Six Poems by J.C. Creasy
Bebop Line
I
would not feign when sleeping felt
doggéd,
stiff & still
where dreams
go fleeting,
that alone your
myopic citizen
dragged its heavy
load –
O I bore the difference
my ease
delighting you,
forbearing.
Tin wash of piano
purring,
rising in smoke
off subterranean
barstools,
mantels of
re(sub/di)vision
Bwah waah waaaahhh
go the trumpets’
sounds,
each metallic
indecision
mapped out across
the cries of centuries,
reminding that to
love
is really just to
hold on to ,
expectant –
convinced of the
very joy of life.
My Image As Astroff
Cicadas
in that wood grow dim, silent
with
setting autumn, September in Europe,
&
the fecundity of peasant song.
I lie
somewhere on the outside.
With
axe, spade & handfuls of Time,
happily
I set out again for the wood.
&
though the song’s still & quiet there,
rustles
of leaves recall her breath.
That
sweet, soft music of pity.
Sonata
of bramble under timid fingers.
Somewhere
she sits & needles Fate –
high
moon full as lips gently pressed, passing
the
long, narrow road leading down to the river
where
– nightly – I set a little phrase to the wind.
California Poets
for
Jeffers, Blaser, Spicer, Duncan &c
‘can
you really think of any California
poets?’
came a
question before dinner,
after whiskey,
between
waking & sleeping & dreams –
Can
you imagine mystic reality
founded solid
as
creaking metal, asphalt
sweeping,
red-golden bridges below
treacherous ((read: beautiful))
mountains
of San Francisco –
Giles
& I drove all night, from Berkeley
to Oakland,
back
through that great, grating city,
home of just one other such lost love –
Williams
said we are different here
because – of necessity –
we face East & Orient.
Behind
the wheel driving drunk
on
wine & poetry,
words impossible to pronounce across
accent
or upbringing –
&
thought of a life together with these men.
‘Can
you really think of any California
poets?’
Living
calls up their image, their voices in dreams,
& cannot
bury them.
The Whaleships
I have
been thinking about the whaleships.
Microcosmic
engines of industry.
900
ships sailed the watery world
&
almost all of them American –
all
buried beneath the waves of our history,
emblems
of a frenetic century.
Imagine
the boy of fourteen,
his
hands caked in old blood, only
ever
washed clean by salt-sea & new blood,
away
from the shore he knew so briefly
for
four years when he might return a man.
If he
does not jump ship
at
Tahiti to take his chances with
the
cannibals, becomes jail-breaker &
jumps
another whaler – this time Australian,
to
serve out his weary time on pennies a day.
Hand
to mouth to harpoon in the whaleboat.
See
the night-watchman at Nantucket when
first
he spies the fire from the tryworks
a few
miles off the coast. He forgets for
a
moment his unfaithful wife, his son
long
dead, & the questions which nightly
he
asks the lightly drumming rain.
The
ember nears or recedes on the seas of time,
every
man in his Pequod, his Essex–
each
our own little country carved out & industrious.
The
watchman turns a corner, disappears
into
dust & midnight, all once again
father,
husband, sailor.
He
taps a bit of ash from a hand-rolled
cigarette,
sets his eyes toward morning,
humming
soft blue tunes to eternity.
Blue Piano
tonight O’hara smiles.
& Monk plays Duke –
so sweetly.
churning, she turns
to one side & kisses
the inside of nowhere.
those lips a symphony,
impossibly accomplished –
an Art of knowing.
growing calm,
eyes more pools than
waves once thundering.
Napoleonic stone
translates my language
to you completely.
tonight O’hara smiles.
& Monk plays Duke –
so sweetly.
Organ Cycle
I
How
you happen here, still
such a
complex of occasions as
naturally
you’ve
come to be.
Proud in imagined history,
waking
light, walk here within the spirit
of our
dream;
each
time the product is the same,
though
the craft & method changes.
II
You
wrote a letter to the end of time,
distopic
now the mind
that
wanders for only the sake
of its
forward motion,
turned
over as thought & dream &
the
process behind circumstance,
bristled
brush of wire
flecks
out paint poured general
in
field. Mapping out song & time.
III
America
a million miles away,
though
I stand at its center,
& pass
off
the page to the lateral
dimension
it suggests.
Area.
Metric. Mineral.
Limbs
for holding wind
&
the shadow of a dancer.
IV
The
city draws me to its sea
to
make uncommon ritual.
Mile
upon mile of travelled road.
I
cannot mistake one for another,
you
for another. Standing
at the
foot of a great bronze gate.
The
shapes of hell
blazed
on such heavenly matter.