimed!”
Ravel was a brilliant chandelier in her hands.
“Brava! Brava! Encore me – more please.”
“Maybe a short one – we do have plans out back – aperitifs with the hummers, and maybe a piece of candy? Peppermint??”
Sure enough. She played a piece written in homage to Auguste Get, the culinary inventor of French Pippermint. The lightheaded frivolity of Belle Epoque waltzing beneath a chandelier – here – in Dunkinpo! This piece I didn’t know.
“It’s by a friend of Debussy’s, Deodat de Severac. While Debussy remained in the limelight of Paris, Deodat went provincial, becoming an incredibly sophisticated country cousin.”
“I see, as Schumann said, “‘There is always more to learn.’” You play beautifully, where did you study?”
“Right here, in this room with Professor Haentzschel.”
My father thought he was crackpot, but I liked him. He was aggravating and kind.
“Relax, relax, he would say.”
“Yes professor.”
“That alternating move is called the dog-paddle, but for you it is the graceful hands of a ballerina – arms and hands of a dancer, without them they could not keep their balance – same at the piano, more so since you sit – emotion through motion – practice!”
“Yes professor.”
And when I hit wrong notes, the rants began.
“What, do you have elves in your piano today – playing the cracks? What was that! Your elves are now Gnomes!! Practice more, or it’s back to Czerny and Burgmuller!”
“Yes professor, more practice, I promise.”
“I am certainly impressed, Angel, you must be very popular with the locals, Max exclaimed.”
“Not really. I tried to present a recital, with a small token admission – no one attended. Then I tried to give one for free – no one came.”
“Oh my—!”
“Enough for now, let’s go out back – I have freshly made Gin fizzes, fresh Missouri air – thick not thin – and imported hummingbirds.”
Through the kitchen with the adjoining butler’s pantry to the back porch we went. Screened droplets of evening condensing inverted tiny worlds – split seconds of time stretching moments before combining into downward streams. Two arbors on either side were hung with feeders – the focus of conquest as warring hummers swooped and maneuvered.
“Up from the Mexican Yucatan, right?”
“I like to think mine are from Costa Rica or the Caribbean They arrive in April and leave with bellies full of sugar water.”
“They do seem greedy, but I prefer your gin fizz, just the right choice, an escape from a long day.”
“Yes, it’s really classic – but I like to substitute tangerines for the orange juice – lightens it up – the rest it standard – lemon juice, sugar – 2-3 oz of gin, heavy cream, and an egg white whipped – chilled club soda, and someone special to drink them with – is really nice!”
“Man, these hummers are crisscrossing with a vengeance – one lands, another ambushes.”
I knew about ambushes, one of the reasons I was on the road. The East Coast had suddenly become a smaller place. It was becoming dark. I lit a cigarette and puffed the embers out into the nearness of night.
“Let’s go in Max.”
“Sure Angel.”
She disappeared into the Butler’s Pantry. I could hear the rustling of plates and clink of silver. I watched as she set the split Round Oak table, the leaf having been removed from service long ago. It seems Angel lived a reclusive life of music and students – life in the arts is like an open wound salved with a periphery of societal pleasantries. Most people haven’t a clue.
“We have some old favorites tonight, to start – cheese curds and toasted ravioli with a nice Moselle-style Riesling from Crown Valley Winery- that’s in St. Genevieve County. For later, I have opened a really fine Blumenhof red – ‘Court of the Flowers’ – award winning aged Norton from indigenous Missouri grapes. It will go with the Crawdad Boil, I know you will like that!”
“I’ve been in Maryland for a while now, great crabs but not even close to a real Boil. Do you have some Delta Blues to go with that? Some, “I woke up this morning and everything I had was gone.”
“Well Max, you were the one gone all this time, you know I did miss you.”
“That was long ago Angel, and I was lost – no parents – no way to stay here with Social Workers after me, wanting to ‘place me’ somewhere else. I have thought of you of course. And tonight, your music was so meaningful to me. There are next to no classical music stations in this country, and I’m not socially dressed to attend the concert hall.”
“Matters not, not now anyway – ‘to Missouri and lost friends.’”
“‘And to lost ghosts—‘ could you pour me a glass of that Norton, I’ve a hankerin’ for crawdads!”
After dinner, with a glass of Edelbrand cherry brandy in hand, I coaxed more music from my hostess. A music of reminiscence, youth recalled, thick not thin – late Brahms. First, the Intermezzo from Op. 116. Who would think this is in E Major – the pickup beat leans into a dissonance darkening to c# minor, the melody falling, always falling. For nearly two pages nostalgia drips till a few measures brighten into major, the left hand floating upward – still the right hand descends. Along with nature, Brahms collects the dew to drops – those inverted tears. Age falling, always.
Then Angel picked up the pace with some earlier Rhapsodies, impassioned, flaring and surging forth. Both in minor keys, the first dazzling with octave passages and sweeping scales tinged Hungarian. The next, with it’s low-rumble-earth-breaking-open, hands crossing, carrying the line over and recovering again and again – finally reduced to a nervous, brief diminuendo, suddenly crashed by two fortissimo chords to conclude. Played together, they exhaust. Angel came over bringing the snifter of brandy, its fragrance released in our glasses. The upholstered sofa, meant to trap visitors, enveloped our spreading shapes as she gave me a light kiss on the cheek.
“I thought I felt the room shake with tremolos, I inquired?”
“Just the usual tremors, leftovers from the 1811 Madrid Quakes – you know we lost several relatives in that event, largest on record. Along with our “Tornado Alley” status, its lucky anyone lives here – and on reclaimed swampland yet.”
“Guess I prefer musical tremolos to tremors and relatives who remain far in the past.”
We sat quietly, each passing our thoughts through the air wondering if they would recognize the other. With the music silent, the frogs in the Magnolia trees chorused of all their guardians had witnessed, tales true and exaggerated, bringing them closer.
Angel turned towards me, “Are you staying?”
“When the “wizard” finally waves his wand over my car — I left off, she was a pause in tense air. Can’t deny it, I am a drifter you know – if I stopped, quit the road, stayed in one place – I’d be a bum. And what does Dunkinpo have to offer a bum?”
She gave me a look from the past, her voice modulating, softening, “Are you staying —?”
The sun malingered through delicate gauze drapes, morning aromas of dark coffee and chicory mingling with musical notes from below – a youthful Johannes, his Andante so full of hope and romance. I had long ago memorized the poetic couplet included in the manuscript.
Der Abend dammert, das Mondlicht scheint, Da sind zwei Herzen in Liebe vereint Und halten sich selig umfangen. Sternau
Through evening’s shade, the pale moon gleams While rapt in love’s ecstatic dreams Two hearts are fondly beating.
Angel heard me coming down and pulled me towards the kitchen. There was a breakfast nook on the side, away from intrusive sunshine. I begged off on a large breakfast opting for toast and two cups of black Joe. Slowly rising, I excused myself, for a cigarette and a little walk down to the wizard. As I approached, I remembered the threatening sign and killed my half smoked Turkish Special. I was down to my last pack, with Faders Tobacco in Baltimore a distant wisp in the East.
“How’s my Chariot I inquired?”
“ — ’round side.”
At least he hadn’t misplaced it. It was unlocked, I quickly pocketed the keys dangling from the ignition.
“What’s the damage?”
“Oil, gasket – you were leaking, two 60,000-mile tires, one headlight – you’re going to need a ring job soon.”
“Ok, but how much now?”
“167 dollars.”
“You sure are a succinct businessman, wizard.”
“Sliding out from beneath a car, he shot me an up-angled glance and pointed. There across the shop, another sign – “No Cussing, or I Keep your Car!”
“Shit, oh shit, I better pay quickly! Sorry— just slipped out —twice.”
I drove around town and up a few country roads, taking my time, thinking things over. Then I drove to Kennet, the sinful town we were warned against as children. It seemed dreary and sleepy to me. So small for such a big reputation, but Dunkinpo was a dry town and at least I found a bar on a corner complete with local bums. Maybe I should join them, I thought. I could come up here and hang out if things got dull at home. Staying with Angel, I would have comforts She was an heiress to a fortune after all, a real cultured lady of the south. And more than that, the music – music is more than anything. But what of the townies – how long till I was ostracized? After all there is a strength in the collective – a horrible potential for violence. Surely my very presence would anger them. I mulled over beer and bar nuts, the day yawning to evening. Finally, I returned to the grand house – one of the finest in the county. Angel was waiting, sitting on the porch swing, waiting. I sat with her. Words slid back down my throat. I had decided, but the words were lodged inside the cold decades I had spent alone.
“Listen Angel, you are more special than anyone I have ever been with, but I can’t stay just now, I have business in California that is unavoidable – for my new boss. I promise you I will try to return as quickly as possible.”
Her pause hung thick, the tree frogs were silent, the Magnolias ominous. I didn’t know what else to say or do. I rose and thanked her for the dinner and music, and with a ‘till I return retreated down the steps and slightly sloped path.
Once Max was out of sight, his car engine beyond hearing, Angel opened the door, went down the dusky hallway and entered the music room. The Brahms Sonata was still open to the Andante, the one with verse at the top. Quietly, with one beautiful motion, she closed the score.
As he drove along, he thought to himself – drift west old man, just drift. A fine mist had begun to cover the windshield. He decided to avoid traveling directly west through Arkansas, instead heading Northwest past Senath. Somehow the car was sluggish. With each mile a thickening fog seemed to push the gas pedal back, holding him in place – ahead, now to the side, then ahead again, a light of obscure shape, of shapeless borders. Max felt alone as never before and there was a thinness to him – then with one last regret, he was gone.
c. 2023 Byron W. Petty
The Church on the Hill
I was down and across the street heading the other way, as usual, looking over my shoulder – they always tell you to look both ways, but it’s behind that should concern you – when I spotted him, “the one” – a shabby old ghost turning the corner of Lexington and Main. It was Sunday morning, a Confederate grey sky with a misbegotten sun and August humidity, my pockets like wet palms rearranging sweaty balls. I diagonaled over.
“Hot CP, I queried?”
“Yeah man, I’m evaporating.”
CP – his initials for Cornered Poet, only name he used, and me? — little cp, cole pensa – a youngish writer, Cornered Poet – older, grey like the sky and lurking, always lurking.
“Look as us here, he said, “nearly invisible, all the townies tucked away beneath steeples, singing the hymnal away.”
“Why not completely invisible,” I proffered.
“CP replied with a long sigh that ran out of breath – life is not perfect. While they sing four-part harmony (like barbershop quartets, I inserted) I go without – all the bars podunked shut – bookshops closed, every block uphill, all the cares of the world bearing down on me, the cream of hope curdling in my mouth, more spit to swallow, day lingering into endless night, night with its tiny hooked feet grasping and biting, the bite of night, amputation of soul. “
“It really is all about you — saints and sinners,” I mumbled.
“Rather, sinners and me – who else? In the end, I do carry a carrot of optimism in my back pocket,” he replied.
“Really – how long has it been in there, must be shriveled by now.”
“It just stays in my pocket, never set free. At least at home I have a thin sanctuary, whisky, Xanax, music – Colombe, Marais, French Baroque, tasteful – “I weep for you —but gently.” Then, two hundred years later, Mahler in ‘06 Vienna listening to his failing heart while writing Adagios for eternity.”
“You’ve got Xanax?”
“—Robert Schumann with his Florestan and Eusebius – wild and calm twins of his bipolar psyche – me, I’m bipolar too, just that my doppelgangers are both the same – paranoid.”
“It really is all about you —!” I thought – out loud.
“Well sinners and me — maybe only me. You know, I was born in “that year.” The one the government —
“Hey friend, let’s try me for a change,” I said. “Have you read the latest in my Dumping Ground?”
“No.”
“Not enough time?”
“Plenty of time.” “Listen, friends are people who disappoint. Enemies, you know what they’re about – no expectations – as a friend, why would you presume otherwise of me.”
—the one the government owns, the one that allows me to fuck at 18, drink at 21, collect S.S. at 65, and die on record at the coroner’s office. Every year since has been beautifully forgettable.”
“Well then — have you got anything new?” I poked.
“Sure, you can have this – he reached in his one pocket without a hole, pulled out a crumpled page, crumpled it some more and tossed it at me.”
I stretched the words out and read the smudged lead penciling.
It’s all a plot, a plot against us all. Years pushing by, turds floating in air, ghost of years, a plot of death. People never know when it happens to them, that’s left to the rest of us, grapes of vinegar, crumbs of dry bread.
I wasn’t born, I was excised, chopped in little pieces, sanded with the coarse paper of life, unwanted, unsolicited, dragged by tv cowboys on painted horses, my skin tugging at the coarse rocks of earth, tearing on the sharpened corners of time.
“Wow, you could use a time-out – there’s plenty of all-day left, let’s get out of town, to the countryside, fresh and green.”
“What? Really? —where critters chew in the night? And I don’t mean the animals.”
“Ok then, can I come with you – a little whiskey and Xanax, some classical music —?”
“Get lost cp – you little CrackPot!”
The Cornered Poet muttered off down the street, looking left and right – especially behind.
George
“Sunnyside up” people are born face up and die face up. The only time they die face down is a bullet to the back of the head, when they cross the family.” To the family, being born face up was both rare and special. This was just one of the sayings passed onto George by his family.
In mafia families, owning a flower shop is considered a sign of respectability. Maybe because it presents a positive side to the public or soothes the sensibilities of wives back at home. George’s father had a flower shop situated in the middle of the block, flanked on one side by clothing stores, the other side by a butcher shop owned by a distant cousin, a recent emigrant whose English sounded like scraps scraped from a bone of beef. George’s earliest memories were of being bathed in a shallow bath, strewn with three-day-old petals of many colors – blue and red, yellow with green striations, with such a delicate perfume diffusing from the warm water. As he grew older his father gave him chores, at first in the back room tying off the fresh bundles that arrived twice a week, later he slowly learned how to arrange the bundles into color combinations, and by height and the texture of foliage. Of course, flowers have a shelf-life. They wilt despite the most attentive care, and when they do it is face down. George wondered if they had crossed the family in some way, if not his then maybe their own families, the genera of their origins.
George had arrived into this world of flowers face-up, but a little bit sideways.
He had a slight deformity in his left hip which caused a lean in that direction. This, he compensated for with a fashionable cane. As he grew up, this lean made for many nicknames, bestowed by his amused classmates in school. Wobble-boy, To the left George, Three-leg-wilt – a reference to his father’s profession, were a few of these. At first, he found the names hurtful, but as time shuffled along with him, he took a kind of pleasure in being singled out. At least he was worthy of attention, and in a way, special. He had become adept at finding corners in which to lean his cane, a position to assume in youth’s society.
When George reached his teen years, the surrounding young ladies began to remind him of certain flowers. Some were like daises, tall and direct with bright, straightforward colors. Others were delicate in tint and fragrance. These he longed for wishing to inhale the scent of their skin, especially the crevices of raised arms and the curved dips in the small of their backs. Some of the girls had plant-textured personalities that placed them firmly in the flora kingdom. These he ignored as they were too strong-willed and didn’t inspire his imagination, which, at the time, was all he possessed – only in his dreams did they flourish.
For many youthful years, he watered these dreams, cared for them in tender hopeful ways. He was now a partner in the flower shop and was known in the families as Georgie-Cane, though his involvement in the business side of the family enterprises was minimal and left vague. George thrived amongst the buds and blooms, the long and short stems, trimmed to suit his introversions. He had developed a heightened awareness of all the aromas, yet he developed a particular attraction to dried flowers. Their compression and longevity, even after death, appealed to him. They remained facing upwards. Perhaps the old moniker, Three-leg-wilt, revealed an inner destiny.
“Years shed years, tears gather tears.” – another saying George had learned within the narrow streets of violence. In this community he was centered in the middle of the street, just like the shop of flowers. He had not found a companion. For a short while, he was engaged to the daughter of next-door Sammy-the-butcher. This distant, distant cousin almost his, but there is a great chasm between flowers and meat. And people came into the store every day – it was enough for now, he told himself.
Then Georgie-Cane was alone.
His father, who had shown him how to tie bundles of flowers, his mother that bathed him in petals of love were gone.
The butcher shop next door closed. Flowers were now sent through the mail, delivered in white, or black trucks with G.P.S. There was nowhere to turn.
He had never truly been a member of the larger family.
One day, late after lingering hours, he took from the drawer of the store register a pistol that had belonged to his father and shot himself in the head – through the front.
This way he would land on his back like a dried flower, a sunny-side up. A Poem
Evening dries. The fall is red and gravitas. Winter thin, acidic.
Day waters life evaporates and vice versa. Spring disappears.
Summer is.
Kintsugi
Oh desires!
—to be tickled with a tiny brush
dipped in gold paint, all life’s miseries filled.
Short Story
Paragraph one —
a description, extremely detailed & tedious, of a beautiful female character — the end. Nothing further to the story.
Alternate paragraph —
Even with a given yes in the past, the doubts of now harass
my round shape flattened to the floor, always, always,
my appearance presented as an incomplete novel.
The end has no story.
After All
Before the sun lifted the horizon,
before the night twinkled out and extinguished day, before that,
all we truly have is in the escape,
coming to us for brief moments while alive, coming to us later —
life is nocturnal, vestigial.
Laws of Physics
Even I am an intrusion on myself,
a self-measured success amongst an ocean of brine,
yet, with unabashed bravura I greet the day
by becoming an object at rest remaining at rest.
Laws of Nature
A reddish bromide bulb of sun flicks through wet fog.
Through wet fog, a bare frost gives shape to dead vegetation.
Winter drips into Spring.
Spring jostles striving abundance dances, sings.
Songs accumulate like mold, white on yellow-green leaves.
Summer gone, Autumn is no reprieve.
The Unholy
Three days I have risen before the sun raises the horizon,
and am not a holy one, nor of Nazareth, or even wise.
Only waiting, for the sun to set
and me with it.
Night-ku
Tree limbs bend in night’s wind
rushing shadows across the porch-lit yard.
Modern-ku
The xerox machine sounds like you rustling awake
drying ink for another paper day.
Stars take time to Dream
Empty – yet something open, full, whole, she, her, brushed me, her smile with one raised corner, shaped like one finger touched.
“Why am I here, I asked?”
“Yes, yes you are here—.”
“But why?”
“Why? You exist.”
“But why, for what purpose?”
“Is existence not a purpose?”
Gently she pushed him as time pushes space, the red sun browning their bodies against the color of sand, clouds like pale butterfat floating upon salt-waters slipping waves beneath the bows of distant boats.
Her eyes circled the earth, returning wet and away-from, grey as dusk shredded to
night-spread shadows, their skin shed of light merged, quiet sounds of lapping water from oceans like oceans everywhere in vast union in another time, an intimate nearness of breath enters a slender moment.
“I don’t understand, he said”
“Neither do I, she replied.”
From the book of instruction—
The chill wind sweeps her hair, tosses golden streaks against sky’s light,
while I crave the dark, the absence of all around, the ground deep with death.
To each his own hell.
Be direct in an interesting way, obscure in a fascinating fashion, linger, dwell in the minds of others. Notice the chromatic inflection in their voices, the chronic, atonal note of forbidden desires. Here is where you slide in, thinly at first, repeating a voiceless mantra, a repetition of yourself into their being. Eventually, one of these variations will prove the key to dramatic change, a resolute salvation of their souls in yours.
Back and back, forth and forth, the tides of redundancy wash spirits in death.
Beware her sun-worshipped hair, it has become a merciless red and this place consumed by the black cloth of priests, only sighs follow unrequited and of our fate, only tears. Despair stretches sorrow. Here, hope does not spring eternal.
When first they come to you, take only a little of what once was, slowly replace with nightmares, extract the salt from their grief, their shredded souls, gnaw on any signs of growth, of spirit, dismember their emotions, gorge on the ripe bladders of their agonies.
Keep a catalogue of pain practiced, inflicted. Note the colors of decay curling, skin peeling. Gauge time as it squeezes, leave something behind, remember, stars dim as time repeats. Keep them until eternity dissolves.
Do not heed their hopeless gestures mingled with phlegmatic pleas for release.
Stomp down with hatred, slice through into the blood organs, be relentless.
After all, they have so much death left to suffer.
Vampire
More from the book of instruction—
Blind to the light, we hear the squawk of hoarse voices within the ear, choking in a fear that howls. Darkness is not an absence; light is the intrusion.
In a black mirror, shadows reflect, dwell here, shine forth an enveloping gloom.
Find those short of hope, extract them, create them anew, cut the bud of their desires – how much better to never bloom.
Absorb the soft, dank clay of those around you. Mix the detritus of their dismay, lost dreams of more. Show them they cannot sidestep the inevitable.
Show them death climbing all over itself, make it their ever-present companion. Bury their souls in cracked earth.
The breeze of old notes tremble the air and seethe with dreadful persistence.
Diabolical yearnings, cultivate these with the sharp hoe of night’s edge, revel in the fogged stillness, hold tight the ghosts of ancient tongues whispering rituals next to corpse-filled bogs beneath cloud-covered moons.
Find the solitary ones cornered within themselves, self-conscious shriveled spirits. Their dreams coagulate in a thick syrup.
Open these slowly, they will last far beyond the outgoers,
the ones of cheer and faith.
None are equal. Texture, color, smell. Stew only the best amongst them.
It will do no good to tell you of great things unless you unclothe unwashed yearnings, feel the pulse of night banishing day, mute the bubbling of hope. Reality is an artifact, dreams a shadow, scream and howl your sighs into the last distance of eternity.
Vampire
Mandible
Part 1
Waking suddenly in a convulsive shudder, she heard a scream that only stopped when she did. Then again – the scream was hers. It lingered in the tissues of the throat, ready to resume at any moment. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her knuckle, she felt a grey grit. She spittled on her appendages, pressing deeply, trying to clear her cataracted vision – trying to connect with the surrounding blur. “Like charcoal,” she thought. It seemed impossible to penetrate to the exterior. Was it really out there – this dimly lit wall, dense, motionless? She felt cold here, in the twilight without will or sense of time passing. Then the grey grit began to warm to a pale orange – green-yellow apparitions formed in a slow, transformative modulation – this new world turned.
The scream, or maybe a screech yearned in her throat. From further inside, a rasp uttered forth as she felt her diaphragm swelling, collapsing, swelling again in a rapture of self-belonging. Beneath her lithe body, long legs coordinated in a symmetrical alternation. In pairs they trembled ahead without destination. Instinct. A now without then. Her back hovered below and above vegetation, a rocking motion moving the body forward – it seemed no other possible way existed. Thought was unnecessary. She acted; it was enough.
Two long quivers had emerged from her head. They translated chemical odors, more information. Ahead, other forms like hers shaped the surrounding space, some her size some much smaller. One grasped at her, another tried. She was pinned by a tiny sinister shape! The warm air now hot, she struggled with accelerated energy but was unable to move. Time extended. The present lasted. Finally, the moment twisted, her head rotated over her closed wings. Instinct. Emerging song. Her mandibles closed over the aggressor’s head, tearing, slice-crushing, severing with a crunching sound as she proceeded to consume the body, the taking in nourishment of future birth. Nature without hesitation. Her nature.
Part 2
Her raptorial kin had dispersed throughout the cretaceous forest, their nonappearance no one’s surety. She had become a gentle fern dance swaying in and out of dapple-tinged light, absorbed and reflected by her quintupled eyes, while still digesting the post-passage of fatal coupling. At first the male had remained attached following decapitation, his abdomen continuing to pulse with copulation. A few pieces remained smeared on her side.
Movement. Sounds pitched only for her kind whistle and hum the air. The jungle veils day in a nocturnal show of life and dread. By turns, a leaf, a twig, her deceit trenches tunnels of camouflage, passing blinks to the unaware.
She treks in drifting betweens with binocular focus, any arthropod will do to create another event; these events, a necessity for time to pass. She knows no other measurement than the next meal. Stopping briefly, she grooms her exoskeletal eyes, rubbing across the hard surface with a sweeping down and in motion, avoiding the sharp-toothed tubercles used in the imminent capture. Her forelegs are a destiny; a double-length femur lined with spines, a rake of opposing tubercles adorning the tibia-garnished apical claw. Movement to the left, peripheral vision refocused; her triangular head tracks the shifting Coleoptera. Nearby Orthoptera present more prospects.
The strike already occurred! Unseen speed! The Orthoptera’s hindlegs thrust outward attempting to hop-escape, the tiny underbody legs flurry in desperation.
She begins as always with the head, working down through the varicolored organs and gel-textured guts. Another meal, another event for time. Following the meal, a Mantis religioso moment. This is her existence.
Time unmeasured.
An event unexpected and without need of thought graces the evening moonlit jungle.
Birth. Several hundred baby mantis! No need for another excursion – here is a ready-made meal readily grasped.
Part 3
Motionless.
On a silent limb, attached by autonomic muscular contraction, a verdant, yellow-striped gecko watches.
Byron Petty
The Queen of Not Quite Clean
I’ve been to “Hell.”
It’s just like any other contained-slum-diner in Baltimore.
Eggs over hard with wider-than, brown-crust edges. Bacon so thin it crumbles when approached with a glance. Triangular-shaped-wedges of once white, grainy toast accompanied by little sloped square containers of artificial butter. The orange juice is the color of a thin sunset on a smoggy evening along a cloistered East Coastline. Not-quite-white milk is served semi-cold. Cereal comes in a small box with a side of bowl. Taken all together, a typical city breakfast consumed by a cozy mix of suspicious and conspicuous customers. The one neutral thing you can say about Hell is that the hours suit the customers. It opens at 5:30 am and closes at 4:30 pm. The menu never varies, a mix of breakfast and lunch items strewn throughout the day. For the suspicious, the early morning is their late evening, the conspicuous ones arrive in the afternoon – their morning.
The street corners are rounded in Baltimore. I used to think it was a carryover from Colonial times. Actually, it is from the wear of feet crowded to the edge, semicircles of pedestrians heading straight across or doing the diagonal dance. The traffic is a mix of 20-year-old cars with fins rolling by low, always with two passengers in the front and three in the back, taxis with torn seat covers and secrets the drivers try to forget, and buses with smoke-glazed windows that brush the round-cornered pedestrians back on their heels.
Midday is not a time in Baltimore; it has no distinguishable features. The sun is not visible, hidden behind grey clouds above grey streets. The city peasants are clothed in complimentary greys, checkered work shirts, dresses with more complex plaid tints washed to a dinge in city water. The people do not mingle or jostle, they slip past like barges carrying illicit goods from across distant waters. Baltimore’s harbor is not the center, but the edge of off limits. Nearby are 7 & 8-story bldgs. from which young and some-pretty ladies emerge at lunchtime. Another few blocks west, a local newspaper, the Afro, is hawked up and down the streets near the Lexington Market where you can buy skinned black marsh-rabbit, large, yellow-skinned capons which you could stuff with dried dates and jumbo apricots, all kinds of seafood with eyeballs staring up at the distant, dim-lit ceiling, vegetables imported from the next county. The sound of commerce is cheerful here. Perhaps it is the dark lighting, or the dampness drifting in from the harbor, the melodious calls of, “get yo Afro here.” The smells of the marketplace are come-with and the free paper bags “take-with.”
Only two blocks east are the aromas of Faders Fine Smoke Shop. Sweet Cavendish and blends of Turkish Izmir and Yenidje with Virgina Blond and Black Latakia, or hefty Perique, stuff tamped-down briar pipes. Cigars from the Caribbean have mythical status, the Jamaicans coming in white metal tubes with a thin wood liner and screw top.
Up Charles Street North, G. Washington stands mighty upon his tower -pedestal gesturing the document of the United States. In the summer night, bats circle the round hi-beamed structure catching the invisible and spreading bat guano. Here the streets divide, The Hell diner on one corner, Peabody Conservatory of Music up the hill, a small strip of park between there and the High Episcopalian Cathedral flanked by 19th century stone apartments with spiral staircases and high ceilings, and a generous share of 19th century roaches.
Famous Rosa Ponselle from Meriden, Connecticut sang with Caruso at the Baltimore Opera here and John Waters made films here on the rounded corners near the Washington Monument. I lived here too, they stayed, I left.
Forward Flowing
Music in then time-flooding back
passing memories one moment
another inverted we inhale a grand pause
while notes collect chords gather
ornamental complexity woven in exposed threads
of heritage displaced by time through us
events through us away towards forward flowing
a trickle knotting not knowing
flowing towards away
then passing.
For Edgar
The Dirt Road to Hell
Chapter One
In 1955, I reluctantly emerged into a doomed society. Not that this dire assessment was a new concept, nor was the birth of another malcontent such as myself. History would assign me baby-boomer status. I would object.
This was the year of Eisenhower’s first heart attack during his first term in office, which also included a minor stroke and a bowel operation. He was tough. It was the 7th heart attack that ended his life in 1969. Ike served two full terms as a Republican President. My father must have been very content. He had survived four years in the Army during WWII and was a conservative all his life. He was a common-sense man of humble tobacco-field background; a do-for-yourself, do-it-right the first time, work-hard-get-ahead middle-class lifer. In ‘55 he was age 36 with 56 years lying in ambush. I was not yet one.
As I imagine it, June, 1955 was a quiet time of before; my father sitting in a worn canvas chair, cloaked in summer heat, warily watching a Florida of little sun-browned barefoot neighbor-kids of 4 or 5 years, unknowingly run concentric circles. Here, he thought, the earth dreams the sun and tides wash the bay of Pensacola and Panama City in warm salt. My father was still young with desires, vaguely aware that life is thrown in a scatter to entice.
I was born a month later on July 3rd, my coming birthdays overshadowed by our national holiday. By my earliest memories, I was one of those shirtless, barefoot bothers skirmishing about. Our past memories are fractured, notorious, – as reliable as an old crime scene and just as guilty of deception – best dispensed with quickly.
I do remember the little boy, hit with a bully’s rock, the gang of children chanting, “His head bled red, his head bled red.” And being chased around our screened-in porch by my mother wielding a fly swatter, because I let that same bully chase me down the street. The next day a gruesome clown-faced-weighed inflatable showed up at our house. I was instructed to punch its guts out as practice for future feudalistic encounters. I remember my little girlfriend who kept me company on damp evening hunts for frogs, which we kept in our pockets. I remember being held under the salty waves of Pensacola bay by large boys and being rescued by a mother’s rage as I looked up through clear water’s edge. I remember sitting on the back stoop with friends, my mother her head sticking out the door asking, “Would you all like a banana?” “Would you like it peeled?” Bananas appeared, flayed bare like a Halloween trick. I recall my mother driving a 50s used ford four-door, slamming the breaks at every stop sign, my older half-brother in hysterics as I continually slid off the slick seats onto the floorboard. Then there were the evening car-rides where my father would often pull over to hand scrape the huge grasshopper and moth guts off the windshield. I remember the little nearby creek when we moved to Panama city where I fished in early mornings provided with a slab of fatty bacon for bait, and the wild dash back home with Tippy, our half Chow-Chow, leaping at my pole. My father would lightly flour the tiny sunfish, then iron-pan fry them for my breakfast. Perhaps my happiest and confusing memory was the brilliant colored billboard with the cutest blond, bronzed girl – a small dog tugging her bathing suit, showing a glimpse of her little white bottom – my first daydream. I was five by then and repeating kindergarten, having been allowed entrance at age four. They had a school orchestra, mostly instruments to strum or bang, and a little chorus. I would have no part of either till I was given a baton and made conductor – a premonition of a long-off future, a new crime scene.
Ultimately, parenting is about geographically redistributing your children. Disappeared is a real place where fathers send offspring. It was a commonplace event in the 19th century, in an era of large families, to board children elsewhere. In modern times my half-brother Charles, spent his last few high school years in a military boarding school in Georgia, followed by entrance into the Air Force.
I, however, was taken along on a relocation to Mobile, Alabama. My father had received a promotion to assistant manager of an office in the Continental Insurance Company – an imposing company moniker with a patriotic edge. My memories of age six are pale. We had a standard flat ranch-style house in a flat neighborhood with wide sidewalks stretching beyond my allowed territory. These hot sidewalks of countless squares were a roller-skate heaven for us neighborhood kids. Nearby was a large road that actually sloped slightly downhill. This became the site of a yearly soapbox derby – a slow-motion coast, not fast like our skates. In one of my mother’s old albums, there is a photo from Florida days of Charles in a soapbox racer, likely a father-son project. I still wonder where they found a hill.
I was now ready for first grade school. But just when one feels safe and cozy, bosomed in family, the tides of the Gulf Coast change. I had not escaped military service after all. I found myself registered in the University Military School of Mobile, Alabama. At least I was not boarded overnight, discipline by day only. In distant years, my old-fashioned father would board two nephews under his care in institutions, one private and one military.
One might surmise that I was a problematic youngster, but there was a different reason for placing me at U.M.S., at a school known by initials. This was a 1961 deep-down south in a state of turbulence. A restless black population demanding deserved rights from a wash of white supremacist and an ordinary populace addicted to racial discrimination; for them a normal, acceptable attitude. The history of all this is, or should be, well-known by now. For my part, I was safe in an imposingly private, respectful white institution.
I look at old photos from this weary time. I wear a grey wool uniform with a few plastic bars attached to the lapel. We were issued two versions, one for cool weather and one for the severe Alabama winters. I remember sweating in both seasons while marching in formation with my fellow prisoners. We had a 45 minute session every day following a school convocation in the gymnasium where we saluted the flag while saying our pledge of allegiance, repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and listened to inspirational urgings from the principal. UMS consisted of grades one through twelve. I was there for the first three, grade four being where you were allowed to carry a model wooden rifle in the daily exercises.
Second and third grades are less nebulous in my thoughts. My English teacher comes to mind first; an attractive, short, blondish mid-twenties reminder of that billboard goddess from the now iconic Coppertone advertisements. Being a very nice teacher, she only paddled me once -without malice. All the teachers were certified paddlers. The ladies used a short light paddle, while the gym coaches wielded much longer weaponry. My gym class had a daily ritual where a fellow student, named Tuttle, was summoned. “Tuttle,” barked the nearly bald coach. “Front and center, hand on toes –whack – back in line.” Tuttle was the paddled expert. He had me convinced that this daily event was nothing compared with his visits to the principal’s office. The last-resort punishment was kept there in a keyed drawer opened only for his benefit by the Commander. It was even longer and electrified! I listened to Tuttle’s stories with a certain horror and reverential admiration for his paddle-worthy endurance.
The teachers and administrators also carried ranks. My music instructor was Captain Addison. During my second year I rose to the level of a section head of flutophones – one of three holding this imaginary position of student Captain. These pretend positions were no doubt meant as incentives and were achieved by head to head challenges. However, by the beginning of third grade, my competitive ambitions had grown and I challenged the teacher himself. A bemused Captain Addison addressed me, “Well Captain Petty, I think I shall have to concede and give you a field promotion to the rank of Major.” “Thank you Captain, sir, I answered.”Thinking ahead, I began to covet his baton too but the buzz and zap of an electric paddle played in my musical head. This monumental audacity convinced my father to buy me a real flute and I began private lessons.
When not practicing flute or skating the scorching squares of suburbia, I scrap-booked newspaper clippings of the latest NASA missions to outer space. These historic events were full of drama and media hype, completely irresistible. Even the names of the space craft were eye-catching; the Mercury-Redstone 3 designated Freedom, flown by Astronaut Alan Shepard Jr. – the first American pilot in space, 1961! Irresistible! Shepard was grounded in ’63 due to an inner ear condition. He underwent a successful, experimental surgery in ’69, then returned in 1971 to command Apollo 14, becoming the fifth and oldest man to walk on the moon. From the papers, I discovered that the astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, were all less than 40 years old, less than 5’11”, and graduates of test pilot school with a minimum of 1,500 hours of flying time. And all were smart, with IQs ranging from 135 to 147. Another featured hero of space was John Hershel Glen Jr. He piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6, named Friendship 7, becoming the first American to orbit the earth in 1962. Glen retired from NASA in ’64 and later became a Senator from Ohio serving from 1974-1998. He died in 2016 at the venerable age of 96.
In my search for space news, I would also find other more disturbing information. Back on earth, in Mobile and throughout the country, there were headlines of civil unrest, pickets and protests, school integration, beatings and murders of African-Americans by white supremacists, trials with unconscionable dismissals. Some 300 miles away, the “Ole Miss” riot of 1962 made front page. It was to become a pivotal moment in Civil rights history. In May of 1963, three and a half hours north of Mobile, the Birmingham riot broke into hand to hand battles between protestors and police. It was a horrific event, a premonition of the assassinations of President Kennedy on November 22, ‘63 and Martin Luther King in April of ’68. I was quietly sitting in my third grade class when our principal announced Kennedy’s assassination over the intercom. I knew this was something of importance and terrible, but age eight is not an age of deep comprehension.
Similar tensions were spreading in Mobile. By considering societal shifts, my father had made a wise choice, buffering me in a safe, private school. Unrelated to the racial dilemma, were the local news reports of several gruesome murders, the bodies cut into small pieces. I was sternly lectured on safety protocols; do not talk to strangers, do not accept rides from strangers, etc. One day after school, I was waiting out front for my mother to pick me up. Instead, a car pulled over and a man I had never seen before rolled down the window. He calmly said, “I am here to pick you up – take you home.” Puzzled, I stared at him silently. “It’s ok,” he said. “I know your father, we work together – he sent me.” Now I was disturbed! Who was this, was this true? “How do I know you are telling the truth – I don’t know you.” After a pause, his arm emerged with a card and his driver’s license photo. “See, this is me and here is my business card from work,” he laughed. Still unsure and hesitant, I finally got in and was safely taken home. My father explained that my mother had to visit a sick relative out of town and he was stuck at work. Some years later I learned the real story. My mother had experienced an emotional breakdown and needed to spend a few days at a mental institution.
A chilly digression: It was the winter of ‘63 that my father took me on a short hike in a nearby wooded area. The weather was unseasonably cold; cold is never normal in Mobile, so I was wearing the only coat I had, my sweaty uniform jacket. While running ahead to explore, I tripped and felt a sudden, sharp pain in my left leg. Looking down, there was a lot of blood. It seems I had found a large fragment of brown glass which sliced my young leg. My father lifted me and proceeded to carry me towards home, perhaps a little less than a mile. To my astonishment, he had to stop twice for a rest break. I had imagined him to be of invincible strength. His biceps were impressive mounds. Of course I would have thought this at age 8, but they mysteriously remained so for his whole life. I believe this to be the result of his early life, growing up on a tobacco farm outside Wingo, Kentucky. He worked beside his father planting seed behind Jack the family mule, harvesting in the fall and storing the tobacco up in the loft of the barn. He was born in 1919 and died in 2011 at age 92. At age 87 he had a car accident and nearly died. Following this he began to experience seizures which required special medicine dispensed by a neurologist. Every appointment was accompanied by a short battery of clinical tests which included handshaking, both left and right hands. My father reveled in this opportunity to express his dislike of doctors by giving the neurologist a display of his crushing grip. Returning to my misadventure, the cut was repaired at a nearby hospital with seven stitches and a scar to remember it by. The cold streak continued throughout the south. One morning I awoke to an amazing white snow; a rare, never-happens occurrence. This time the headlines were of a different nature, reporting the many car collisions by a populace inexperienced with such driving conditions. This provided great amusement for states to the north. One day soon, I would join in their delight. I was leaving Alabama.
c.Byron Petty 2022
Musariart Studio 