Einfuhlung

If there were stories that could take the place of life,
What would you need? Not even a house or wife.
Let the air resound with words and nothing else,
Not the earth, not water or fire, not even a face.

All our lives are given over to what’s human.
Animals can’t speak so they must listen.
I wanted to know how she spun and weaved
and cast a spell. It was not because she could.

She told me to go back and read John Keats.
Learn how he sees a sparrow at his window,
and finds himself pecking among the gravel.
You concentrate like him, you learn from her.

She was a hoodoo, ju-ju, gris-gris conjure woman.
She let the loas in. They gave her a lesson
then two and three and four and she learned how
to make what she never told when she could show.

Pretty soon the lungs begin to rupture, his blood
spilt on the Spanish steps, no telling what could
save him, not Marie Laveau, not even sparrows,
for he lived too soon, death was in his marrow.

The mother and daughter had the same name.
I could go back and live there but what would
I do? The wraiths say I need to start over.
I will when I find the words I never learned.

Mother gives daughter all she needs to know.
The daughter does all her mother taught her.
When the mother dies what of the daughter?
She does what she will. She cannot follow.

(30 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

Egg

When of course you read Mother Goose
you’re in the back seat of the 38 Chevy
your daddy’s driving, mama by his side
many miles to get from Mother Hubbard
to the next tale and one before bedtime
you hear from the source.

My folks know everybody on the way
and some they never knew become old friends
and I can’t wait to get to Grandma’s house,
I go off and make sculptures out of mud,
we go on, and here we are, where the air
smells warm in slow rain.

The riddle of life: what happens to whom
and where the sky opens you always are.
The surgeon who lives in the countryside
goes each year, for two weeks, to aid the lame
in the jungles of Peru. Here at home
is his happiness.

Childhood is an egg that will break open
and who steps into the endless wide world
will go away and stay where the city
reveals what was never seen on the farm.
Could you have foregone this course or that one
and stayed innocent?

When I drive I tell my love the story
of lost children finding the only soul
is only half enough until lovers
learn to live where cold rain drizzles, runs down
window glass, falling upon the threshold
of the floating house.

(29 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

Over the Lake, along the River, to the Sea

1.

Here’s the lake, there’s the river,
I don’t have a boat, I can’t drive a car,
In public I drink,
By myself I think.

It was before the flood,
We were in the mood.
When the pillar of salt was gone
I was alone.

You’d have thought the town was on fire
How I drank myself into the mire
Sleeping by the bayou
Where I woke without you.

If I could cross the bridge,
I'd be at large
Yet safe in Algiers
Under the rule of Leander Perez.

I drank and danced and found a love
I didn’t deserve, was lucky to have,
And I took her out of town
In the car she drives she owns.

2.

Here we are in the white city
Shimmering under the blue sky.

St. Francis feeds the birds,
Virgin and child here from Lourdes.

When we played by the shore
I can’t remember what you wore.

The war was over, I was free,
But who knew why?

I don’t recall which war,
I can’t remember saints, only sinners.

(28 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

Names of the Cities

Where rain is ice the feet take steps
knees bending slightly staying close
to the earth not even a squirrel dares
such weather I’m learning to walk in
and wish I could stride like my young
legs carried me twice into Mexico City

I wanted to see the flowers in the lake
Xochimilco and climb the pyramids
at Teotihuacan not even a child’s foot
regards with elan such steps so small
you would need to be goaded by spear
to the top where hearts were sacrificed

A hundred miles south of Winnipeg
I am most happily married to my soul
and she with me though days were long
fifty years from sun to dusk in her eyes
to the quickening body she gave to me
that long ago loving in the city Seattle

I found her finally in San Francisco
you know the song You left her there
and she was with me in New England
where Manhattan and Boston were
though New York is its own not for
everyone say those leaving Santa Fe

She carried me here when I wanted
to stay she said I was with her or I
would be nowhere and here I thrive
as the ice melts and the legs bounce
along steps quickening toes to heels
my body a wand when it is with hers

(27 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

Mnemonics

People I know don’t fuck nearly as much
as they say I do. I’m in it for the music.
I may drink and smoke and ogle the girls
but I know a major from a minor,
a sharp from a flat. Girls take off their clothes,
I take off mine. Who would want to say no?
They are not groupies, I’m not a rock star.
People say I gamble and fight too much.
I’m a pussy decked out like a tom cat.
I get hit, swallow my Adam’s Apple,
who could hear me sing? like a red rooster
early mornings, even though it’s pitch night
when I work myself up to reach the sky . . .

Lonely women take me home, love me good,
say I can fuck them all night if I want,
and I do but I’m older now and sleep
the day away, don’t come until the moon
appears. She’s been waiting, she comes along
when the sun kneels to get a good night’s sleep.
On my back, her face above, I’m alive.
The music never lasts as long as life.
You get older you shoot up so your world
comes down to enter hers. Then you can sleep.
People know her music is all I have.
We fuck through our clothes by the baby grand
she plays. Priests forbid you to come undressed.

I lose track, snow covers the years, I want
to keep going until the winter ends,
I smell warm air, tires lay down their slow beat,
horns find the melody, music begins.

(26 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

One Way

I figured the time was ripe: I went home.
My father was dead, my mother alone.
She told me stories no one else would know.

My sister took her off to live alone.
I had no business there: My last trip home,
Mississippi headwaters my new home.

. . . that old home gone, polluted with shit stench
of Bar S cattle fattened by Mammon
on their one-way journey to perdition
wrapped behind the counter, beef same-day fresh.

(25 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

War and Peace

Cops fracture one’s skull,
lacerate another’s spleen.
Scott needs a third tour
of duty, but Iraq's near over.
Send him to Afghanistan.
Kayvan fought both places,
so he should go to Iran,
though he was born here.

I should go home to Glasgow
or Ulster. Maybe Cardiff,
even the Blue Ridge . . .
I got drunk to take the bus
out of San Francisco over
the Bay Bridge, then walked
through Oakland’s dull yellow
shadows to the Berkeley line.

Men kill men in the line
of duty. You become a man
that way, I was told, young.
Don’t blame women’s soft
loving bodies, their lips
on yours, the world’s reason
for bringing you into earth’s
orbit where only we say love,

or so we believe. Someday
creatures from a galaxy
yet unnamed will be unable
to go on. Poison, ours,
flooding their planet, they
elect to put us in thrall
to make peace where war was.
Ask God why He didn’t know

they exist. Maybe God doesn’t
either. That would be news.
Nietzsche walking mountains
looking everywhere gave up
searching. He knew God
was in the mind or nowhere,
saved a horse from the whip
the day he took God’s place.

(24 November 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander