Ulysses Comes to Mind

1980: A Year of Hell

Lee Nye photo on cover

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James Joyce’s Ulysses chronicles a day in the life of Leopold Bloom and company exhaustively, the way the mind works constantly noting, digressing, backpedaling, and just generally obsessing and running off at the mouth. It’s that stream of consciousness process that is a fun way of writing a poem, and I suppose one could make a case for Ulysses being the longest prose poem ever composed.

So, I started writing a poem today along those lines and wondered how I might weave it into a Substack post. A prominent theme in the poem is death (when isn’t it a prominent theme, particularly in one of my fucking poems?) which made me think of what a good friend has gone through in the last few months. And that reminded me of his earlier brush with his mortality when the grim reaper reached out to him and whispered, “maybe it’s time.” At that time I was moved to write this poem published in my first FootHills Publishing collection, Forgotten Dreams, 2012, entitled “Keep On.”

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KEEP ON

I’m worried about you
Which means I’m worried about me
I’m worried     I’m afraid
We will disappear
Flash down that trap door
Or grow old unsure     make that blind
Long walk to the electric chair
It isn’t fair     the sun
Poisoning you at thirty-nine
Knives hacking at your mask
The inevitable crawling inside
Like Carver     like Hugo
You lived high and wide
Chicago shoulders to the wheel
A steely medium weight contender 
Plowing     bulling     a bullet-headed grinder
Cutting through the spin
Of Exxon’s Lily snake oil 
Salesmen     those shiny distractions
The sound from our throats
A dormant Godworm sleeping 
Burrowing into the night we all hold
That universe we’ve forgotten
Those secrets we’re dying to know 
So we cling to our scars     young
Lions     we sing and fight
Whiskey wrestlers bleeding
Tonight’s the Night
Hey hey     Shaky
My my     Mongo Jay
The undercards     the true bards 
Will never dive     will never cave
It’s better to punch out standing
Let your howling words rave
Hey hey     just say what’s on your mind
But never lie
My my     little brother
Hey hey     big guy     keep speakin’ your rock
Rollin’ hearts can never die
Dig in     let go     push on     assume 
You know all that exists 
Now is you     now is me
Neal Cassidy rollin’ down Route 66
Neil Young’s crazy rockin’ horse guitar  
Melancholy as me in the free world
My my     your eyes meet the sunrise
Count the score today     hey hey  
I want to love you more than Andre the Giant
But Dick the Bruiser blows me away
Like our collective minds on the page
Your sly Bly haiku dancing me through sage
Swimming with the dogs
In an icy high mountain lake
Symbolic perceptions I keep
Trying to define     to reclaim 
To conceptualize and vocalize into meaning 
Some way to stop this silly seriousness     time 
My young Powderfingered Brando friend
Time to open your mouth and sing
Open up the Tired Eyes     keep on rockin’    
Shockin’     Like a Hurricane 
Like a Prairie Wind blowin’ me away
Somewhere sacred on a mesa
Where the Camphorweed sways
Where tumbleweeds roll and Creosote grows
Keep on dreamin’    my friend
Cataloguin’ Kerouac’s spontaneous scroll
Loggin’ your Lorca inspired Whitman tomes
Refrains the Ginz would’ve cut off his beard for
Beat-hot blisters and cacti lyrics
Rattlin’ scorpions loose on the free world
Please Man     call me if you can
‘Cause I’m worried about you
Which means I’m worried about me
I’m worried     I’m afraid
The record’s done played    your song is sung
They’re putting the albums away
And I’m afraid I’m a fraud
A mock rocker in my mind
I’m afraid you’re fading away
Leaving me behind     Patsy Cline gone
Tell me I’m wrong
Tell me your fire is rust
Tell me to keep on keepin’ on
I don’t want to stop rockin’ 
Don’t want to stop talkin’ 
I guess I’m just afraid of stoppin’
I’m afraid of losin’ the beat
Afraid of losin’ my ear    the air
That thunder charged ionic
Rarified air     plugged into the motion
The notion of being here     and not
Scared about losing tomorrow 
The next hour or next year
I want you to promise me you’ll be
Here in this poem till I’m gone
So I can come back to your heart
Come back to your songs
The U.S Department of Poetry
Anytime I want     anytime I need
Your help to keep on keepin’ on
When the shitstorm rolls in
And the rock won’t roll my way
You’ll be here helping me embrace the day
Holding fast to the deer’s twitching ears
At first light     that Guinness poured slow
And sipped with delight     the bell to start
The last round of that championship 
Fight     and know today 
That at least not here     not now
Not on this page will I be afraid 
Of losin’ you or me     or anything today 
Because today you’re with me
And I’m free to let ‘er rip     free to tear it up
Today I can really love     my friend 
You know love and only love will endure  
. . . Keep on rockin’ in the free world

	—for JimBo Jay & Neil Young

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And being easily distracted by the bloom of this abso-fucking-lutely beautiful June day, I stumbled upon this poem in the same collection about another beautiful day mirrored at another time of year on the cusp of change, “Indian Summer.”

INDIAN SUMMER

the kind of day
that’s so clear
you can see the color
of God’s eyes shining 
through waving treetops
a striking lucidity
flashing branches & tails 
where jerky squirrels chatter
& ratty crows mumble
like muttering old men  
coughing up
cat calls & chicken talk
spasmodic songs
full-bodied contortions
in your skunk dug yard 

a pair of eagles circle
around a whistling osprey
& the not-so-fat cat snores
curled sunny in tall grass
by the rhubarb alley 
hound dogs whelp out a duet
yodeling jailhouse blues
from separate pens
blocks apart & sluggish 
bald faced hornets 
consider you ain’t nothin’
drowning in beer

red tumbles yellow 
in the blue fall breeze
& our green scribe 
eyes this sweet summer lie
youth wanting to articulate age
hope & fear counting on next year
trying to make sense of grubs
love worms & death 
science poetry TV or meth 
trying to communicate 
what he thinks he knows 
what he sees & believes
that this is it 
& damn ain’t it grand 
on days like this

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And after hearing that my old pal, James, got the all-clear report on his most recent cancer gag-gift from Old Nick, that greedy fucking escort to the great beyond, it seemed like today was a damn-grand hooray worth celebrating on a day like this!

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Summer is almost here, so I’ll share this ode to the joy of it written with kids I worked with in the Missoula Writing Collaborative summer camp years ago. It’s included in my forthcoming book, Word Salad, due out next month (more details on that soon) “Ode to Summer.”

Ode to Summer

Green
you please me
like the sun
deep in my bones

Squirrels flit
the Yellow Pine boughs
shading my knees

Scribbling
I watch their eyes
flick & stare
dancing around
following sounds

Small hands 
hesitate
think
undulate
then dig in 
pushing pens
pause, eyes
look again, and . . .

I write, too
letting go of them
because
it's summer
and we are 
writers
outside
taking it in
it's time to be
time to begin

Sweet summer
so easy
to breathe

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On that joyous note, let me shit a little bit on the flip side of it, all that easy breathing joy, in the following poem which wound up bouncing around in 1980, generated by photos and objects cluttering my space. 1980 was a pivotal year for us (cuz I’m not alone, have been joined at the soul to the same person since 1970). We died with so many others that year and somehow lived to tell about it. Life and death, the mystery of this trip. We take it all in blinking in slack-jawed awe and call it love. Keep on spreading the love!

Ulysses Comes to Mind

This June Gibbons-Blooms-Day
Brubeck playing the soundtrack
To this greenSpring morning
Contemplating howWhat to play
Or who to say it like Magic Annie
With pen and ink my last trip
On that finalSlow freight train
Heading back east post-St. Patrick's
Day when the Milwaukee Road died
Then pulled up spikes and rails
Two months before St. Helen's blew
And dusted us all as ashOutlaws
Masked and stunned by ch-ch-change
forming beyond drugs and booze
Disappearing Blues hauled our asses
To BozoU to study film production
Broke on stools in the Crystal Robin
Teetering in the Rockin' R drunk
Cowboys cheer Ronnie Reagan before
Whiskey pissing on the kitchen floor
An unordered six-o'clock wake-up call
Ringing in the desert of a tequila dream
Hangover announces Brother Bear died
Last night killed as a highway sign
When the bars close the nightmare cries
That dayYear of 1980 hour upon hour 
One shitstorm after another heartbreak
AndFear the futility of resisting change
Hallucinations turn darkly ragged as
The skull and crossedBones of death
A need to regroup and bury the bear
Dig in the earth go to work roll away
Unstoned long enough to return home
In the December of this daymareYear
For the assassination of Dear John
The night the wheels came off Dakota
What looked like dusk at the end time
Was simply a new dawn of mourning
As the oldFolks used to say itWasn't
The first day the music died so grow
Some skin and getUsed to the day 
It's past time to giveUp and giveIn
The bastards always win in the end
So who the fuck knows anything about
OddsOrEnds they say Gibbons-Blooms-
Day must come to anEnd but what might
Tomorrow bring a pint of Paddy an eagle
In a cottonwood snag some heartRock
A whitetailBuck in velvet grazing green
June grass or the discovery of St. Helen's
Ash crusted in the rocky ground of Jumbo
From forty-six years ago another day
In the life of a centuriesOld dream 
That never dissipates the mystery of this
Existing for a millisecond of geologic time
Day in the life Ulysses comes to mind