Johnny Meyers

My friend
John Ryan Dobbs,
an air traffic
controller,
says pilots are
the only truly
happy people.
If they get
some time
in the air
then that is
all they need.
They don’t make
mistakes
he says.

I knew a kid
in high school,
Johnny Meyers,
who, though he
was small, had
bigger, more precise
dreams than anybody.

He loved planes.
He always had.
There was never
any doubt.
He wore a
newsboy cap and
an olive green
jacket with
golden wings
pinned to
the pocket.
When a plane
passed over
he’d stop the
conversation,
stare up
and name it.

Johnny had a
high voice and
it seemed like
puberty would
never happen
to him.

Presumably
puberty could
and did happen
to Johnny
but I like to
think he escaped
the pickling
and souring
of growing up.
Sure, Johnny could be
drinking Milwaukee’s
Best in a Ramada Inn
in Amarillo, Texas
alone right now
but I like
to think that
today Johnny Meyers
is up in some sky
somewhere

happy.

Jim Carroll

Sprinting across the hot tar of a rooftop in Alphabet City
the red wings of his sneakers push and lift
and he goes soaring out of his own body
into a sky of flame. This is a city of war.

My Friend Chip's Spiral Notebook

He wrote from bell to bell
at the black lab tables in
the back of Mr. Kegley's room,
so many words and still adding more.

Mrs. Moutvic hung a gallery
of his work on the art room wall;
etchings of space stations,
cyborgs, intergalactic derelicts.

He asked me to write a movie
with him about Vietnam.
We split it down the middle.
I wrote the first half, him the second.

Mine followed the rules:
I got into scenes late and ended them early.
I showed and didn't tell. The pages
were clean and properly formatted.

His looked like a homeless man's
autobiography: wild manes where pages
been torn out, rambling monologues,
a vision of a mushroom cloud.

Garf, who was Chip in a wig, sun-
glasses and a Beach Boys baseball hat,
stopped an atomic bomb with
the sound waves of his guitar.

We should have made that movie.

Juan Ramon Jimenez wrote

        Music-
a naked woman
running mad through the pure night!

Although I would say this
       
        Woman-
a naked music
running mad through the pure night!
 

Procrasturbation

It is exhausting
All this work
I'm not doing!

Sheepfold Superimposed Over Garden

How to levitate:
                            crawl yourself
                                                     beneath new sunset
floorboards, candles,
                                  wormwood.
                                                       There were iconic stones
piled out there,
                             but they fell.

Put forth
               new accidents:
                                        a fire climbs up your sleeve.

Pep rallies
                     in the bloodstream.
                                                     Aortic ticker tape
and periodic baritone
                                    of young campfires.

Shakespeare gives a thumbs up
                                                       from the side
                                                                            of a beer bottle.
                               
No spine,
                 no ribs,
                              no function.
                                                   Assorted cookies
and danish.
                    Everybody learns
                                                  to hate
                                                                to be
their father/mother.
                                 A brother pins you
                                                                 to the dirt
and dangles a worm
               
                                   in your face.
Sorry.

            Lost without conversation.
                                                           Vivid
the contours
                      of the lucky terrors       you survived,

your house burning down,
                                            a windswept meadow
of fire.  This fire
                            stored
                                         in a compartment
of the mind
                     visited by the page.
                                                     Everybody learns
to drink.

The cities hold fantasies
                                         which will never involve us.
Life is a series of defeats
                                           and learning to be
a good sport
                       about it.

               You will never
                                         smell the bouquets
of the finest women.

The week snaps
                              back around.
                                                                     Snivel.
            But there is a road
                                           that can never be filled.

The road is waiting,
                                                                     empty,
for your legs.
                                          A scribbled river winds
through itself,

each drop wandering
                                   down the highway
                                                                  of the whole.
The cities run on.
                                                                  
                               The cities.

A Winter Evening

Translated from the German of George Trakl

When the snow against the window falls,
Long the evening bell rings,
For many is the table prepared
And the house is well-stocked.

Many on their wanderings
Come to the gate on dark paths.
Golden blooms the tree of Grace
Out of the earth's cool sap.

The wanderer quietly steps inside;
The threshold was swollen with pain.
There, glazed in pure radiance
on the table, Bread and Wine.