Sister Buffalo
Poems: a Christmas gift.
When it comes to truth telling, Mark Gibbons doesn’t lay it in slant. No one is off the hook, not himself, not the dead, not the living, not even the “goddamned American dream.” Yet Sister Buffalo is neither polemic nor rant. Because Mark Gibbons is a poet of love supreme. In odes, elegies, laments, and hymns, to drag queens and panic attacks, pool halls and dead batteries, from Sam Cooke to Bob Dylan, from Janis Joplin to Wallace Stevens, from Cinderella dreams to Federico Garcia Lorca, he lets that love flow. With dazzling wordplay, borrowed lyrics, and piercing humor, strung across his seemingly effortless poetic line, he reminds us, once again, that “the meaning of life is in the living.”
Dave Caserio author of This Vanishing
This new collection of poems from FootHills Publishing goes back almost a decade. My sister died in 2015 after 30-plus years of Parkinson’s disease. My brother-in-law followed her in less than a year. Donald Trump was elected president. So these poems are a bit dark. There is an edge to this book, but then most of my books probably fill that bill. And with the recent results of the election, Trump’s coming return to the White House, some of it feels like it could have been written yesterday. Some of it reaches into the past, like 1969.
1969 at fifteen fifty years ago I felt a part of an awakening a reckoning of the horrific truth this land of the free was built on murder and slavery we pledged allegiance every day to a bullshit amerikan dream of equality and peace liberty but the real history lesson is about the business of war industrial heels and iron wheels crushing the backs of the poor we the privileged children of the late twentieth century decided we could say no to the old ignorant credo follow orders the rules do what we were told by those protecting a system that believed in bullying to hold onto hypocrisy spoiled by the comforts of prosperity and race we were Easy Riders entertained by Nicholson and Namath the Jets and the Mets our ears on the Nashville Skyline burning draft cards in Navy P-coats and Army fatigues long-haired radicals smelling of burning rope weed smoke wafting the Hollywood Bowl Creedence Clearwater Revival chooglin along down the bayou of my fantasy Woodstock-song in a different reality two men played golf on the moon and Nixon grinned on TV unleashing his plan for peace bombs and napalm for Charlie when Manson started a new religion gave Satan a bearded face a hippie movement to hate The Beatles became a decade of yesterday's firsts at last Altamont speedway crashed the Stones who Let it Bleed as Happiness turned out to be a Warm Gun bang-bang shoot- shooting Elvis to the top back in black I grew my sideburns and fell into reading Richard Brautigan the braille of bra-straps those twin miracles of nipples and nookie at drive-in movies plus whatever booze we could find Too Fast To Live Too Young Too Die I sang along to LP records and AM radio rode the yo-yo swing of everything that year progress and retreat victory and defeat tough lessons for US kids who didn't know shit served ceremony and feared the worst not having a car or plan for the weekend the status quo never wants to let go selfishness just makes sense covering your own ass in an unknown environment a hostile situation one that is tenuous every second the reality of breathing of being alive in a way like cowering under fire in a battle zone at any given moment death may arrive and ask you to leave go to that place we know we don't know the one nobody comes back from the other side of whatever this paradise is and wherever it may be right now is all we can deal with awake or asleep I decided in '69 love seemed to be for me the best response to uncertainty why not Give Peace a Chance
Mark Gibbons has a powerful ethos—political and personal. Images roll past with great velocity and location. Life and energy burst from these lines on all sides, Angry and exuberant and brave, a prayer to nature Warning us of the brutality of history and its deep undertow. Summing up the loved and the lost—reminding us of our duty To get out of bed and speak the truth. Sheryl Noethe, author of Grey Dog, Big Sky and As Is
Contact me at marcogibbo@yahoo.com for signed copies.
Or you may buy copies from FootHills Publishing
https//foothillspublishing.org/mark-gibbons/
Also available at Fact& Fiction Books in Missoula, MT.
The Mountain We are the walking wounded, blow upon blow, day upon day, we cringe, gird, panic, and endure. The grass is greener, of course, until you crest the ridge and tromp through knapweed down to the dry creek bed. For every cool cedar bottom there is the sun-baked hillside of rattlesnakes and scree slides. Groomed trails are hard to find in this bushwhacking life. The best we can do is learn to read the terrain, trust our eyes, know we were lost before we started, breathe into the chest pains, slow down, look around, appreciate the trip, the stumble, the fall. Listen, smell, maybe chant or sing. Those storm clouds will rain before darkness descends.