Notes on Process, Part I

    Last year I tried to write a chapbook about horses. It seemed like a natural subject. I grew up surrounded by horses. As a kid, my grandfather exercised thoroughbreds at Aqueduct. My father got a 
license to train thoroughbreds in middle age, and for a few years pursued that dream pretty actively, with
mixed results. There was a corral next to the house where I spent the second half of my childhood. Horses were as common as squirrels or sparrows. So, naturally, one would think I had a treasure trove of memories to draw from, and combined with the hindsight of 50+ plus years, several volumes of horse poems were surely just waiting for me to extract them from the depths of my subconscious.

     As it turns out, not really. I have rarely written with a theme in mind, although I respond well to prompts. Prompts, however, only lead me back to myself. I am an expert at making a conversation come back around to me, me, me, and prompts are the first sentence of poetic conversations. For this chapbook, I started with only the vaguest idea-- something to do with horses. The few poems I attempted that dealt primarily with horses were drawn from my memories of them. I do not see many horses in my day to day life at this point. The poems are imprecise, dreamy and totally rootless. I always meant to go out and find some real horses, to add some fresh observations to my ancient memories. I never even got around to Googling the damn things.

     What I discovered is that my connection to horses is superficial at best, despite close proximity for almost two decades. My sister turned out to be the cowgirl in the family, and still rides today whenever she gets a chance. She has a beautiful barn in her backyard, and her property is adjacent to a state park. She's got an amazing amount of room to ride in a suburban Long Island neighborhood.

     I was afraid at first, and never overcame that fear. As a kid, we were led around my grandparents' corral on Princess, an sedate Palomino who was the last of the many horses my father and his siblings grew up with. I'm sure I pulled out a few hairs from her brittle blonde mane, I held on so tightly. Now that I'm older, and that much more aware of the consequences of a fall, I am all the more frightened.

     The best poems to come out of this effort are not about horses at all. They are about horse people, family, friends. They are about the affect horses had on others, and about the affect others had on me. One
poem is about a gold charm I have in the shape of a horse, and what it symbolizes. Another is about my grandfather, who died when I was 13 at the age of 57. We had very little in common then, and less now. Of the group, maybe five poems are worth reworking and sending out to find a home somewhere.

     Ultimately, they are Long Island poems, which I will never stop writing. They fall in line with the theme of my life. Poetry, writing is the way I explain myself to others, and to myself. It's a way of sorting out the pieces of the past, and clumsily ordering the future. Horses are certainly a part of my life. Just not enough to inspire more than a few poems to add to the archives.

*Poem: "Three Hours"*

Three Hours


Three hours behind me every day
and as I finally my eyes
droop before the DVD de jour,
your evening is just beginning,
supper dishes drying perhaps

if you are one of those that still does that,
or maybe the dishwasher has ceased
its recycled rumble, the sound
you’re unaware of until it stops

like the trains that pass my house
a couple blocks away, 11:04, 11:35,
and which is the wrong side
of the tracks from here?

Midnight, prime time on your coast,
sit-coms just starting in earnest.
If we had cable it would be time for Bill Beutel
to say goodnight to Roger Grimsby.
I leave the bedding of Mrs. Calabash
in your nostalgic hands.

My head tilts up on the pillow like a baby bird
hungry for any worms the night can provide,
trains huff through the backyard,
sirens for no one on the tracks.

If you were here, you’d hear the birds have
already begun their mindless chant
for sunrise, and at 4 a.m. I know
where the term, 'birdbrain' comes from.

We are three hours, three thousand miles,
several partners apart, and just as the sun
reaches the high point over the Catskills,
hides behind as many clouds as mountains,

you are ready for a second cup of coffee,
check your e-mails, watch those celebrated frogs
settle into midmorning callesthentics,
and I wonder what with all the tectonic shifts
in our friendship, how time will fly before us,

if our suns will come together, mountains part,
and we'll share a cup o' joe from the same pot.
I'd look in your eyes, colored the same
sarcastic tone as the rest of your sad bones,
eyes that have it where the rest of you is
overshadowed, shark-skinned and cautious,
chink in your herringbone armor.

Three hours, three thousand miles, a couple of
lives before, we meet again and again,
you my ambassador to the world of high standards,
red-striped ties and a sense of what
good can do in the lives of strangers
and other insidious creatures
on the left coast of life.

CAR 6/19/08

*Poem: Blessed*

Blessed

"Is Jesus still alive?" my niece whispers to my sister,
unconvinced by the pomp and ribbons
of the decorated tree before us,
o holy night carollers trembling song,
dark-robed minister and his simple good grin.
"He was a good man, and that's
why we celebrate his birthday,"
is my sister's ecumenical reply.
We have talked about this, and agree about
the man, the story, the not believing.
I am not guilty as this litany assumes,
wasn't born bad, have not gone,
owe no apology to some Great White Father King,
but the congregants recite,
in the glow of electric popcorn balls,
30-watt savior device in the popsicle creche,
their apologies.

My nephew and niece are invited to the menagerie,
handed a small stuffed donkey, plaster lamb
to add to the crowd in attendance at the celluloid babe's cribside,
after the second hymn, second verse, O Little Town tonight.
They don't know the words,
and we are so distracted by the lights and burgundy and
gold on the tree tumbling into our laps
that they almost miss their cue.

Yes, Jaimee', there is a Jesus,
and he lives as surely as Christmas returns,
with or without the snow you missed,
without blame, even without faith,
He fills the pantry for the poor that
the minister says is bare already, only December.
He carries the souls of the suddenly light into the next act.
He lays in the bed of straw, patiently waiting for his attackers
to come with their gifts, to cover the earth in gold,
surround the barn in a cloud of frankincense,
lubricate his small limbs with myrr
for the sleep of
the peacemakers,
for they are blessed.

CAR 12-28-01

*Poem: "Paul Newman at the Dodge"*

This is my latest, and a work in progress (aren't they all?) Suggestions and feedback would be much appreciated-- CAR

Paul Newman at the Dodge

At the poetry festival, passing from tent to tent,
no umbrella, my sister calls.
Without cellphones, we'd have no news at all.
This morning she says Paul Newman is dead.
I am hardly surprised. We media mavens
saw the telephoto snapshots in the raceway pits--
this spring Paul Newman was gaunt, stooped, unhandsome.

In this antique toy woods occupied by
allied forces of spoken and written,
Paul Newman's death, much as my own,
will be just another writing prompt,
a place for odes to go when nobody's home.

The poets here in their dollar store hefty ponchos,
Ren-fest capes, elbow patched cardigans
will beat Paul Newman's cunning eyes blue,
hang every sentimental maxim they ever read off them,
his long, beefsteak marriage fodder for sonnets,
his carved beauty beside Jackie Gleason's
rotund gentility the stuff haikus are made of.

Didn't we all want to sleep with him?
Or told that we did, obediantly half-believing
until we saw for ourselves.
Drizzle in the woods pecks at the canvas rooves.
My date for the weekend goes off to hear
the academics and their sauntering poses.
Since Paul Newman and I aren't well acquainted,
Paul Newman, to me, is alive as he was last night,
and will be come suppertime.

With so many stars shot from the Hollywood firmament,
it's hard to believe Paul Newman lived this long.
My date and I crawl back to the motel after a day's
bombardment of memoirs, pithy quips, occasional truths,
and out of respect and morbid curiosity,
we turn the TV back on after lights out,
and CNN continues live coverage late into the night
of Paul Newman's death, and nothing changes,
not the photo montage, the few details repeated
in the crawl at the bottom of the screen.

Paul Newman's still dead, same film at eleven,
midnight, one a.m. and fo a moment we
look to each other from separate beds.
I don't know the color of my date's eyes.
His beard fades to red and grey in the morning.

Paul Newman could fuck the camera with those blue eyes.
We kept looking, hoping that perfect god
would descend from the multiplex altar
to fill us with his perfect, blue-eyed dick.
That's what we paid for.
The lengthy panoramas of sagebrush and bus stations
is when we people get to roll over, light up a smoke
(these gods encourage that sort of thing)
or run out to the bathroom, for popcorn.

The rain at the festival never ends.
There is no more Paul Newman for us to fuck,
but no less than most of us had before.
We blow out of Dodge when the big guns are empty.
We forego free mums, given by the organizers
to help clear the stage they've adorned all weekend.
We're like Butch and Sundance up on that cliff.
Where to from here? There's only one way down.
They, we, always decide to fly.

We like to believe we'll survive the fall, too,
make it to Mexico and the lucky senoritas,
soak up the sunshine and the tequila
under the blue skies over the border.

CAR 10/14/08