Best Creosote Poems
Talk to me
Creosote poisons
Rattlesnakes bite
And the white bird sings
In the night
There’s a hollow in the night
Following the footsteps
Your eyes are cryptic
You got a shadow over you
I can see your soul
I can see your face
There’s a shadow over you.
Evil is your friend
Circles flat and long
Bring me back to you
There’s a shadow over you
Cooking on the edge of town
Taking children down
You’re all black inside
There’s a shadow over you
You got it all to yourself now
Nothing but ashes
Left to stain the trees
There’s a shadow over you
Black as the night
I can see the circle twisting
As the beer cans hit the ground
There’s a shadow over you
Evil is your friend
You leave them alone
Dead to be found
There’s a shadow over you
Hanging to the ground
Like the shadow on the door
Your soul will be bound to hell
There's a shadow...
Harsh sunlight beats upon the thirsty land
And glares upon the limestone cliffs and sand,
While waves of heat rise shimmering, above
The parched loam where the great saguaros stand.
And perched up high among the spines thereof
There broods in camouflage a mother dove,
Whose eggs lie hidden by her breast, her nest
A knitted niche of neatly-knotted love.
Along the desiccated ground, impressed
By tiny running feet, crisscrossing lest
A predator should see, a rodent’s track
Evinces its unending hungry quest.
Concealed among the stones of brown and black,
Its body hidden stretched along a crack
And waiting, watching for unwary prey,
There lurks a waiting, patient diamondback.
Ephedra, sage and creosote all stray
Along the rims of sere arroyos. They
Succeed in thriving: an exquisite feat
Amid the barren soil and rock-hard clay.
And seemingly unfazed by searing heat,
Up where the mescal trees and heaven meet,
Cicadas make the wasteland throb with sound,
Their many-years’ interment now complete.
The desert’s lush abundance will abound
With form and color rarely elsewhere found --
Throughout one sees the working of that hand
Whose word and wisdom nature will expound.
Back Creek Smells
My nose senses the unseen,
Like a final Act’s scene,
When I arrive near the Bay,
I sense my sinuses are gray,
From inhaling the city.
Fish scents replace the gritty,
Creosote soaked wharves,
Instead of perfumed scarves.
Smelling imitates tasting,
Licking’s like nostrils basting.
Something’s earthy of water,
Meet mother Nature’s father.
The odors of Back Creek,
Have no comfort for the weak,
But a fragrance it has,
If it was music, it would be jazz.
Desert Morning
A stiff little north breeze, still cold from the night, shoves warm condensate into my fists and face from my coffee.
It was good to assemble that coffee.
Then a little weed.
A beautiful new morning sun and sky.
All my senses are awake and acquiring data.
The same thing the quail are doing.
And the coyotes. And some hawks and a snake or two.
Then the sun is warming us and brightening.
The wind changes south, grows a little.
In a Juniper grove surrounded by Joshua Trees.
The Great Basin Rabbitbrush look on fire.
You can smell the rain yonder.
Sweet Creosote!
Sitting on an old rock where the Indians sat.
Waiting for the unfolding.
Waiting for lazy friends to arise.
The Last Spike
Helios orb peers cautiously
with guarded optimism
through cracker-slatted clouds
as Thor's divine implement
shatters the morning stillness with the clap of a sonic boom
Mere mortals assigned Herculean tasks
trill a gospel cadence,
their labors heralded as glistening ribbons stretch yon and hither,
a tribute to their genius
and their genesis
Now, as the celestial cotillion materializes
in the ebony overhang
the spinning Mother bids 'Adieu'
as the last rough-hewn iron phallus
penetrates the porus creosote-drenched flesh
with a tempered satisfaction
known only to Gods.........
And those men who will be.
("Hell On Wheels" final episode)
April and the clocks forward spring,
our cricket practice gets in full swing.
Nets to untangle from their poles,
players to call and enrol.
Gang mowers to grease and oil,
the team kit-bag to disembroil.
Green stained pads to whiten bright,
fixture lists to expedite.
Mend the sight screen's rickety panels,
coax another season from my flannels.
Wash and iron the umpire's coats,
the score-box to creosote.
Tea urns to scour,crockery to rinse and clean..
a team captain's tasks routine,and unseen.
Cricketers good,indifferent,unsung,
across this land in a timeless sport played for fun.
The gravel grinds
Beneath the tires of my car.
Bumpity bumpity bump,
Air rushes under the car
For a split second
Until the old rubber
Hits the pavement once more.
All the houses are behind me now,
The gas station too.
The town is in my rearview,
Fading into the background.
Outside my windows,
There is nothing
But the empty desert
And the scattered creosote.
A snake here,
A jackrabbit there,
My speed slows.
I am in no hurry;
I'm going nowhere in particular.
Just like this road,
This strip of dirt in the sand,
This road that leads
To Nowhere.
In the back of my head, in the garden shed,
I see him as clearly as fresh white paint:
A little boy sat on the creosote floor,
Dragged grazed knees hugged up to his chin,
So familiar, so resonant and never faint.
He shivers and weeps on the wooden ground,
Alone, almost silent, with hardly a sound,
In retreat from a world he cannot understand
That Is ruled and defined by a callused hand.
It's his seventh birthday and a slowing flood
Of mucus and blood flows from swollen lips,
A tooth bares a nerve and a jagged chip,
But the pain means no more than dandelion clocks
Or cuckoo spit; the act alone the gestalt of it.
Some days he would walk for miles,
To see beyond the next hill, around the bend,
Kicking slowly along, his shadow twice his size,
Dwarfing him, tracking him, a passive friend.
Perhaps to find some haven, someone to
Take him in, rescue his heart, and want him;
But strangers, though kindly, approached
With the dusk and it always ended the same way:
"Where do you live?" they would say
And thoroughly drilled, he would quietly reply,
In emotion drained monotone,
His address and number of the telephone,
And they always took him back home.
Some days he would walk for miles,
To sit on the edge of the viaduct,
Perched perilously with nothing to lose,
Dangling feet in small scuffed shoes,
Dropping pebbles and stones to the
Rocks and undergrowth far, far below,
Imagining if he may fall in their stead,
What then would be left to know?
The fall down the stairs snapped his ankle
Like a spindly twig, fractured some ribs,
Dislocated his jaw.
The children's ward, antiseptic and bright,
Young nurses in uniform, starched and white
Were so kind to him, he almost cried, bringing concern
And orange squash and a paper straw.
Sometimes it’s like this when things go wrong,
A scapegoat is needed to blame things on.
People thought him shy, with head bowed low,
Lost in comics and books, lost in himself,
Denying the threat of another blow.
He was not shy, just hiding and biding,
Keeping his head down and trying not to show.
Life is a scoundrel, and time a cohort thief,
Stealing a childhood with no reprieve,
Leaving only the slow burning sense of relief,
That an unpleasant childhood seemed mercifully brief.
the angel on the mantel
comes from an old wagon road
that cuts from desert brush
into the burnished hills
where creosote breaks up and scatters
at the base of the Chiricahuas
where Fort Bowie Calvary slaughtered
Apache braves
where an old cancerous man treks
miles of primitive trail
into the heart of a sacred mountain
for pure white marble, cut into blocks
and stacked
one hundred years ago
to wait for a truck that never came
it's an arduous journey
for a piece of rock
especially
for a man
half-blinded as a little boy
by that first nuclear blast
in that sneak attack on New Mexico
arduous
for a man riddled with cancer
who could be spending his days
easier
"what behooves you to do it?"
"it's something to do while I'm here," he says
"we all need something to do while we're here
even if you're sitting on your couch, watching t.v.
eating potato chips
it's something to do
this is what I enjoy, so this is what I do"
he finds his chunk of marble
it tells him what it's supposed to be
he sculpts the figure
as he sees it
roughly
and really not rough at all
for he feels
more than he sees
and you feel
what he sees
angel on the mantel
do you feel me
You were sharp|ning grass
With your eyes | sit & fixed
Again | a substitute for mow|n
Machine chug|ging along lug
Nuts, molar friction | u - r - n .
Lawn stretches of up|beat
Beach | was there even wind?
Filet a cannonade me | see
The crayons fly | in a circle
A head | towards blu|er | stretches
There | where clouds resemble.
Light is a commodity, scream!
Silly | man | omnibus no teacher
Not even a man. Well still: Lorine
Niedecker e|merges like new
Breath, pulp come together
Mis|hearing cranes, a making
Multicolor wax, bending fuse
Forge |X| fissure for left foot |
Right foot,—we'll find a job a kind
Of game | it’s just planes turned
Paper crane | creosote guardians
A dead lean-to shouldering volts.
Winding lines of cars
Stop and go on black paved roads
Driving down the shore
Bright umbrellas pose
Sitting on a sandy beach
Lolling in the sun
The smell of hot dogs
salty air and creosote
Float in mid-day air
Little children play
building castles made of sand
near a deep blue sea
A delightful book
Floppy hat and Coppertone
Fill a summer day
A red setting sun
Sunburned skin and tires eyes
Tell it's time to leave
Tail lights glowing red
pinned against a blacked sky
Guide the way back home
let us say the summer that year
was a cliché to its lovers.
And its once open windows stood
firm
against Prying Eyes.
Perhaps the silver
smoke of automobiles rose toward the waiting sun that
climbed so eagerly. we didn’t know.
Summer was a witness
A watcher
Tracking our movements, counting our
numbered pulse beats
our Numbered Kisses
—of sweet desert rain
when the creosote bush was thick in the air—
our crimson liquids
moving fast through
the chalks of our skin
And the rouge on your cheek seemed
almost translucent to me
as time itself, sifting between
Hourglasses broken shattered
With memories tainted
stained—
and let us say that Dandelion perfume lingered on our parted lips
—it was pungent, maybe, as the saline tears
where lashes are sieves—
clinging to the pads of our fingers.
our identities
veiled by tiny white seeds
that may,
In the winter (when the sun cracks along its crevices
like melons in the heat),
bury themselves deep into our pores, Waiting
For that last Dandelion seed
to surrender
Boxed in
and filled with sand
like a dry ocean
the towering
creosote soaked pillions
take the form
of an old shipwreck
with riggings, planks
and a captain's wheel.
Paid by the commons
for the children to enjoy.
"Aye scalawags all aboard,"
shouts a portly
pint size scoundrel.
Hence heed the call
and came skipping
from his yard
none other than
six year old Suleiman.
"Halt boy,
There are no black pirates"
says the patched eye
little thug
within ear shot
of his parents.
Keeping the world of thievery
squarely in the domain
of whitey.
The tent of Autumn is wet,
Nights as dark as creosote,
Days that fall like
Mother apples which bruise
With cold sweetness.
The impending conspiracy of
Frost;Laburnums stripped to
Bare frames, each fox pulled
By the neck into the
Hedgerows.Let go, curled leaf,
You are tired and dragged with sleep,
And can not look the snow away.
Gentle Earth, I beg of you -
Whisper to us the first sign of spring.
Annul this wintry despair
And a season of life anew, bring.
From the depths of Baja
Carry the warmth in upon a draft.
Poke the sunshine through grumbly clouds
And send it down as a gilded shaft.
Clothe the desert with the raiment
Of fleeting sheets of white rain.
Implore the wildflowers that they
Bestow upon us a fantastic display.
Help the button-face of the brittlebush
Peep over the dead, crumpled brush.
Bring forth the canyon penstemon.
Make the Mexican lime cactus flush.
With one quick stroke of rain
Paint the delicate creosote yellow.
Order the Engelmann’s cactus to raise
Their trumpets of fuchsia and blow.
Tempt forth the birds to sing - listen!
I beg, usher March in.