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Disassociation
Gawaine Caldwater Ross
Some people dash through fire,
Others plunge through ice.
Is Reality the only thing
If Chaos is the king?
Ring all your golden Christmas bells,
The sewer rats still dance.
Then the ice they buy and sell
Will wind up in your drinking glass,
All muddied and black,
That iridescent toxicity
In which the ship is lost.
The mutineers choose weapons
And toss the captain overboard
To feed her to the barracuda
By the reefs of broken glass –
Each mirrored fragment seizes nightlight
And cast werelit visions
Of her home bleeding, collapsing
As the boulders fall dead center.
She goes into her heart and mind
Which remind her of departing kin
Who told her of the doom that wheezes
Down the orchard’s razor walks.
-Too cold?—We’ll
leave this
Television frame behind
To go and seek the whip instead.
The radio commander never stops,
Hilarity dances with dank despair,
Barefoot through the
Mudslides block the view.
She seeks a serpent that doesn’t bite
And settles for a badger’s den
With herself as Joan of Arc,
Cinderella, and the Virgin Mary
Or a raven squawking over food.
She has to shout in a crowded train
“Rubber plantation workers
Beat seedless grapes!
Venus is being invaded by dogs!”
--Gawaine
We get mail--
Dear Mr. Guthrie -
I've been enjoying
Chickasaw Plum immensely for a while and thought I'd send you a few poems for
consideration.
Thank you much for
taking a look at them. Continued success with your excellent
and powerful magazine.
All best,
Doug Draime
Thanks Doug. Here it
is:
Doug Draime has been a presence in the 'underground' literature
movement since the formative 1960's. He was part of the notorious
Right & Wrong
Only you
Could have
Said that
& gotten
Away
With it.
If the
Bullets
Weren’t
Flying &
The bombs
Weren't
Dropping &
The blood
Wasn’t
Running &
The rats
Weren’t
Biting &
If you & I
Weren’t
Dying
I would say
You had
No right
To say
I misjudged
Things.
The Night Before
For the first Buddhist monk
who burned himself to death
in protest of the Vietnam war
I witnessed it all at
the beginning of day,
starting with cold confused
hands,
along the floor of dirty
pine.
faraway bleeding cries
broke thru
with a self-mocking glee.
i had no open
clues to the exploding
night before: there was no
one holding my heart,
no trouble pouring
inward.
i was dared to destroy
the scene,
& i did it all without
a shudder
in a few words spoken
at the madness of
us all,
i blew up all the black hearts
of time.
Down By Ten Mile Creek
No indoor plumbing and
nada electricity.
A shot gun, or 30-30
in every rusted out pickup truck.
Most not quite certain
of their biological parents,
as they run the major
businesses, churches,
and bars
in the white trash ghetto.
Dilapidated schools and
skin heads and
Aryan Brotherhood burning
down houses for
the insurance money.
Prostitution conducted out the back door
of a prominent
funeral home and you can get embalmed,
any thrill you crave for
a 20 dollar bill and
a corroded pipe of meth.
Tin Cans
In Memory Of Ray Charles
I was 15 or 16
when you were helped
from the stage in
incoherently and later
arrested for “narcotics possession”,
partying at the Claypool Hotel.
On that night I was only a 100 miles away
in
playing “What’d I Say” at full volume
on my 45
using 2 large empty potato chip cans
as conga drums.
Dazed, and a little messed up
from some Thunderbird wine I had
smuggled up to my room.
And more than a little bummed-out.
over having missed seeing you.
Half way through the song, my grandfather
flung the door open,
yelling at me to turn that nigger shit
down.
The next day after I heard about your bust,
I came home from school
got out my cans and played you again,
at full volume, finishing off the
wine.
No one was home and I played that song
at least 15 times.
That afternoon changed me forever, man.
But the wine, with just a little food on my stomach,
made me sleepy and I took a long nap.
I had a dream I’d made it to your concert,
that you played your full set fully
conscious,
with 3 encores, and you were not
arrested afterwards -
perish the thought.
And the next morning you were given the key to the city
and a lavish gala dinner
put on by the
bowing and scrapping at your feet.
Note: "Tin Cans" first appeared in Struggle magazine.
The
Chickasaw
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