The Poetry of Mark Gibbons

warps our reflections

we keep on eating

more or less

drink more

sleep less

pay attention to

the dirty truth

the word success

dancing to the tick

talk of the wind

the prattle chatter

of animal wisdom

a party line

on the food chain

gain-link-saw

slave to the clock

consciousness of all

lost in the march

woods of time

gray blues the jazz

we can’t explain

articulate again

we seal who

we smear chew

those sounds sustained

to complain

make sacred

the profane

and smile when

the glass shatters

cup your hands

sip the dark

light mystery of

breathing in

here again

we still linger

like garlic

or a thorn

ungone

I.

They hang in the dark

corner of a room, three black

duffel bag sized sacks

like giant eggplants, upside down,

wrapped in a woven membrane

like a nylon sock. The face

pressed in the bottom of one pouch,

eyelids closed, is a girl I knew

from high school, her hands

still puffy, clammy & cold.

Though always small in stature,

she is the largest of these

intruders — slick bat-like larvae

who wait with me this night to be born.

Lazily she unfolds her almond eyes.

I can’t decide if she recognizes me.

II.

My mother has come to visit, now

eighty-three. She wears the winter

coat I remember from the fifties,

carries her snap-lock pocket book

over one wrist, & a Kleenex in her hand

that she uses to dab at her nose.

She looks tired & old as she fights

back tears. When I ask what’s wrong,

her voice cracks to a whine.

Her mother’s gone. She watched

her die. Slowly & gently

I pull her into me, hold her softly

& rub her back. I kiss her hair

to soothe us, to open our eyes,

so we can bear the uncertainty

of form — our ongoing metamorphosis.

Photo of Susan Carlson’s collage art piece “Gone to the Birds”

cemeteries and ghost towns

abandoned buildings

the dilapidated evidence

of lives lived and gone

broken glass and missing doors

some swollen and jammed

to the floor

the rank smells

of mildew and stink pigs blend

like ant hills littered

with larch needles and rat shit

mounding along the baseboards

below the gaping chimney flue

a yellowed-stiff pile

of catalogs and magazines

have welded

over time

the outline of a cabinet

torn-down scars one wall

another is scrawled with F-U-C-K

in all caps

and illustrated

with a scratch-drawn cock and balls

one tube sock lies on the floor

of a dim bedroom

the windows boarded-up

a single cot-spring

rusted to a metal foot-board

the wood-grain face

pierced by three bullet holes

and hung in the wall by one leg

punched through beaver board

out back the old wood shed

stands dramatically close

a frayed rope still hanging

from a rafter inside

and a broken claw hammer

lies half-buried in weeds

beside the railroad tie stoop

the outhouse a one-holer

has lost its roof and reek

the Hills Brothers coffee can

holds no spare roll

no one shits here anymore

one story has it

the young woman drown

bathing in the Clark Fork River

pregnant with her third

it didn’t take her husband

a full year to follow her

off the Rock Creek Road

everyone knew he’d drown

in a bottle

the girls were farmed out to

next-of-kin in the Midwest

taken in like little birds

fallen

from the nest

but who knows

these headstones

are almost a hundred years old

so it must be

a fairly safe bet

the daughters are gone now too

—inspired by Susan Carlson’s “Gone to the Birds”

Red light flashes right

White light flashes left

A buoy bell clangs

Out in the darkness

Somewhere in between

The surf roars breaking

Against the rocks below

And underneath this constant

Percussive Maine song

Evening crickets fiddle along

While Polaris directs

This coastal symphony

And the Milky Way assures

All foreigners they are

Welcome here as home

—for Aunt Pam

Young lady, Luna

Diane, this shitty gift

of a black-assed poem

upon the birth of your baby

girl, is sadly the best

I think I can do. Of course

my sister wouldn’t agree.

Your grandmother

began parenting

as a teenager, too.

It was what she wanted

to do, raise babies

on slobber and hope.

Now the prevailing wisdom

is to wait until you’re forty.

I believe it is most wise

not to advise, but to live

and let live, empathize,

realize everybody loves,

works, and dies.

My Old Man used to say,

“You can shit me, but

you can’t shit yourself.”

He didn’t believe life

had any meaning, really,

at least not in the crowd

pleasing dogma of the church.

He figured we were here

for no particular reason

we could comprehend,

that our lives mattered

only to us. He was awed

by the miracle of existence.

It was the damnedest thing,

from the Grand Canyon

to the birth canal.

He was a pragmatist,

a self-taught historian

and scientist. He questioned

everything, the devil’s

advocate. Your great-grandfather

was a pain in the ass, a truth

teller who believed in justice

and unions—be fair or fight.

He taught me the best we can do

is take care of each other,

and that’s what mothers do best.

My mother, your mother,

your grandmother, my wife,

all mothers never leave

their children, and fathers

remain long after they’re gone.

That flat-tired bicycle chained to the fence and rusty wheel barrow propped against the side of the house, like me flopped in this plastic lawn chair (though you better believe my wheels are spinning) are going nowhere while chickens cluck and strut, finches chitter and flit, leaves flutter in the breeze while songbirds celebrate this backyard ease of a sunny afternoon accompanied by a neighbor’s table saw whine, the drone of a lawn mower and intermittent automobiles passing by blocks away, all for my ear-pleasure on this feathery Sabbath day-off, Joe Campbell’s heroes riding with me driving (or driving me to ride) these mountains to mole hills, these rumors to lies, Ed’s deer still navigating for me, black bear lounging in my sleeper berth and smoking reefer with coyote both laughing and singing to crow dancing on top of the cab, the noisy bastard can’t get a caw in cross-ways to save his heckled ass, so give it the gas and pass the mustard, Dr. Jekyll, throw another sausage on the fire and let me get back to my dream behind the wheel of basking in the sun, a bookworm beach-bum, Mr. Yesterday’s youngest son sneaking into the Golden Years’ Shuffle-Foot Club without invitation or KKK Trump-the-Nazi affiliation because I’m a white male over sixty and my words are your bonds, you’ll never be free as me, don’t take it personally, equality is an egalitarian myth, rest assured, death cures everything, but nothing can keep up with something and often exceeds anything’s wildest schemes of whatever the lusty-fuck we want we dream, just the basic breath of today, tomorrow’s steam, more of the same keeps turning the wheels down here and way up there in the middle of the air.

Don’t go down

to the edge

of Black Lake, they say

there’s no story

beneath the surface,

no moral midst the chaos

of mud and weeds,

no answers pulled from its depths,

just a mirror of plate glass,

a sheet of black marble,

the pool of nothing

but heartaches for the lost

and dead.

Don’t go down there.

They say it will pull you in

if you try to see

what’s below the reflection. Believe

it’s time to break camp, move

on. Still, the calm, the quiet,

the serenity of night

invites you there, whispers

jump in, home is a space

you know in the dark.

So don’t be frightened

of Black Pond,

it’s the beginning

of Black Falls,

headwaters of this stream

you float and fish,

drink and swim.

That mysterious universe

that underlies the rest of it,

tests the limits

of artistic stimulation.

So what the fuck

is going on here, and

is anyone arrogant enough to answer

that question? The problem

with language is it

assumes comprehension’s

a possibility, that my reading

of your experience

can somehow make it mine.

As much as we try

we cannot get away from ourselves,

there are too many of us—

all connected microscopically

and all uniquely alone.

All in all, all the more reason

to go down to the edge

of Black Lake and listen, watch,

pay attention, maybe sit down and wait,

wait till something happens,

know there’s a reason you’re here.

Don’t be afraid

to test the water,

don’t be afraid to swim or bathe,

do the dead man float,

feel it fully

before you walk away,

take the trail back down

into the valley of death, of people

and shadows, of poems

depressed, following that

familiar well-worn path

back into the breath

of laughter and light.

I fell in love

with the wounded animal

in you. I recognized it

across the room,

and I wanted to hold you,

soothe you, and reassure

myself we’d be

okay as a team.

Which meant a friend

in the fifth grade.

That gauge I used

on everyone I met.

It was part of the initial

size-up, the risk factor

for entering truth.

Sometimes I see it

in someone’s eyes,

sometimes it’s body posture,

or I hear it in their voice,

a surrender, a letting go,

the desire to know

love, another, the other.

We both knew

the exhilarating joy after pain

and how to comfort

the sick, the dying, ourselves.

It starts in the dirt

and is totally present

in animals, but people

never often find the time

until the party’s over.

To have been there

and returned is the metaphor

of Christ, and Christ knows

I came back for you.

—for Pam

Think of it, all

the great poems

we will never read,

the uncollected gems

no one tried to publish

or those groundbreaking

verses submitted to fall

on ears that couldn’t hear

their music or genius

since no one had ever written

it before, smiled at or

applauded the blue

discomforting new,

odd aberrations evoking

miraculous celebrations

that grew into the norm

of the comfortable few,

those modern post-wandering

spontaneous rangfoo

we now crave, that anxious

reach of ghostly poems,

so edgy-honest in their silence

and loss, guaranteed to be

packing their necessary

form—the unsaid, the beautiful,

the queer—a poem.

Dan Lavelle was a poet

with impeccable credentials—

he was a wild-ass Butte rat

bound to a wheel chair

after a mishap behind the wheel

involving speed, involving age

and rage and alcohol, of course.

His curse (our reward) was surviving

the wreck, recovering, incurring,

uncovering, and insuring

slurred speech and immobility

for the rest of his days.

They called it “brain injury.”

He called it “scrambled eggs

and ham—no toast.” Dan had trouble

being taken seriously,

and he was a serious guy

about pulling your leg,

copping a feel, or making you laugh

at yourself. He knew how

seriously funny human beings could be

when they were being seriously human—

did I mention he was a Butte guy?

A working-class knucklehead.

An aficionado of the big mustache,

blood brother to the Hells Angels,

all those post-war, po-boy,

testosterone fueled assholes, outlaw

boomers living fast, dying hard,

and not giving two Helena fucks for

the prudence of governing suits

or the tough talk of John E. Law.

Danny Boy perfected his “Elephant Man”

imitation—don’t laugh. For all

the distractions, his bare-assed

dependence, those shocked glances,

expressions of pity, repressed horror,

and masked disgust at his slump-n-moan,

his drool-n-leer—the eyes

were alive on the stage of his face,

pushing and pulling his heart

across the page like Mick Jagger, Marty

Robbins, Johnny Rotten and Jimmy

Reeves. Dan Lavelle was a poet

who wrote love songs that crooned

desire and despair. No one

struggled to understand him

there—he spoke clearly . . .

he was a man . . . of letters—

well, a sort of “poetry” man,

maybe a little frilly, more

of a “ladies” man, which was

exactly what he wanted to be. Dan

Lavelle was one Hell of a poet—

one mess of a bag-a-bones.

He was a prankster, a pain in the ass

who could make you laugh,

make you cry, a tough little guy,

a fuckin’ Butte rat who lived longer

than he should’ve perhaps (given

the fact that he died and lived

dead too long) but who ain’t guilty of that?

We’re all hangin’ on till the pit comes

for us, that nightmare poison

dawning on our lust. So, Girls, you can

keep your panties on ‘cause

Dan the Man has left the building—

the richest hill on Earth hangs on

for the punch line . . . so sue me,

Danny swallowed a gaggle of toxic geese,

opened the floodgates of the maze,

released the rats to dance with the piper

who plays Blinded by the Light

on blues guitar, growls like Howlin’ Wolf

holdin’ the keys to a ’73 Camero

Super Sport—mag wheels still spinnin’

in the middle of the air, revved up

like a deuce in his Springsteen ear,

the rats are loose tonight in Walkerville

and runnin’ down the mean streets of Butte.