The Holy Grail Press
Proudly Made On Earth By Earthlings
For Susan, as is everything.
The I
and the you
The he
and the she
Are all exactly who
we want them to be
Copyright © 2003, by the Holy Grail Press, Springfield, Missouri.
Copyright © 2023, by the Holy Grail Press, Portland, Oregon.
The Car of My Father
I was raised to believe in Fords.
It was the car of my father,
and his father before him.
He taught me to change the oil
every three thousand miles,
letting every drop of the old
fall from the pan like dirty blood,
before he replaced it
with the thick honey that oozed smoothly
from the hole where he punctured the can,
a small hole above and a larger one below.
He taught me to shine the finish,
turning the chamois again and again,
keeping the old from the new
until the chrome reflected the sun,
like the day my father was handed the keys,
driving home for the first time
with the back seat full of kids.
But one by one we strayed,
my brothers before me,
and then I, too.
Believing in Chevys and Chryslers and Gremlins,
whatever we could afford coming before
all we were taught to believe.
And now I find
that I have become an Automotive Atheist,
teaching my children to believe
in absolutely nothing at all,
except the reliability of a strong battery,
a heater,
and a car that never leaks.
Chocolates
She offered to share her chocolates with me,
as we sat in the frayed webbing of her rusted lawn chairs
on one of the last warm evenings
of what had been an unseasonably cool summer.
I didn’t know which piece to take
because I was afraid of getting one I wouldn’t like,
but having to eat it anyway,
just to be nice.
Not that it mattered,
because all the good pieces were already gone.
She had broken them open
and left the nasty ones
with their gooey pink insides
lying scattered about the box.
So I politely declined.
Cross Country
You really have to have ridden a bus cross country
to understand
that even though the bus is going
from San Diego to Kansas City,
and there really is no reason
to go through Cheyenne, Wyoming,
it does anyway.
And you lose track
of all the towns you go through.
Big towns, little towns.
Some places that aren’t even towns,
just stops on a lonely stretch of darkened highway
where potholes filled with black water
reflect the nothingness of night.
And people come and go.
You lose track of them, too.
Some happy, some sad.
Some trying to wear the opiate mask of disinterest.
All fall into the rhythm
of the concrete seams
that mark off the miles with such blatant disinterest.
Kansas City will come.
And you will give up that window seat
that you weren’t able to grab
until you were well into Utah.
Another bus will be through tomorrow,
and the next day
and every day.
And when they all get to New York,
they turn around and go back again.
Trading Places
It happened this morning.
I was caught by a train,
a slow train, a long train.
And as I sat back in traffic
I watched the businessmen
leave their Lexuses and Mercedes behind.
With their ties flying and their coats flapping
they all made a mad dash
to catch the sides of the boxcars.
And as they scrambled and struggled on,
the hobos who had been riding there
one by one jumped off.
With their bindles over their shoulders,
they all leisurely made their way
to those fine cars that had been left behind.
Much, I suppose, like Satan,
who after such a long fall
claimed his seat in Hell.
Windshield Blades
The windshield blades slowly disintegrate,
each useless swipe flapping pieces of rubber
like a bird struggling in vain to be free of the net
that it’s flown into in the darkness and the rain.
Soon there will be no blade at all,
at least on the passenger side,
and then the arm will start the slow etching of the glass,
digging a groove into the windshield as a testimonial
of where the wiper had once been.
From her seat she complains,
about the darkness and the rain,
and the fact that she can’t see
the nothingness that lies just out of reach
of the soggy flow of the dirty lights.
Dead People
All the people I’ve ever known
who have died
keep calling me on the telephone
and then hanging up.
I know it’s they
who are leaving all the messages on the answering machine,
the quiet click of the receiver
falling back into its cradle
after they’ve said nothing at all.
Sometimes they try to disguise their voices as telemarketers,
trying to sell time shares down in Florida,
but they’re not fooling me.
“Uncle Arnie, I know that’s you!”
I scream into the mouthpiece.
They usually hang up.
Sometimes they’ll page me at bars
and then speak so softly
that I can’t understand a word that they say.
But I know what they want.
They want me to follow the light,
to go down that tunnel,
to leave the shell of my body behind,
to come join them in an eternal game of cards
where nobody keeps score.
But I’m not going to do it.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
I know it’s just a matter of time
before they start knocking on my door,
trying to peak around the curtains,
trying to catch me hiding behind the sofa
pretending not to be home
with the TV still blaring.
Maybe I’ll send my wife
to tell them I’ve gone out for the evening.
Or maybe even better,
they won’t know the difference
and take my wife instead.
8:00 A.M.
Imperceptible the change,
like the slow deterioration
of my father.
When did he move from middle age
and become a frail, old man?
And there you are,
only in the second grade
with both arms through the backpack straps,
still wanting to give me a hug
before getting out of the van,
still waving from the sidewalk
with that little kid wave,
side to side,
before disappearing
into the gaping mouth of the school,
to wind your way deep into the bowels,
where the slow process of digestion
has already begun.
Coffee Break
I long to get another cup of coffee
just out of habit
To cradle the warm ceramic
between the mottled skin of my hands
To blow on the querulous steam
Just to have something to do
Just to have a reason
for owning a cup
Monopoly
Susan refuses to play Monopoly
simply because I know
without ever having to count
that a 12 from Marvin Gardens
will land you on Mediterranean,
and that Mediterranean’s rent is $2,
unless, of course, it’s mortgaged
for the mere pittance of the $30 that it will bring.
Then you don’t have to pay anything.
But it’s not like throwing a 12 from Marvin Gardens,
or for that matter anywhere,
is a statistical probability that’s worth worrying about.,
Hell, hitting Marvin Gardens in the first place
isn’t a statistical probability.
I can’t help it if I know these things.
Memory can be a curse.
Like knowing there are no advance cards
in Community Chest –
well, to properties that is.
Remembering that statistically
the Reds are better than the Yellows,
but that the Oranges are better than them all.
And knowing that the Dog is always luckier than the Car.
Independence, MO
I feel the necessity to point out the things that have changed:
the grocery store to carpet barn transmogrifications;
the McDonald’s to Texas Tom’s metamorphosis;
the mystical apartment complex that took root in the open field;
and the Wild Woody’s Discount Barn that simply ceased to be.
It’s a compulsion.
I can’t help saying, “Look, kids, that was once my grade school,
but they changed the name and they put up the fence to keep us off the playground.”
I know my kids have heard it before,
but just the same I say it again.
Independence has always looked the same to them.
There never was a drive-in at the corner of 40 Highway and Noland Road
where my folks would take us on a Friday nights to watch John Wayne always win,
and, of course, Elvis.
But then again, to them, Elvis has always been dead.
Birdbath
Larry was a sick fuck.
He filled his birdbath full of vodka
just so he could watch all the birds get drunk.
Figured they’d stumble around,
maybe forget how to fly,
or fly into the side of the house.
Barf up all the worms they had for lunch.
Maybe even die.
But the birds were smarter than Larry.
They knew better than to drink poison,
so all that generic vodka just sat there,
slowly evaporating.
Until one night
when Larry was out of everything else,
he thought, “Ahh, what the hell?”
And he went out and scooped up what vodka he could
back out of the birdbath,
careful not to get any of that scummy stuff
that was all over the bottom of the bath.
And he drank it.
Straight.
No orange juice or tomato juice or whatever.
The doctors said it must’ve been some sort of chemical reaction
with all that nasty stuff on the bottom of the birdbath,
but it damn-near killed Larry.
He was in the hospital for months,
and when they finally brought him home,
he’d forgotten how to walk,
and when he tried to speak,
all he could do was spit.
So his mother sat him in a chair
right by the window,
so he could see the birds.
But there weren’t any birds to see,
because word had gotten out,
and they wanted nothing to do with that birdbath,
even after it had been scrubbed clean.
So all Larry could do
was sit there and spit on the window,
which his mother thought meant
that either Larry needed to go to the bathroom,
or that maybe he was ready to eat.
Seeing the Dead
The dead are easy to see
once you get the hang of it.
At first you can just barely see them
out of the corner of your eye.
Remember when you thought you saw something
that wasn’t there?
Yep, that was a dead guy.
With practice you can get good at it.
The secret’s in not trying at all.
But take my word for it,
it’s not really worth the effort.
Once you do it,
it sort of becomes an obsession.
You start looking for them everywhere.
For the most part,
they’re exactly where you’d expect them to be:
In the graveyard just sitting on their tombstones,
smoking cigarettes and staring at their watches.
All of them with nothing to say.
It’s like some demented remake of Our Town
that has no point.
But then you start to see them in other places, too,
like walking around in the mall
or waiting for a show at the theatre.
Just this morning
I saw a dead man standing on the side of the road,
smoking a cigarette with his coat across his arm.
He was like one of those hitchhikers
who doesn’t even bother to put his thumb in the air,
because he knows eventually somebody’s going to stop,
and even then he’s not in any hurry.
And that dead guy,
he gave me the look.
That, “Yeah, you,” look.
But there’s no way I’m going to stop.
I won’t even stop for a live guy.
What makes him think I’d stop for him?
Besides, I’m not going that far.
Cruise Control
My cruise control took over this morning.
It’s not that I was going particularly fast.
I wasn’t.
It’s just that I was going,
and there was nothing I could do about it.
I considered taking a Hollywood tumble into the medium,
but my car was one step ahead of me – power locks.
After the panic,
after I realized I wasn’t going to die,
at least not immediately,
I started to notice the other drivers.
They were casually reading their papers,
enjoying their third cup of coffee,
catching a quick nap.
Things I’d never noticed before.
And then I became curious.
Just where was it
that my car intended to go
completely independent of me?
Until it became obvious
that it was taking the exact same roads,
making the exact same turns,
and was going to end up exactly where it was
that I would’ve ended up
all on my own.
Dream Catcher
What kind of dreams could you catch
with a miniature dream catcher
looped over the rearview mirror of an ’84 Mustang?
They couldn’t be very big.
I’m certain the dream of the open road would not fit,
at least not a very big road,
or very open.
The really good dreams would pass right on by,
like when there were no roads at all,
when mustangs weren’t made from plastic and steal.
Or even better,
where there were no mustangs at all,
and the white men who brought them
were still groveling in ignorance and sickness and filth,
waiting for the enlightenment to come.
Roadside People
All these people were lining the side of the road this morning.
At first there were just a few,
but before long they were standing shoulder to shoulder.
Just standing there
staring at me as I whizzed by in my nice, big car
doing 80 down the Interstate.
I tried to pretend that they weren’t there,
but my visor wouldn’t go down far enough.
I could still see their eyes staring out from underneath
their broken-billed baseball caps,
their rice hats,
and their turbans,
and those with no hats at all,
just pieces of cardboard to keep the rain away.
They lined the road all the way to work,
and then they stood outside my window,
just staring at me while I pretended not to notice
from behind the glare of my computer screen.
So I pulled down the shades.
But I know they’re still there,
and they’ll still be there when I leave this evening.
I’ve already decided to go home the back way,
just in case.
And if that doesn’t work,
I think I’ll get some of that tinted stuff you can put on your windows.
I know it won’t make them go away,
but at least they’ll be easier to ignore.
The Travelers
Not yet abandoned,
we left in the car
only those things we’d never miss:
a broken radio
and a glove box forced shut
on miss-folded roadmaps
to places neither of us would ever return.
Down a tree-crowded road
we came upon a place
where the creek had moved on its own accord,
and a mailbox now stood
in the middle of the stream.
I couldn’t help but wonder
how they would get their mail,
and laughed at the image
of the postman puttering along in his boat.
And, of course,
you reminded me not to be stupid.
It was plain to see that no had lived there
in quite a while.
And, after all, we had to keep moving on,
because there was somewhere else we were sure to be
before dark.
things go away
car keys are misplaced
replaced
and then the car is sold
and all but forgotten
the shape of the dash
the feel of the gear shift in your hand
the smell of the heater
on that first cold day of the fall
and how she pushed the buttons on the radio
changing the station
every time a song came on
that she didn’t know
or didn’t like
or didn’t remember
that I remember
but not the way she wore her hair
or the texture of her clothes
or the last time she kissed me goodbye
Markers
There is an insignificant stone marker
just up from where my brother lives
in east Independence
that marks were the Santa Fe Trail began,
or at least ran through –
the marker doesn’t say which.
The trail began in 1821,
as duly recorded in stone,
and ended in 1872.
On the same spot,
not more than 20 feet away,
is a marker announcing Tour Stop C.
It’s a spot of many markers.
Tour Stop C is a cast iron plaque
telling how Moonlight’s Union Calvary Brigade
formed a line right on that spot,
or rather, a line that went right on through that spot,
and met the Confederate soldiers on
11 AM October 21, 1864,
until they were driven back to Independence.
I must confess:
I have no idea who Moonlight was.
But I like the name.
Ironically, both markers are on a dead-end road,
cut short in life by the four lane divided highway
that US 24 has now become,
at least as it passes through here.
It’s still a nice spot
to eat a donut
and drink some coffee,
to waste time
until heading to my aunt’s house,
and then on to Buckner,
where after the rosary and the prayers
and the appropriate accolades,
my uncle’s ashes will be brought back to the house
that he never got to live in
and spread beneath the tree
where he never saw the shade.
Dashboard Dog
My dashboard dog
shakes his head disapprovingly,
as I dodge in and out and in-between
in my impatience to be at work.
He has other opinions, too.
Opinions about my choice in ties.
My choice in breakfast pastries and latte.
About the three CDs I invariably listen to,
regardless of how many others I have stashed
throughout the cab.
And about the cars that glide by my windows
in the sun’s barely there light
and the places they may be going.
It is becoming increasingly apparent
that that opinionated dog
believes any of those places
to be better than where we’re heading.
But so far he’s kept that opinion
to himself.
Reconstruction
They were an old man’s wire frame glasses,
but she wore them just the same.
She had paid entirely too much money for them
from a trendy little shoppe
in the now fashionable part of town.
She said they made the world just a little bit blurred,
but that was OK.
Because when you really got down to it,
what was focused?
She got off on these existentialist tangents all the time,
usually after we had sex.
Her wearing nothing but those stupid looking wired rimmed glasses,
staring at whatever there might be beyond the ceiling,
and me suddenly feeling self-conscious,
even with the sheets to cover my shame.
Couches
Every couch I had ever owned
was stuffed into my basement,
from the first spring-shot loveseat
that my wife and I bought before we were ever married,
to that sleeper monstrosity
that would pop open in the middle of the Van Damme movies
as if it were trying to fight back.
My basement had begun to look like
Honest Dave’s Discount Furniture Showroom,
but just like Honest Dave,
my wife finally declared that everything must go.
So one by one I loaded them up in my pickup,
and like so many unwanted puppies,
I left them abandoned on the side of the road.
But I could only drop off one couch at a time,
and on that first morning after that first night,
as I drove by on my way to work where I had left that sofa,
there was a car that had stopped
and everybody had gotten out – an entire family,
and they were sitting there on my couch,
just watching the traffic stream by.
And they were still sitting there that night
when I dropped off another sofa.
They didn’t seem to mind.
The next morning there was another car pulled off on the shoulder,
and a couple was snuggled up on the love seat.
They didn’t seem to mind the springs.
I think they were newly weds
because she was still wearing her veil.
And that’s how it went.
Every night I’d drop off another sofa,
and every morning there’d be another car parked on the roadside.
And all the people who used to be sitting in their cars
were now sitting on a couch
watching fewer and fewer cars go by.
Nobody ever left.
And that went on until there was nobody driving down the road at all,
except for me – dropping off my last sofa,
an old flowery thing that the cat had scratched to shreds.
The next day, instead of whistling by on my way to work,
having to fight no traffic whatsoever,
I pulled over to the side of the road, too.
And I sat myself down amongst those slashed begonias,
all by myself.
But no sooner had I made myself comfortable,
than one by one the other people started to get up,
stretch, and check their watches.
And they all slowly made their way back to their cars
and drove away.
All of them.
Until I was the only one left sitting there.
So I, too, got up and left,
but not before loading that big, flowery sofa
back into my truck.
Uncle Al
The ghost
of my dead Uncle Albert
has decided to haunt my car.
I don’t see him,
but I know he’s there.
Pushing the gas down
just a little harder than I intended to go,
like he’s trying to take one more lap
in that old race car of his.
Fogging up the windows.
And singing along with the radio.
That’s the part that really weirds me out.
Not that it actually sounds like Uncle Al.
It’s more like static,
the distant call of some radio station
that is just barely there,
playing oldies that I just can’t quite comprehend,
late at night when the atmosphere and my antennae
come to a mutual understanding.
Oh, I know it’s Unlce Al all right.
He could never fool me.
But I’ve decided not to tell Aunt Poly.
Even if she were to believe me
and not take it as some cruel, demented joke,
what good would it do?
After all,
she never cared to hear him sing when he was alive.
Why would she want to start now?
Hitchhikers
I know I shouldn’t have,
but I did it anyway.
I picked up some hitchhikers.
When I asked them where they were going
they all said the same thing,
“Wherever you’re headed.”
And they weren’t kidding.
None of them has ever gotten out.
When I get ready to come home from work
or go back out in the morning,
they’re all right where I left them,
scrunched up in the backseat.
Really, they’re not too bad to have along.
They rarely complain about anything.
They don’t leave much of a mess,
aside from a few extra coffee cups on the floor.
And they give me somebody to talk to.
I’d probably be willing to pick up some more.
but there’s really no more room.
Don’t get me wrong.
I had my doubts about some of them,
like the guy in the orange jumpsuit
with County Jail printed across the front.
But he spends most of the time
looking out the rear window.
And then there’s the guy with the Bible.
I really worried about him,
but he spends most of his time
looking up obscure passages
to prove some even more obscure point,
and by the time he finally finds the passage that he wants
he’s almost always forgotten what point
he was trying to make to begin with.
Not surprisingly, I suppose,
it’s the old lady who drives me the nuttiest.
She feels compelled to refold all of my roadmaps
and then neatly place them back in the glovebox,
so for the most part
I have no clue where it is we’re going.
Although, as she’s always quick to remind me,
we always end up where we need to be.
Road-Side Crosses
You know those road-side crosses
with the faded, artificial flowers
and the limp mylar balloons
and the rain-soaked teddy bears
marking where people have died?
I steal them.
I used to be sneaky and wait until dark,
but anymore I just pull over whenever
and toss them into the back of my truck with the others.
There’s a lot back there,
what with the little picket fences
and the decoupaged plaques with the day-glow lettering.
I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with them
once my bed is full.
I could just dump them out somewhere
and start all over again.
I could try to remember where I got them
and put them all back,
as if nothing ever happened.
O I could just leave them in the truck,
stacked pell-mell as they are.
Who knows, they may come in handy some day
should I drop off behind the wheel.
Fortunately I don’t have to make a decision.
Not yet.
My bed’s not nearly half-full.
Throwing Things Out the Window
Lately I’ve taken to throwing things out of my car
just to see what will happen.
Sort of a scientific study.
My necktie was fairly predictable,
but I was expecting a lot more out of my coffee cup.
And my cellphone, for the most part,
was a huge disappointment.
It just bounced once and then disappeared from view.
But my briefcase didn’t disappoint me.
So much for anti-shock locks.
Papers and pens and even the peanut butter sandwich
I had packed for my lunch,
just went everywhere.
At first I threw my CDs out one at a time.
I started with all of my oldies
that I had ordered off of late night TV,
but that grew tiresome.
So I launched them all at once.
They exploded in shards of iridescent plastic,
which was really kind of cool.
I even pitched out all of those hitchhikers
who had been hanging around for so long.
They insisted that I bring the car to a complete stop,
which I’m sure would invalidate the experiment,
and then they just stood there on the roadside
looking confused and disappointed.
I know I probably shouldn’t’ve thrown them out,
but compassion can’t come before science.
Then I started bringing things from the home:
the telephone and the TV,
old copies of Thoreau,
the coffeepot and the computer monitor.
The computer monitor was the best.
It actually kept up with me for a while,
the plastic and the glass,
the rubber and the wires.
My wife refuses to go riding with me,
and the cat won’t come out of hiding.
All told, my results are inconclusive.
However, when I finish this poem,
I’m going to throw it out the window, too,
but I really don’t expect it
to do much of anything at all.
