Households unhitch, clapperboard hulls creaking -
the sound of storm-lashed rigging, as washing lines
and telephone wires twist
netting loosening foundations.
Where we once believed roots gripped bedrock,
planks bob in the swell, chests and their drawers
billow and fill.
Bed-springs gape, cupboards
turn inside out, what surfaces
is the face-up exposure
of our everyday innards.
Even as mailboxes are torn away,
we refuse to believe that a river and some wind
could move our lives so a far afield,
or that this world was really in fact,
just this shipwreck on a shore
that is always moving.
What we once thought of
as an address,
has turned out to be only a buoy
on an ever-moving wave.
Romancing the silver screen
Setting a million hearts ablaze
Through amorous dreams
Of actors lost in
Love, desire and longing
A make-believe that entertains
Takes us on flights of fantasy
With a clap of the clapperboard
A professional obligation begins
That ends with wrapping up the scene.
Rolling clouds over rolling hills.
Kentucky is winding it roads out in endless curves.
No hurry,
this journey drives me
through its curling landscape
as a self-reading picture book of racial memories.
Born in a far way place, I feel rooted now
to these unfolding boonies and hollers,
backwoods and backroad, places
that speak to my very bones.
A small town ahead, a clapperboard store
a gas station and a 7-11. Despite being modern
they have that tumbledown structure
that is native to these rural backwaters.
The shanty tilt of well-worn porches,
dusty front yards flagged with
the fading banners of old glory.
The sun will be going down soon,
I'm driving slow, meandering into a history
I recognize as my own.
The fields are threaded with deer
as evening paints the gleaming creeks gold.
I'm told
that perfection is a pocketsize piece of scenery
no one has discovered yet,
a place just right, one just now
appearing as my memorable soul.
The edge of town arrives quickly,
one last suburban tract,
one last inflatable swimming pool
then over the only hill around here,
after which an oatmeal wash of savanna
surfs over the blacktop.
There are many left turns ahead,
but when you discover a beat-up clapperboard
hanging over cotton brush
you’ll know you have attained warp speed.
Turn sharply down a hollow crick road
where pent-up pockets of sunlight
bud in the thickets, keep on
until you see ahead the land leaking into the sky.
No matter how many times you take this drive
you‘ll feel that you have only just now escaped
a story that will always end right here.
Dark brier grow thick in Cleveland,
thorny tendrils thrive.
Clapperboard homes slack and linger,
neglected yards grow thin grey bones.
A vaporous wave passed over Lake Erie.
None noticed the lightless seeds in the sunlight,
but little girls went missing.
Whole neighborhoods searched other places
no one thought the monster hid among them.
Detective Puccini grinds his jaw behind the wheel
of an old Cadillac.
Red cracked leather creaks as he reaches
for a brown-bagged vodka bottle.
He knows the girls are near;
at night as he sleeps, he hears them,
they cry for help under their breath
least their captor overhear.
Today Puccini takes out
a sledgehammer from the trunk of his car
he's intends to tear down any dark-eyed house
until one fine day
he hears the girls again.
~~~~~~~~
https://abcnews.go.com/US/cleveland...-berry-gina-dejesus-journey/story?id=67858538
the edge of town arrives quickly
you hang an inscrutable left
only to discover
one beat-up clapperboard hulk
hanging over tall corn
as if time and land-wrecked it
or
you drive to the end of
a suburban tract
and while waiting for the lights
a blue wash of sky
paints out
the last inflatable swimming pool
the land becomes a swampy hollow
prone by a basking river
treads gets sticky
in pent up pockets of tarry sun
needles of flinty light
glitter the blacktops
the road has dropped you
beyond the town limits
now miles fly straight
bending only to the whims
of natural inclinations
the prim madam inside
your G.P.S.
takes a long nap
turning to your wife
or dog
you smile
acknowledging
that the edge of town
has once again been shattered
It’s the elephant,
the huge shadow,
the gray bulk of gray in the room,
and it’s such a small threadbare room,
four bunks deep
barely five feet wide.
Wood lice are eating a cheap village fiddle,
it was discarded in the rush
to meet this moment at the end of the tracks;
for many the ride ends in open iron doors,
but here clapperboard hatchways yawn
and close,
and those that go out and return
shelter no thoughts of steps taken
without instruction.
The musician in the spotlight
could not have known any of this,
for her an elephant is beautiful
and perfect as it is.
yet she cried at the rehearsal
when her lips were scratched
by these fretful notes.
I am watching the video,
orchestra and audience;
seeing the camera scan
faces caught off guard.
Everyone is leaning
into a memory
where violins were once
as common as handkerchiefs,
rags used to blot and dab
at sadness,
but this music is a river
that will not dry up.
Only the bored taxi drivers
outside the concert hall
happily leave this repository
of anguished beauty.
For those going home
there are prayers
and perhaps tears for the tears
that did not fall
when they should have.
The edge of town arrives quickly, one last suburban tract,
one last inflatable swimming pool then a blue wash of sky
surfs over the blacktop.
There are many left turns ahead, but when you discover
a beat-up clapperboard hanging over cotton brush
you’ll know you have attained warp speed.
Keep left, turn down a hollow crick road where pent-up
pockets of sunlight bud in the thickets, keep on
until you see ahead the land leaking into the Mississippi.
No matter how many times you take this drive
you‘ll feel that you have only just now escaped
a story that will always end right here.
the edge of town arrives quickly.
You hang an inscrutable left
only to discover
one beat-up clapperboard hulk
hanging over tall corn
as if land-wrecked.
or
you drive to the end of
a suburban tract
and while waiting for the lights
a blue wash of sky
paints out
the last inflatable swimming pool.
The land becomes a swampy hollow
prone beside a basking river.
Treads gets sticky
in pent up pockets of sun.
Needles of light
litter the blacktop.
The road has dropped you
beyond the town limits,
now miles, tick-off yawns.
The prim madam inside
your G.P.S.
takes a long nap.
Turning to your wife
or dog
you smile, acknowledging
that the edge of town
has once again been shattered.
I am blinded by her image,
A lone sainted visitation,
Marching on the snow swept steppes,
A ghost in isolation.
I glimpse a tribal statuette,
On white-gold desert plain;
A stallion black as ebony,
A charge of love and pain.
As celluloid flaps off the reel,
Like batwings in a dream,
The tearful burn of incinerate
Engulfs the dying screen.
Murdered in the cheap seats,
Oh, my weeping heart be still;
Impaled on silver nitrate shafts,
Such radiance drains the will.
The film has died a death,
Yet down remains the light,
And embers sear the filter
In the clapperboard of night.
Though succumbed to reality's plague,
Fading in the neon spill,
In my mirror image eyes of love
Her vision lives on still...
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