blue horizon what he doesn't know is why he goes down these roads over and over, why he wants to drive more, keep stumbling out of bed, breathe in, shout about politics, poetry, his plan, watch the minutes fall before him like larch needles, golden beauty: and know truth-- the hour of snow -- will always come sooner, that cold shiver he shrugs off -- driving into the spin of the blue horizon.
My old friend, poet, and publisher, James Jay, called to tell me a week or so back that he had uncovered in his cluttered storeroom some unopened boxes of poems, copies of my second collection he had edited and published, blue horizon. We had both thought the book long gone into the world, proud that it sold itself out but a tad rueful that there were no more copies available for new readers to discover. Being the generous soul that he is, he wanted to know if I'd like him to ship them to me.
CAMELS In an effort to appease my mother, who doesn't know if she likes my poems because they make her sad, & others (including my wife) who wish I'd write more light hearted, love struck, funny poems -- camel fights crossed my mind. Female thighs riding my shoulders, wrapped around my ears, camel toes and pubic bone on the back of my neck, my elbows locked around her knees, we'd do battle in swimming pools or on lawns, bulling & pulling, slapping & laughing till one rider & camel went down, our bones too hard to break . . . until later when the camel tried to jump the rider, mount the rump who'd rode his hump, tear at her bikini (his cut-offs or trunks) reach that oasis he'd been plodding toward for days, weeks, months in the desert. Camels are patient, they know the way to water, how to weather Bedouins, wind storms & blinding sun, finally arrive under B-movie green palm trees, drink slowly from the pool, lie back on the grass, maybe light that famous cigarette, one arm cocked behind their heads, pass it back & forth, lip to lip, suck it down deep like a reefer hit. I smoked a pack of coffin nails a day for ten years, worked with a guy who ate & lumped like a camel, could go all day, never stop to eat, but eventually when he sat down to take on some chow he'd put an all-you-can-eat buffet out of business. Yes, I wish I could ignore my imminent death, nothingness, the way youth & animals do, but the ache in my bones questions tomorrow, all those faces turned to sand.
I mean how many times do you bump into a camel fight/camel toes poem? Right? Poets (some poets) are often fucking insane asses who love to entertain themselves. I felt like a kid at Christmas. I was almost as excited as I was to see them the first time I got the original copies. It was published in 2006. David J. Spear let me use his photograph shot over around Fairfield, Montana, in the '70s, not far from where I taught school for six years in the little town of Augusta, where our two children grew from babies to small kids, where I taught high school English, directed plays, coached basketball and football, and a variety of other things that teachers in small communities were and still are called upon to do (this was in the '80s). But when I wasn't going in forty different directions or trying to check in with my wife and sons, that immense and incredible landscape on the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains grabbed my attention, an expanse of solitude every scribbler craves, those of us who love looking around at shit, all of it, and making a record of that experience. David's photograph captured that place for me, and it included the lure of my previous life (and subsequently my later life, too) in that rearview side mirror, all those trips driving furniture vans and semi trucks across Montana and the west.
WHERE THE SUN NOW STANDS I am tired, ready for a break from wrestling this semi down 155 across the Colville Reservation -- return trip from Canada delivering household goods with my oldest son, Sean. According to the map and my friend, Nespelem is the place Chief Joseph died. So we pull over across from the service station on the edge of town, ask a Norwegian looking Indian in Caterpillar cap, "Is Chief Joseph buried around here?" He wags a thumb north, "Yeah, he's up there in the old Nez Perce cemetery. It ain't far, but you got to walk." Four blocks stretched out the stiffness. Every dog warned us to keep moving down the street toward a rusty, wrought iron archway and barbed wire gate, the entrance To this scabby, clay burial ground. Only rock mounds grow here, many unmarked, and several kid sized. Polished granite headstones identify Indian veterans of foreign wars. No tourist information found at this historic site, just dust, heat and wind. Dead branches overhang a salt-white monument. Did they ever provide shade for Joseph's grave adorned with offerings from the people who stopped and honored his run to breathe free? Sean and me empty our pockets of Canadian coins. My heart is sad; there's nothing to say. I want to be cynical, witty, profound -- but vain words dry in my mouth. My son's leaving for France next month. Joseph lost his children in the Bear Paws and Oklahoma. I believe We can learn from history. Hear me my chiefs: take this bleak story (the momentary joy of hope in a barren land) and make it a prayer for us all -- that someday soon we will fight no more, forever.
The book's title and many poems inside reflect those days behind the wheel. Most of the poems were written after my sons were grown, after I'd gone to graduate school in poetry, and after we'd moved down to Missoula from the Rez. I like the book, I like the poems. I like how Jimbo and Sean Carswell, author of Train Wreck Girl, Drinks for the Little Guy, Madhouse Fog to name a few, also a teacher in southern California, the editor of Razorcake magazine, and old friend of James', designed it from font to covers. I think it’s a beautiful little book, and I feel like the poems are worthy of their dress. I am happy they exist, and if you like the shit I write and don't have a copy of this book, here is your golden opportunity! Send me $20 and your address. You can Venmo me @Mark-Gibbons-37, or you can stuff some bills in an envelope and mail to 2316 Gilbert Ave, Missoula, MT 59802, or if I know where you live, feel free to write me some bad paper.
Outside of that sweet surprise, I am just trying to stay on top of several projects, editing and recording, thinking about adding a podcast to this Substack from all the video interviews I've done over the last year while I was serving as the poet laureate of the state. That time is about up, someone else will soon take over plugging poetry for the next couple years, and I will return to plugging poetry (my own mainly since I have a few manuscripts that need dusting off, and at some point writing a note reflecting on the time I served (sounds like prison or the military when you say it formally like that “the time I served!”). I missed posting the Memorial weekend post I'd planned to deliver. I really don't know how to do all this shit, let alone sell it, the whole tick-talk-insta-crock zippity-social-media-twitter-twat (I love that naughty word “twat” especially out of the mouths of the English/Irish/Scotch) I do not get nor do I want to speed up to it, the noise, the flash, the peek-a-boo gasp of trying to know what's on the mind of every fucker I know every minute of everyone’s show. So, if you want to know what slo-mo marco is up to, I'll check in every week or so here. Finally I’ll leave you with the final poem in blue horizon, dedicated to Dave Thomas, my friend and a true Montana artist, one who grew from this ground and will return to it—and there you go.
watch the watch and here it is and here's the trick and here's the score listen to the ad men the voice of god listen to the television watch the internet spin my fellow americans prey, in god we trust you're getting sleepy sleepy, set your alarm go to work and spend, spend, spend work and spend you're getting sleepy sleepy, watch the watch love to spend, my friends keep working, spending let freedom ring that's good that's right that's a good, good life spend your life working till you die and there it is and there you have it and there you go -- for david e. thomas
And thank you to all of you who can afford to throw a coin or two in my broken guitar case. Peace.
Thanks, Mark...for time served. Your words are somehow comforting and nostalgic and disturbing to this comfortable old woman.