My Car
by James Ross Kelly
At seventeen I was driving my
Newly restored & shiny red 1951 Henry J
I’d worked on for 3 years,
With its rebuilt, “Kaiser Supersonic 6”
Down Highway 62, it is 1967 &…
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Tag Archives: Poetry
An Unkindness of Ravens
On the death of poet David Lloyd Whited
It has been over four fortnights since my friend
David died, his widow at his deathbed calling
Me & asking me to speak to him
Through the phone, he in a coma
Children and Marian around so, I panicked &
I prayed the only Christian prayer
I could think of, “Lord bring him back
We need him here, his good cheer and we
Need more of him and Lord don’t take him!”
I’ll apologize to no man for my panic
When his wife arrived from her
Work that Friday he first allowed that he’d not gone
To work as he was feeling bad, & minutes later he
Was on the floor, that Friday night
Having collapsed trying to sit up with Marian’s help
On his couch, didn’t feel good that day
& he stiffened up and went to the floor
I was 700 miles down I-5 I could not go
& there was no good outcome surmised by doctors
The Poet’s heart had given way
In Alaska I saw repeatedly every deer season
An Unkindness of Ravens as they are called
When in a feeding frenzied group to
Herald every afterkill of blacktail deer,
A snow laden clamor of raven and eagle
Blood on white snow unsympathetic
As most obituaries but louder, & yet
I know only the antidote of fond memory
David & I as young men
Drank and read our poems aloud
& reading poems we crawled through bars & bistros
& fished behind the Snake River dams
& off the derelict sand barge on Maurey Island
& caught ling and true Cod & sharks out of the Puget sound
I carried him out of at least three bars & one night
Off the Tramp Harbor pier
This was the man that wrote:
“Sadness Drives a Fast Red Car”
He died Sunday morning after Thanksgiving
I did not go to the funeral, did not know of a wake
Cremated out of the hospital & as there is usually
These days, no acknowledgement of the body as a rite
A memorial in a church in Tacoma was due
Work friends, one brother, grieving Marian & son & daughters
I called her the morning of the funeral
& I asked her to open all the windows
In their little house on the Puget Sound
At the mouth of Judd Creek
When she left to go to Tacoma.
My good poet friend David is dead
Anger of a Kind–after viewing a year of child massacres in Mexico, Peshawar, and Syria
Anger of a kind
rests in the contours
of our palms,
inexpressible
Anger of a kind
with clenched fist
demands hearing of
why & wherefores
to this satiated life
Anger of a kind
bleeds from open wounds
& wombs, distended
bellies, machine-gunned children
nerve gassed children, & children killed by suicide bombs
Anger of a kind
wretches at the politicos,
foreign & domestic,
whose wart-healing
short-term gain
infects itself & all
that it touches
with promises & putrescence’s
Anger of a kind cries to a limpid
unconsciousness not
to accept anguish, suffering,
murder, ignorance, nor placation
solely because they have always been
or, because they have always been paid off
Anger of a kind stands
witness for all that come after, sometimes
having used a tempered edge for necessary deadly force
and final will for change, & that swift bitch–change herself
This anger is kind.
Mall Santa
The crowd looms
& I’m a mild spectacle
Ho, Ho for dough
I smile, wave, & shout,
“Merry Christmas!” yes I believe & I
Tell some of the nose miners
As I’m led, that Christmas is really
About Baby Jesus, some of them know this, yet
I am forbidden to do this, by the hucksters from
New Jersey that run the photo business here,
The parents are generally having a good time
The Mall is reasonable, making
The concession folks let the parents take pictures
On their phone camera, without buying & all
Can sit on Santa’s knee, buyers or not,
The poor are challenged by the $40 dollar snapshots
Insatiable consumerism? Charlie Brown might think so,
Then, there are the little ones that
Really believe, the college students
Running the set are intelligent & need
The money, I’m old and still,
I think intelligent, & I
Need the money, though I can’t every time
Remember all the names of the damn reindeer
I rattle off the ones I do know at that moment & it always works
No one tests Santa, had I walked by this scene
& some other white bearded fat man was doing this, like in a Brueghel painting,
About Icarus, I’d take no notice, & the line of children daily winds around,
Some of children want toys that total more than
Two months pay for a middle class family & some, like a small smiling boy, from
A humble household by the look of his smiling parents,
Asks only for new slippers, and his thread bare brother asks for a new coat,
& hearing this my heart wells up and the parents smile & I know
They’ll get them & I say,
“Why yes! Santa knows you are good boys!”
& I say the same to most of them & even
To the affluent, knowing if the thousands of
Dollars of tabulated excess does not all work out
Disappointment will actually help them,
& near Christmas after a lunch break I stride in the Mall with
A confident “HO, HO, HO,” & a little guy streaks away from his mother
& runs a hundred feet to me as fast as his 15 inch legs will take him &
I sweep him up in my arms & he holds tightly to my neck
& won’t let go & the next day
This scene is repeated by another tyke exactly the same way &
Now, approaching 70, I may not do this next year as
I sometimes long in this exact same manner, to
Run to the arms of God & hug His neck.
Favorite meal
On entering
The Tehama County library
I find a sumptuous oak table
Locate the latest
National Geographic
& learn the favorite meal of the
Inuit, in Isortoq, Greenland
Is seal
Dipped in Ketchup & Mayonnaise
High above at this moment
The last two pieces of oak have gone
Into the stove
& it’s too dark & icy to get more,
Inside the stove a chunk to the right
Smolders & pops
To the left about thirty seconds
Ago the other said the same
It is getting cold—a jet
High above at this moment
Is taking someone
Toward a sad occasion
We all suffer
Iris in a water carafe
Is stupidly trying to bloom
In December
On the hot stove I dropped Frankincense
This after noon
& a Holy odor
Pervades this cabin
No priests on this mountain
Wind chimes however
Announce epiphany
Unrecorded
Lovers embrace in
Immaculate numbers
All over the planet
Genetic material furthered
To be exactly what they
Are, themselves, guiltless after Christ,
Either by love or some other reason
Life brings on abundant life &
His own purpose
& like the tides, surges connection
Recedes, then surges again.
Venus Void of course
Stepping out into
The crisp night air under leafless
Oaks, there is a clean
Smell that can only be
Had in certain places,
Venus shimmers off mountain
Horizon, I thought maybe
You were looking at her too
Glimmering off your Bodega Bay
The pliable ivory of your face
& red hair
& connected pervasively,
Venus occluded with moon
Four days ago.
While you know
I don’t buy Astrology
& for you that’s part
Of your faith & that’s all right
For you then
I wonder about now
Three days before this evening
I’m told of twelve people
Are meeting
Three of which believe
That they are from Venus
& have video tape of
Venusian space ship
Landing on earth
Life is preciously beautiful
& we are part & parcel of
Gaseous formation of the adjacent
Planet & I would never want
To break up their meeting, & laughing
Though I am
Knowing that voiding time
All of this is a togethered thing &
While Botticelli’s art
Which we accept unlike
The Venusian space ship
& how he
Put her so delicately
On the half-shell
With your red hair
It is more like
A dream this art as life
Than a reverie
But there in imagination
We loved each other
& shared our last name w/out marriage
no relation & states away
A decade apart our
Birthdays, yet the same?
We astonished each other
You were swooped off
To California, but
In this cabin, this damn
Cold Oregon December,
Your red hair spilled across
My chest, your smell like
Lilac must, your
Touch soft, is soft &
Warm air becomes heavy
Acrid smoke fills the air,
A cabin, or a cave,
Or a peat heated shanty above
A wind swept cliff & the sheep bells
Clang in the mist?
I saw a reflection in your eyes
Dim light, our bodies move,
& then we were still, & your
Touch again, it should not be
A dream, yet it was
& that’s all we had
My heart surged
Not from desire
But from wonder &
Though we never made love you
Were many times on
My arm & we many times kissed
Deep spit swapping passion
& one night we slept together
This imagination makes what it will
Yet you were always a person
Not to be worshiped
But to be known & we knew each
Other in some kind of morphic
Field that came together & said
Remember?
I don’t buy reincarnation either, but
The neo-paganism you seemed to love, hey
The playful part I get,
Masks &drums & the anthropomorphic
Notion of animals, like coyote, but
The old gods have always been
Flipping dead
Pagan playfulness, still has a black ribbon
Running through it to the diabolic,
As did the inquisition,
Or any religious spirit
In every camp—waiting
For the wrong move away
Presence interior & from
Above simultaneously
The dimness fades
& the light grows
Too, too bright
I close my eyes
Black ice on asphalt & fire
On the moon
We were both void of direction
Toward God
& then I see again your face
Surprised
Then calm, your face changes, again &
Ten out of ten of us die
& you were eventually gone
