My Problem with Purpose

Take the Weekend Off!

“My” being the key word in the title. Because it’s always about me trying to figure out you, me, and whatever-the-fuck-else I believe is going on. And one of my problems is committing to a vision or purpose long enough to try and manipulate whatever I think I can to help fulfill it, put the old shoulder to the wheel thing, join the team, rah-rah-rah, nose to the grindstone, get to work. Like most of you I’ve done it all my life, but I’ve enjoyed escaping from it more. Haven’t you? Isn’t there a grasshopper inside every ant yearning to fiddle around? All those ants working for the weekend, forty-eight hours of freedom! That’s what art is for me: unknowns, uncertainties. That really resembles life to me. Experiencing it or making it. art celebrates questions and wonder. It transports me somewhere, here and there. It invites me to hear and their, to jump in and go with the flow, “take a trip and never leave the farm” as Jim Stafford sang.

This perspective made it difficult to be an authority on anything other than myself. So it was hard to focus on a career for me, a professional career. The jobs I’ve found the easiest and most rewarding were teaching poetry and moving furniture. Poetry has no rules unless you want them. Poetry is all about you, the writer. The poet runs the show, so all I did was share things I liked, then asked people to write whatever they wanted to write however they wanted to write and then share it with me and others if they wanted to. Pretty sweet gig.

And my bread and butter day-job of moving household goods for twenty years was always new, a different job every day that ended every day, a job that involved problem solving, exercise, communication, and sensitivity. Moving is stressful. I loved making it easy and fun. I remember calmly telling one shipper, a woman who was very anxious about her stuff getting broken (in the voice I’ve used when talking to sick kids or animals) that moving is an act of faith; “Ma’am, it’s out of your control. There’s nothing you can do, so you might as well hope for the best, let go and trust us to do the best we can to make sure your stuff gets there in the same condition it was when we picked it up. That’s our job. our promise to you. We do our best. But sometimes things happen. All you can do is choose to have faith or you can fret and worry. It’s up to you. Either way, it will be what it will be when we get there.” I don’t remember a time when that didn’t help reduce the stress for them and us. But then sometimes I didn’t bother using it with a few shippers who were so stressed they were inconsolable, and a few times I had to walk away—those of you who work in the service industry know those assholes, there is no amount of money that’s worth taking that kind of shit.

HAPPY LABOR DAY ALL YOU GRINDERS!

Quitting Time

I have the gift,
the mind trick,
to be present in the task
at hand, do the job
I've been hired to do—
don't watch the clock
but put my nose to it,
the old grindstone,
dig in, focus and get 'er done . . .

because if I stop
to ponder the possibilities
beyond what is there
in front of me, let my mind
wander, I know it will
bump into the hound
watching me, waiting
for the shift to end, poised
to pounce on my chance
glance in his direction . . .
“So is it time?  Are you ready?
Can we go? Can we play?”

Past experience, heartache
and rage, has taught me:
don't go there, do not answer
nor pay any attention, don't
make eye contact, just
ignore him, don't even listen,
make him sit in the car
like the good dog he is, 
and wait till the day is done.

Then, when he sees me 
coming out the door
and notices the spring 
in my step, the grin 
on my face, he'll leap
and bark and howl.
We'll wrestle and jaw, sing
along to the stereo, crank
down the windows,
feel the release
and exhilaration
of driving away into
our day—that feeling of
freedom—to do nothing 
or anything we want 
now that we're done 
doing for someone else.

Quitting time is the sweetest
part of the day
when I get to play with 
my best friend, 
that shiftless-happy mutt 
inside me, the one
who'll be with me till the end.
He's a smelly black lab 
named “Marky Boy”
who never grows old
nor up and knows me better 
than anyone does. He dotes 
on me: every gesture 
I make, every word I utter, 
and I can count on him
to bring me beer—
he knows what I like—
he simply loves
being with me.

---

These days I still get the opportunity to work with young kids writing poetry, but most of the time I make my own poems whenever I want. That’s the greatest reward of living this long. Here are a couple inspired by other artists, the first, Gone, was written after seeing local artist Susan Carlson’s piece, Gone to the Birds, which transported me to all the abandoned shacks my dad loved to explore across the west and reminded me of stories from the past. Images, colors, collage art can trigger a story that never and always existed. That’s the power of art.

Gone
 
cemeteries and ghost towns
abandoned buildings
the dilapidated evidence
of lives lived and gone

broken glass and missing doors
some swollen and jammed 
to the floor  
                   the rank smells
of mildew and stink pigs blend
like ant hills littered
with larch needles and rat shit  
mounding along the baseboards 

below the gaping chimney flue 
a yellowed-stiff pile
of catalogs and magazines 
have welded 
                      over time

the outline of a cabinet
torn-down scars one wall
another is scrawled with F-U-C-K 
in all caps 
                 and illustrated 
with a scratch-drawn cock and balls

one tube sock lies on the floor
of a dim bedroom
the windows boarded-up 
a single cot-spring
rusted to a metal foot-board
the wood-grain face
pierced by three bullet holes 
is hung in the wall by one leg 
punched through beaver board

out back the old wood shed 
stands dramatically close
a frayed rope still hanging 
from a rafter inside 
and a broken claw hammer  
lies half-buried in weeds
beside the railroad tie stoop

the outhouse a one-holer
has lost its roof and reek 
the Hills Brothers coffee can 
holds no spare roll 
no one shits here anymore 

one story has it
the young woman drown 
swimming in the Clark Fork River
pregnant with her third 
it didn't take her husband
a full year to follow her 
off the Rock Creek Road
everyone knew he'd drown
                                             in a bottle
the girls were farmed out to 
next-of-kin in the Midwest 
taken in like little birds
                                         fallen 
from the nest 

but who knows 
                          these headstones
are almost a hundred years old                                              

so it must be 
                      a fairly safe bet
the daughters are gone now too

---

And the following poem arrived while staring at a fence and thinking of Robert Frost’s Mending Wall. I hope something moves you to make something new today, in the way life happens to us fresh every day. We check it out, whatever is in our faces, crack open our baggage, rummage around in there, see what we might find to tiggle-up a gift or two, something for me, something for you. Peace.

The Fence

Frost is here in summer—
the board fence behind my house
dappled by the shadows
of tousled leaves in this late-August 
afternoon breeze calming
in its comforting plaid blanket 
of variegated stains, browns worn 
and faded from weathering years
knocking knots into holes, 
slats cracked enough to peer 
through the gaps into 
the mystery beyond.

Still it stands straight-grained, 
square and well-maintained, obviously 
a quality wood in its day, fir 
I'd guess. But I'm no carpenter,
though I know well-built, 
and Christ knows I am
a Frost fan, that man
who asked what was the point
of building walls—why do  
good fences make good neighbors?

Personally I can identify
with boundaries, the desire 
to crawl inside myself and hide 
until I feel it's the right time 
to open the gate and invite 
my neighbor in to share the fare 
I've prepared, this sustenance 
born of my dark winter-skin 
and kindled warm enough 
to feed someone besides me
the cold beauty 
I've found in fences.

---

This short collection is available from Bottlecap Press as a chapbook or a pdf download. The link is below.

https://bottlecap.press/products/cross-country?variant=49210775830843