Michael Rothenberg

Bourbon straight out of the bottle
before I go to bed
Who could tell you better
what love is really like?

I don’t remember

It was a burn in my chest
and a physical wish
Made my jaws tingle
and kicked my ass in the morning

Rubber Jim, Shady Lady
High Buck, Saw Buck
Duck Walk, Calamity Rose

Falling apart all over you

Stumbling around in a hazmat suit
Shoelaces tied together
I walked home from the disposable China factory
singing “Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands”

“Fancy that,” she said, “You’ve learned
to speak in whole sentences,
most of the time”

And she was right, most of the time
She was the smartest one in the family
When she wasn’t crying about how cruel life is
and how none of it ever comes easy

“Oh, you’re a fine judge of character
But your stepping on my toes,” I said
“and making my plantar fasciitis bleed
Ease up some and let the good times roll…”

But she didn’t, she couldn’t
She was a Catholic and so was her mother
Beer was her divine grace and eternal covenant
So she cried and cried, drank and cried
Not that all Catholics do
But you can imagine

Rubber Jim, Shady Lady
High Buck, Saw Buck
Duck Walk, Calamity Rose

Falling apart all over you

I regret I never became a superstar
I was always too shy for that
Suffering from low blue self-esteem
or false humility, I’m not certain…

I’d lie in bed in the dark any time of the day,
tired of the world and Moses
Great things are for great people, I’d moan
Modest contemplation deserves a reward
and should always get it…

“You have to work it”
The movers and shakers like to say
“Enter the system, come to a meeting”
How, exactly, do you “work it”?
“Work it like you’re worth it”

Give me my own distillery, I thought, I’ll do it myself
Besides why do I need a middle-man
“That flower is bootiful all in itself, ” I said
And drank myself unconscious

Bourbon straight out of the bottle
before I go to bed
Who could tell you better
what love is really like?

She wants to know if I am pro Muslim
Why not pro Muslim?
Of course, I am pro Muslim!
Hugely pro Muslim
Pro Muslim like my life depends upon it
And while I am at it
I am pro Jew, pro Christian,
pro Buddhist, pro Fish, pro Swan,
pro Rose, pro Daffodil, pro Biotics,
pro Sun, pro Sky, pro Moon,
pro Trout, pro Limpkin
Pro Marmalade, pro Peanut Butter,
pro Volone, pro Cheddar
and pro Poetry!
Have you a got a problem with that?

There will be queens, presidents, laureates and slaves
Cicada and a calamity of brass bells in a chorus
at 2 a.m., when the shadows stretch and bend
across the heavy doors of the spirit swollen church

Poets from Paris, Sacramento and Kuala Lumpur
will begin a serenade, take on a puppet Broadway,
a stoned choreography in the piazza,
while children in pajamas crawl out on moonlit balconies,
watch through curtains of night-drying laundry,
dripping blouses and large pink underwear,
the dance and fermentation of the spoken word . . .

There will be a quake, a mutant rhyme, a seagull cry
Then change will come

A breeze from the broad blue Tyrrhenian Sea
The resurrection of green with every lava-buried breath,
disabling cobble and utopian abbracci

It will come
The change

And then the children will go back to bed
The police will never say a word
The clock will unwind and all the poets of the world
will march in celebration of another broken law
Another pantomime of insurrection.

Yesterday, we went to Wakulla Springs
One of the largest and deepest
freshwater springs in the world
We took a ride on a pontoon boat
down the crystal clear Wakulla River
Alligators sunned on the riverbanks
Turtles basked in shiny colonies on dead wood
Manatees grazed in the eel grass
I felt like I was floating on a dream
I want to go back to Wakulla right away
There were birds everywhere
All kinds of tropical type birds
White ones and blue ones, striped ones
Ones with red beaks, sleek black ones
Snake necked Anhingas drying their wings
Snowy egrets. White Ibis, Teal and Moorhen

Bald cypress stood like sentinels in the river
Trunks webbed like the flying buttress
on a gothic cathedral drenched
in Spanish Moss, pocked by centuries
Bulrushes and white spider lilies
Big yellow Swallowtail butterflies
Great Blue and Little Blue Heron
Turkey vultures and Common Mergansers
All kinds and colors of damselflies
and iridescent dragonflies
Purple Gallinules. Suwannee cooters
Snapping turtles. Bony alligator gar
and schools of fat striped mullet
We didn’t even get to see
the White-Tailed deer, or Wild turkey,
the Bald eagles or Osprey,
the North American river otter
or those noisy Apple snail eating Limpkins,
but they’re supposed to be there,
most of the time. So I want to go back!
They say, when the river is really clear,
you can see the fossilized remains
of a mastodon resting on the river bottom.