A Trip if You Want to Listen to It

And One for Uncle Walt

Last year I reported that Bottlecap Press published a chapbook, Cross-Country, my poetic account of my first cross-country trip: starting in Boston, down to New York City, then over to Chicago across to Seattle. I’d originally written a long poem after the trip, and at a friend’s suggestion, I created a form of seven sections and 28 pages: a chapbook was born.

I’m pitiful at marketing anything, so it came and went quietly. It is still available at bottlecap.press and I have copies, but for the most part it has gone to its rest with the rest of the chapbooks. Since this space is an archive of sorts (at least temporarily) and I have used it to record other poems, I figured this would be a way to honor it and save it. Not that it is going to change anything in your world or mine, but I like it for obvious reasons you’ll understand once you’ve read it or heard it. I’m also doing it just because I can. It’s kind of long-winded, so good luck to all you attentive listeners. I hope there’s a payoff that’s worth it for you.

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Also, here’s a thank-you note to Walt Whitman I wrote last week for some reason I can’t remember, not that we need reasons or recollections about where shit comes from, but Whitman gave us all permission to wing it, and embrace the miracle of this crazy existence, whatever you want to call it, for encouraging to color outside poetic confines and to be who you want to be.

Uncle Walt

Thank you for living and writing what you knew, what you saw, what you felt,
And saying what you had to say fast and furiously, passionately about the world, 
Your world, your experiences, your rogue perceptions which you knew were ours:
Whispers in the closet. Thank you for showing us a new view on the page, a new song 
In the ear burning human at its worst and best,
                                                                                   For inventing a new poetry, a sprawling
American poetry spilling over borders to fill the vastness of us, of this, for singing out
Beyond religious dogma and political strife to write what’s possible past lethal silence, 
Rights and rules, for chasing your heart and hurling words, words, and more words, 
For ignoring the confines of form, for refusing to go back to the old tired and blue trail 
Your forbearers trod before you blew the canon to smithereens.
                                                                                                                 Your American revolt,  
A civil trespass, your attempt to express what the line might hold, how much breath 
Was possible, and how much praise a poem might explore, willing it to suffer 
The colloquial tongue, the private heart of mind and groin exercising its desires Publicly, belting out a pubic song of blood and dust, your naked lust rolling the stench Of death, true to your eye-ear embracing the beauty in taboos. A symphony lying in The weeds, leaves dancing overhead, joining your lover on the ground. Come, push Into, through the aroma of moist soil and the lilt of birdsong! 
                                                                                                            Walt Whitman, you Brought us here to drink, to dance, to dive into the unknown, to be shockingly Unconcerned with convention. Uncle, you taught us to risk, go our own way, and to Know suffering can be freed, freeing, if not relieved, in practice and in print. Hour Upon hour, day and night, you forged your song up to your elbows in blood and gut Piles, amputated limbs, sleeping in the tents of Hell. Your poems tell me there was no Room for judgement in that lair. No one understood how they got there. They were Just there. Eternal damnation accepts all, no questions. The only exit is death. 
How could the unknown be worse for blasphemers, dreamers, or queers? In Hell, 
Cannon fire barely turns your head
                                                               While the countless wounded-dead keep coming 
On stretches, in wagons, legless, afoot, and moaning deaf and blind. There’s no escape 
From a world of agony and horror. By candlelight you wrote your songs invoking Tenderness you found on the bloodiest of days, memories of sunshine and rain, Catalogs of builders working for peace beyond struggle and pain.
                                                                                                                   Walt Whitman, you Painted our landscape and spared no words. You gifted Americans a poetry worthy of Its bombastic vision, breaking English modes and civil codes to free verse, 
                                                                                                                                   To run wild, To wail what the body will, to be what-who you’ll be, 
                                                                                              Lay claim to this wordy mess, 
                                                                                              Confess your reality as poetry. *

Mark Gibbons

*So I’m guessing the long lines are all fuckedup. I hope Walt is smiling in a galaxy far, far away, and still scribbling in pen and pencil.