Vilkas
by
Vidas Mykolas
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Vidas Mykolas on Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 by Vidas Mykolas
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
* * * * *
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* * * * *
Vidas Mykolas and Vilkas
Vidas Mykolas' parents came to America as World War II refugees from Lithuania. The poems in Vilkas are about street prostitutes in St. Petersburg Russia, the Armenian Holocaust and stickball, reviving dead brothers, Caligula eating pearls, mythical wolves in the primeval forests of the Baltic, dumpster diving, White Nights, ravaged family cemeteries, Disneyworld in the despair and hope of Eastern Europe,a pig roast, heroes of the American revolution and French women in tight jeans, a hill in Lithuania covered blind with Christian crosses, the brutal war of Lithuanian resistance, TV series Bonanaz the best family, knocking the balls off St. Paul, dark lost friends of youth, instructions on catching a salmon, Mexican bands in Oregon, a war insane mother, Dante's lover, and other poems.
* * * * *
Email: 99centpoet@gmail.com
Notes on some poems (end of book)
Acknowledgments to magazines (end of book)
* * * *
Vilkas
Each morning the women of Gargzdai
take busses into birch forests to pick
mushrooms, and with luck,
amber charms. I watch them return
as the town exudes dust and mist
below ochre clouds. Their heavy buckets
squeak and tock, squeak and tock while
the old ones ask if anyone saw a wolf .
The last one died decades ago stepping
on a land mine during the partisan war.
But they want to see the bronze wolf
who appeared to Gediminas in a dream
on a cold Baltic night and showed him
where to build a city. They want the vilkas
to cry in a voice of silent silver, to run
with shimmering paws deep into a white
forest, to the only clearing where an act
of creation, or death, is the finality
of all gathering and plump mushrooms.
* * * *
Who Remembers the Armenians?
The games began early on autumn Sundays
before Midwest snows could hide broken
glass and sharp cans in the alleys. We took
our mother's brooms and swept passages
a piece at a time like ushers before a big game.
We chose to invent a fast and brutal game
beyond what boys played in the open streets.
The skills to win this game could not be gathered
by statistics nor reference to a hero selling
plastic sliding on television in the homes of
steel workers: the Greek boys played defense
with diligence, the tall Serb saw no obstacles,
the Mexican kid reveled in his speed, the Armenian
brothers played untalented and totally fierce.
The setting sun always called the games off;
we could no longer see the clouds foaming
swirling and colliding their way to the cold lake.
Drenched with sweat we went to recite victories
over large gifts of pilaf and stuffed grape leaves.
Our boasting stopped when the old woman sitting
in the corner of the living room pounded on
her chair, jumping up more than her body
could take. The youngest brother as always
did not look up from his food, and as always
explained: "she saw all her family killed."
Endurance is the only skill you need to win or lose.
* * * *
Dostoevsky's Whores
If not for the Monastery's peeling pink
walls the hookers on Nevsky Prospetk
could see Dostovesky's grave and think
of redemption. They begin in twilight
at the tram and bus stops crossing their legs
like tourists at the Summer Palace posing
in costume. Bible-saved drunks beg
his girls to remember the short route to hell.
But nobody reads him: Sonja's grandchildren
came home to buy French jeans, the killers
got amnesty and cruise the streets for action,
not finding relevance in loud Russian suffering.
The Necropolis closes and the smell
of unwashed clothes comes out the Metro
station worse than London and Paris.
Sperm and purpose mix in the humid
breezes off the Neva, in the dark urine
stained passageways leading to run down
apartments where people prepare for winter.
* * * *
Despair in Disneyworld
What if The Magic Kingdom were built
in forests outside Klaipeda on muddy rich
ground where Lithuanians gathered
mushrooms for centuries?
What if Cinderella's Castle opened
each morning in a Medieval fog
more dense than the fumes of bombs?
What if the Country Bear Jamboree
used real brown bears like the ones
trappers in Vilnius sent to the French
to maul criminals just for fun?
What if Space Mountain stood so high
that excited riders could glimpse
the Baltic Sea reflecting silver light
in the shape of running wolves?
Would invading armies have stopped
awhile and enjoyed themselves
among the tours and rides, leaving
peaceful and happy while shaking
their heads and whispering
"whoop-di-do", wanting only to bring
their families back for a visit
and have their pictures taken
at Mickey's Birthdayland?
Would the Siberian exiles have received
letters and trinkets from Kretinga
telling them that all was well,
and Boy! did the Norwegian EPCOT
exhibit ever have real food like stuffed
cabbages, potato cakes, and herring,
and when were they coming home
because the fun was only now beginning?
* * * *
The Family Watches Reruns of Bonanza
Little Joe and Ben have a fight
over lost cattle by the winding river.
Ben yells angry and harsh words.
In the bedroom my stepfather lies
fetal and yellow. My sister opens
the door and I smell oil from his
toolbox. His last directions to me:
preserve the tools of his angry precision.
Little Joe storms into a bar, but runs
into cattle rustlers: a fight,
drawn guns, hostages and the truth
about the lost cattle. Ben rushes
into town to save his son. One night
he came home drunk and cooked
for me. We stared at each other
like coyote and rabbit before they
recognize each as the hunter
and the hunted. He fell asleep on
the kitchen table and I opened
his toolbox and examined awls,
a metal ruler, worn out hammers,
and found nothing I could use
for the projects and plans
I hid in the back of my closet.
A gunfight erupts. Ben is a man
possessed. The fury of his rifle
cuts through men like a buzz saw.
"He's dead. He's dead."
Everyone rushes to the bedroom
except for me. Ben and Little Joe
struggle to each other in the debris
of righteous death and broken
whiskey bottles. They embrace
arm on arm and separate quickly.
I go inside and close his toolbox.
Little Joe tells Ben the family is safe.
* * * *
To "Max Stern of Paris, 1944
Max, the crows still nest on the prison
outskirts. I first see them from the empty
parking lot flying thick and slow over
the jagged memorial. Inside Fortas IX
the cold and damp seem a movie
stunt to the hot summer day. An old
woman even follows me turning
on the lights of each cell I visit.
I first know of you in the Death Room,
where you waited to be taken outside.
You must have been a strong man
because you scratched your name deep
into the cell's wall. Even now,
the comma remains insistent.
You would like Kaunas now.
Laisve Aleja is lavish with shops
leading up to the old white cathedral.
The men favor short bristle haircuts
and shout with baritones wet
from fortified beer. The women wear
wear tight spandex skirts and act bored
while shopping. Cheap Russian Ladas
careen through the old streets.
Most people live in ugly apartment
buildings; I can see them from the hill
where the Germans executed you.
The day they shot you, I know spring
was thawing the ground, the wind blew
hard with traces of warmth, and crows
screamed with delight over pieces
of your brain. Their young have never
learned to leave the spot.
* * * *
The Photo Booth
The mother doubtful, the father cautious
circle the possibility of remembrance
for five dollars. Close by a neon light
puts a patina on a pair of ski boots.
They push the curtain aside and look in.
The parents gather the children
to practice poses of cute deference.
One picture is sure to go to a sunburned
drunken uncle living in a Siberian
town where each year winter blinds
all memory. They enter the booth
serious and leave giggling with success.
I silently urge them to frame the cheap
pictures in the hardest woods, metal even,
for the time when they will lose this world
so their children might search for this moment
and find it among storage boxes smelling
of vegetables from the local supermarket.
The father holds the pictures like
the center of the universe.
I circle the booth. Touch it and take out
five dollars. I go in alone and imagine
a family sitting with me, even a vague
silver emulsion of the one before me.
We have our positions. Press.
* * * *
The Dumpster
Our love seat, stark tables, toolboxes
and stool came from the dumpsters
of apartments offering free parking.
In Volgograd we could sell our plump
gifts for a small profit and even attract
thugs demanding protection money.
My wife finds them easily like she once
found berries along the boiling Volga
in the last days of summer. My son and I
hurry and pack away at night what she
proudly claimed in daylight. The next
morning she drinks chocolate coffee
and plans what edges to sand, the way
her chisel will cut links in the deserted
wood. Tonight, a new bookcase sinks
and wobbles in our bedroom carpet, but
strong enough to hold Bulgakov,
Nabakov and Chekov. As we wait
for the moneyless days before
my paycheck arrives, we read them
together and mind how old words become
burnished, never peeling and falling
away: Late hours in sparse rooms find
all matters of tactility disappear.
* * * *
White Nights
Nevsky Prospekt slams our window:
drunks bellow as hurting, slow
engines from Ladas shake the glass.
After midnight when echoes pass
from hookers to johns, the clopping
of a horse floats into our room.
I always miss the animal as it
disappears into short horizons where
unseen voices drink to a midnight sun.
Maybe it's Peter looking for someone
to tour his city and help him teach polite
manners to a savage people whose bright
teeth obssessed him into science and sadism,
pulling out as many as he could find
in the back rooms of the Summer Palace.
Maybe it's a baba yaga weary and done
with casting spells and singing charms.
The mystery is never solved; I return
to your arms and you take me to the place
where night is day.
* * * *
Kryziu Kalnas
On Kryziu Kalnas you will find
thousands of crosses crawling over each
other. Examine them. Some are held
together with clean honest joints. Look
and you might find a large one with Jesus
sitting on the ground and lamenting
the job he must do, as if a crucifixion
were the start of the midnight shift
in the small factories outside Vilnius.
Wait long enough and the wind will touch
the crosses and give you such a gift
of rattling clicking moaning that you would
be tempted to believe the very earth
wanted to speak to you and to you alone
about something terrible and sad.
* * * *
Only Then, and Until Then
If you would touch me, then touch me
until the outdoor florists along the Volga
can not feel the velvet petals of their roses,
until dancers cannot stomp to polkas
and ride the shock up their spines
as hot sweat flows in dresses of shiny taffeta.
If you would see me, then look at me
until a gardener's eyes cannot draw
out rows of summer peas and tomatoes,
until Naberezhnaya candle makers claw
out wax figures of apples and owls
not able to see wick, blackness, and flaw.
If you would hear me, then listen to me
until your son sings lullabies to you
when your guitar has been silent for years,
until the winter when the breath of two
lovers crossing the frozen river does not
sing on the cold air like the clouds on blue.
If you would love me, then love me
until the baker can no longer taste
the sweetness of his fat pastries,
until children forget the joy of racing
the streets of Volgograd to the river
where they splash their happy hot faces,
only then, and until then.
* * * *
The Minija River Has No Current
A butterfly with a tattered wing lands
next to me on a blade of Buffalo Grass.
It lurches forward but holds on.
An old woman with a babushka looks
for something among the birches. Rumor
has it that she is looking for a mass grave.
She pokes the moist ground with a cane
and stoops for flowers. The butterfly
remains still and exhausted, gathering
strength for one more flight. At the edge
of the park in an old building, the local
Mafia boss has opened a tavern with
wall to wall mirrors and plastic
emblems of imported German beers.
The butterfly oscillates with the blade
as if heaving for air. After the Nazis
burned the town, the State built rows
of cheap white apartment buildings
on a favorite spot of mushroom hunters.
Two men with rusted bicycles fish nearby.
The men do not cast, but let their bait
sit in the middle of the river; they know
that only bottom dwelling fish remain,
eager for any falling scrap.
Last night birds followed me into sleep
colorless and without song.
I wished they were symbols of something
but I never saw anything approaching
a phoenix, griffin, or even a fierce
Assyrian eagle etched into objects
of importance. The butterfly drops dead;
one wing still beating
for the thrill of flight.
* * * *
Starlings
Puzzled starlings swirl on a cool
October morning over brown gardens
littered with the remains of tomatoes
and cucumbers. They flow in unison
through the rising air currents turning
and diving, never breaking the invisible
membrane holding them together.
They ask the sun which way to go.
The first parents of the starlings flew out
of Central Park two centuries ago.
My parents landed in Boston one hundred
years later and like freed birds followed
those in front of them into the country
and cities, to places with food and warmth,
far from labor camps and gulags.
The steel mill town they found had many
starlings, their feathers no longer shining
from the soot and dirt that always stuck
to the cold and meaningless air.
The seasons came soft and unnoticed until
the end of all migrations and hungers.
I wonder at the children of the first
starlings. They fly out a tree in every
direction unable to remember how
to gather into a flock. In a few minutes,
in groups of three and four, they land
on a field and peck at each other. By next
summer they will have wandered miles
from here to nest in the crevices of factories.
The noise from trucks and the loud mills
does not drown their blind complaining
about the lack of a clear and cloudless sky.
* * * *
Fairy Tales
Holidays were the best times
for stories because she drank
passing the line between the event
and pain, memory and tongue.
At the start of the war
when she was in Hamburg
some Poles stole a chicken and blamed
a Frenchman. The Germans
shot him by the hospital.
I learned to watch her
for the moment when
I could reach cautiously
for her memories.
In 1943, she had her first
baby boy but it died
because there was no blood.
This was always the last story.
After, she would stack
the forks and spoons
so they cupped each other
in neat cold rows.
While in bed, I could not let
the memories bleed and sink away.
To the baby boy I gave blood
until he awoke,
a fat red happy tomato.
* * * *
Family Plot, Vezaiciai
In one night at the time of laisva thieves
stripped all the copper and precious metals
from the graves. The women who came
every Sunday to sweep and replant flowers
discovered naked crosses sprouting
like bent daises and wailed. The men left
drinking parties and rode dirty buses
to see their relatives left naked to the woods.
The women spent days finding sandpaper,
files, rasps, anything with sharp edges
to reshape and make holy the cheap iron
skeletons the thieves did not want.
My family lies four deep
in the old section where in the spring
primrose, tulips, and brown mushrooms
shelter the edges of the crowded plots.
I am not meant to be buried here. The village
and countryside did not raise and give
me who I am. May the dead ones in an act
both generous and miraculous take a place
too small, too tight and make a spacious
room lacquered with inlays of oak and smelling
of smoked sausage, and welcome me
to a grave where everyone lies together,
room to spare, even for thieves.
* * * *
Birute, Dream
To a Lithuanian partisan who wounded,
killed herself by biting into her wrists. 1947
Your mother died soon after our visit.
She died alone near the birches where
you slit your wounded body with teeth
still white and pure with no wear.
She died alone near the forest where
you read about wolves and soft opals
translucent with no visible wear,
hoping for the day you could elope.
In the woods you read about wolves and opals
not knowing it would be where you died
hoping for the day you would elope
looking for a final answer in a blue sky.
Not knowing it would be where you died
you crawled blind and bleeding
looking for final answer in a blue sky
that filled with gunfire and pleading.
You crawled blind and bleeding
and were captured by an insistent dream
that filled with gunfire and pleading
where love should have been the theme.
Captured by your last insistent dream
your mother told us about the last hours
when love should have been the theme,
not your life spilling on wildflowers.
Your mother told us about the final hours,
offering us stale cake and a few more words
about your life spilling on wildflowers:
"Such is life" she said like a wounded bird
still offering us stale cake and few words
about mercy, a daughter. "Such is life"
she sang out like a wounded bird
as we walked home through a forest of birches.
* * * *
Caligula's Pearls
After I served Mass for Brother Jonas,
he told me stories about the Romans.
His special treat. Caligula the worst
demon ate pearls. He ate them like popcorn
at feasts with dates, wine from Egypt,
and living eels cut open and sucked dry.
Christian slaves harvested the pearls
off the coast of Greece and were drowned
to keep the spot secret and unpoisoned.
But God sent Saint Paul a dream to protect
the brothers. To every apostle he gave
a special stone: Peter jasper, James
chalcedony, John emerald, and even Judas,
amethyst. He said never wear that one,
although the parish priest could use it
to ward off drunkenness.
For weeks I searched crumbling streets
for the stones of the apostles,
a holy gemologist gathering rocks
into bursting pockets. The screaming
shift whistle of the steel mills ordered
the start and end of my search.
Nothing ever matched.
Brother Jonas always finished Mass
before the school children arrived
for he could give no Communion.
Finally, I asked by what stone would
a father not beat a mother.
Malachite he said.
* * * *
Latkes
The potatoes that hid and covered
you for three days were thick
and harder than stones. In the distance
rifles and pistols seemed like bursts
of hot grease on the mornings you helped
your parents cook potato pancakes.
You grated the potatoes into a soft
mush, then sliced the onions
into pieces as transparent and delicate
as butterfly wings.
As a young man in Gargzdai, you
wooed the girls with this recipe.
The ones who thought of marriage
exclaimed "A man who cooks is a wonder.
Now my mother teaches me
your recipe as she tells me how
you erupted from that cellar
like a white ghost and asked her
"Are the Germans gone?"
The day was warm and promised
a cool breeze off the Baltic. Within
a barn a few hundred meters away
you hung yourself. The Germans
made their soldiers watch
as they burned your letter.
I try to slice the onions as you
might have. I cradle a wad of mush
into my hand, and, without a spoon
lay it softly in the hot grease,
my hand burning and alive.
* * * *
Pig Roast
My father places hot smooth stones
in the pig's throat and belly, wraps
the pig tight in chicken wire, sewn
metal cutting deep into the flesh.
He lowers it into a hole weaved
with baked bricks and thick banana leaves.
My twelve year old sister skips
among her aunts. Already, she tries
on their gestures, watching the men
from the corner of her eyes.
Uncle Milan enters through the back
gate, still unwashed from the dirt
of the mills. He strips off his shirt,
sweat streaking diagonals across
his chest. We drink, speak about the coming
layoffs; about the farms and small towns
our parents left; the 1961 Yankees.
Hours later, the pig's ears are sliced
for soup. Father wraps the pig,
gentle, honoring its flesh and our
hunger. We eat the meat with rice,
warm beans, and watermelon.
The silence of full bellies comes upon us.
At the edge of the quiet, a twilight
whistle blows, calling men to the darkness.
* * * *
Throwing Snowballs
My brother and I scoop old snow
with eager paws. If the scoop is bad,
we throw it down and dig up more.
The snowballs must be packed tight
with a thick cover of ice and pebble.
Brother coyotes, we weave our way
through abandoned cars, garbage cans
overturned by hungry animals,
and mounds of snow plowed high
by drunken city workers.
We fight and play in the backyards
of apartment houses where poor
mothers watch behind windows
fogged in patches from boiling soups.
Our growls and shrieks stop
near twilight when the fathers
come home from the steel mills
in small packs. As we run home,
a snowball punches a window
making us proud of our craft.
We escape into the street as new
snow begins to fall, softening
the pavement and our howling hearts.
* * * *
The North Bridge
The costumed red-coat British soldier mocks
the tourists before they cross the North Bridge.
He cannot hide his tin drunkenness from me:
my father taught me the complacent rage of gin.
His eyes lock on a pair of French women in tight
pants who are glad not to hear his insults.
I cross the bridge and see the Minute Man
with his ready flintlock and plow. Growing
up he was a backdrop, a plan and verb
for a new land. Now not much of him remains:
chopped from newspaper ads, stamps, and Knights
of Columbus flyers, blank like the holidays
when we drank liquor fermenting with sour herbs.
People hurry past him to the Visitor Center
as if he were an empty toll booth. My family did
not look forward or backward and ignored whole
years as my father slept drunk rolling in his own
urine. I learned history as omission, how to place
a gap in every story, never of this country and never
from the old villages lost in the holes of tenements.
I follow two women from Texas who have a plan
to trace the battles along lawns hiding
the insistent and hidden war. They cherish imagined
sightings of Barrett, Joseph Hosmer, and Major
Buttrick. I can hear Isaac Davis shout his
order by the Concord River as he lay dying.
"Fire, fellow-soldiers; for God's sake fire!"
A voice carried by a hard inland breeze reports
the closing of the park. I barely see the Minute Man
in the approaching orange darkness. The British
soldier sways alone as a young woman approaches.
He is too drunk to say anything and falls to one
knee. They cling to cold planks of the North Bridge.
I leave sober, flintlock and plow in hand.
* * * *
Saint Paul, Before the Demolition
You pose within the dull window
ready to tell the truth to Roman
hecklers and punks, the ones who
rather believe Caesar and lay a
few coins at the feet of Jupiter.
The foreskin part went right past
them. Never played well in Ephesus.
Some ancestor of those Roman
punks has taken a slingshot
to your image and popped it full
of holes, making you vanish a bit
each day, but always a piece
remains. They haven't given up
and neither have you.
* * * *
Season's End
I threw you out at third base to end the game.
We gathered at the spot, caressing our worn
gloves and dirty bats, speaking the blossom
of each flaming hit and pitch, how we broke
our stats for home runs, doubles, triples
and diving catches. And then my brother
came, easy in his eighteen years with stories
of how quiet steps could steal precious things
and how bitter powders could silence our fears
of tougher boys and softer girls: another game
of skill. You and I did not back away and hide
our gloves as the others did. We took our
hidden fill and listened until the darkness
came. That night we threw a hardball against
a full moon and with eyes closed caught it
with bare hands, never minding the sting,
nor the end of the season.
* * * *
A Sunday Stroll
His head hovers in the middle rows
of the Glee Club and Future Teachers
of America. The camera shows his
sleepless eyes no mercy and inflates
the cheeks and chin. Years from now
everybody will assent to his revulsion.
We hung out on hot summer days
waiting for passing carnivals to set up
in the parking lots of strip malls.
Our strutting was strong and sure
on those nights among the tented
games where people pitched dimes,
balls, and rings hoping to win florescent
bears and plaster Godzillas. He signed
my yearbook with words about friendship
and getting drunk in Woodshop. And now
I see him in a park near the school cackling
in the voice of a crow. He endlessly gathers
bottle caps and tosses them. After all
these years I am beyond sympathy
and remorse even for myself, and stroll
away taking the airs of a hard Sunday.
* * * *
The Carpenter
Out of the back window I see
a carpenter stroke and measure
a two-by-four. He does not hurry
against the evening as his body
turns to shadow in the warm
setting sun. My brother also did not
hurry as he worked a lathe
in the basement of our apartment.
He preferred to work in the last
hours of the day as if eyesight
were the cause of bevels cut
indifferently, and the smell of sweet
oak was all that he required
to tell him where to make a joint.
He used that precision and calm
to cut those who harmed us
in the first years in a new hopeful
land. His fists gouged heads
and chests with such skill
that everyone feared his craft.
His hardness passed away as he
raised motherless children and worked
a machine deep in the holes
of the steel mills, drinking too much
but always sure of his hands in any light.
In the dark, I hear the carpenter
lay plastic sheets to protect his work
for the next day. The house he
is building will be solid and safe
for those who will live in it.
The carpenter cares about his work
and his death.
* * * *
Return
You and I have come to Mule Creek
to watch the moon,
to figure the summation of smooth
waterworn rocks, pine trees.
The creek is too low, the atmosphere
too quick for us to avoid
the light that weaves and rumbles
about us. We hear the wind
dip black branches into the creek
and we watch to the sound.
You have come to Mule Creek
escaping smiling eels, gill
nets, and hooks. I have come here
by leaving, by driving off
a road. This morning you begin
your trip back to the ocean,
past dying and exhausted salmon.
You will not let yourself
die at creek's end. Today, I will
also return. We gulp hard
the water and the air.
* * * *
Los Bukis Play the Salem, Oregon Armory
Even the women are
searched. The men open
their coats, roll up
their pant legs if they wear
boots. The women must open
their purses. No one
is disdainful. It's the price
of admission to the soft belly
of a Saturday night.
The women show off in
faded sundresses with no
curves and old prom dresses.
On the edge of the dance
floor stand young brown men
wearing their bones
tight and unafraid. They drink
with eyes open and alert.
The warm-up bands come
from nearby towns,
Los Reyes from Hillsboro, Los
Papagayos from Newberg,
and the Caballeros
from Cornelius.
Los Papagayos begin. The Armory
is warm and sweet as a corn
field. The Caballeros sport huge
cowboy hats and beg
their voices into excited
sadness. People dance
under the spell
of guitar and accordion.
Los Bukis finally play.
Electric guitars and organs build
an intro as a dry-ice fog
obscures the stage.
Bright silver
costumes suck and reflect
stage lights as the Bukis jerk
and blare. In the parking lot
the warm-up bands drink
tequila from plastic cups
and admire the richness
of the moon.
* * * *
Love at the Factory
Your delicate fingers follow copper
traces that tie each resistor, logic device,
and jumper into a body
of joined plastic and ceramic.
Your thumb strokes the microprocessor.
You admire the symmetry of registers,
memory access, the transfer of data
following paths chartered by humans
on this assembly line.
The board does not hold itself
beyond you. Your fingers know
how to follow the pulse of electrons
as they course and warm
tunnels deep within the board;
you tell me they are like Egyptian
gondolas racing the Nile at night,
and I am thrilled.
* * * *
Instructions on Catching a Salmon
For the first year, find maps and books
about coastal rivers: Nehalem, Klaskanie,
and the Rogue. Trace their geographies.
Read the classifieds and find
an old man selling his rods and reels.
Drink coffee as he tells you stories
about the salmon he has caught, his family,
cancer. For the second and third years, go
to these rivers and watch them grow
and recede. Cast your line without
bait and hook to learn
the tug and warble of the current.
Ignore the men who laugh at you.
Afterwards, put your gear away and wait
for a sign telling you to return. The sign
will be sudden. Your daughter's smile
or just the sun reflecting off a window
in the early morning.
Find, then, the end of a stream
where the salmon are spawning.
Sit and watch them. Do not take
your eyes off them. Watch their tails,
fins, how they wag in the water.
Watch them late into the night until
their eyes rise above the stream
into our world. When the salmon
see the moon for the first time, naked
and without obstruction, look with them,
beyond the boundaries of water, air.
You are ready to catch a salmon.
* * * *
Oh My Beatrice
I did not first see my Beatrice in a fit
of literary lunacy looking for a subject
to fill lonely nights just because the sun
reflected so nicely on that purple dress
as she strutted down shit littered
Florentine streets. You were insane
forcing yourself into sweats and visions
to justify your poems to Philosophy.
Listen, I first saw my Beatrice working
at inventories of utterly useless things.
Her hair is black and her skin is sweet pale.
She bends too close to ledgers trying
to find lost entries for she has the curse
of administrative zeal. At lunch she meets
a boyfriend to jog through clean artless
suburban parks. Shall I become insane
thinking she is brave Athena helping
Agamemnon fight the women thieves?
But let us finally tell the truth:
we are not loved by those we love.
Beatrice never proclaimed her passion,
not even a medieval wink and a hard swish
of her arse in your direction. Love did not
find a voice; poetry found lonely men
and we called it love. So we turn to illusions
and whelp out words in our bare rooms.
Dante, today is the first day of winter
and the sun is burning hard the cold
streets as I watch for immortal runners
in their golden clothes.
* * * *
Municipal Rose Garden
San Jose
I do not come here to look at the flowers
but to gather in the inadvertent harmony
of people strolling between beds of Duets,
Montezumas, Fragrant Clouds, and Shining
Hours, to circle the inaccessible
white fountain which the roses watch
as if in a theatre, forever set in their seats,
forever praising and applauding
with the slow acclaim of falling petals.
The roses remain innocent of any
influence as people gather and leave
inarticulate but with no compulsion
to give a voice to all the redolent colors.
The fenced garden closes an hour after
sundown; time enough to see the moon
lay the paradox of night on the content
and dying roses. I leave the garden last
and alone, a step slower, a step forward.
* * * *
Wash Day
The ticking of buttons colliding with dryer walls
raises up and gathers with the odor of burning
lint among the open stairways of the building.
Under dryer vents in the shade of the unkempt
trees, ferns sway happy in the hot blowing air.
Last night the man and woman below me stabbed
each other. I can now sleep long and easy.
* * * *
Ballroom in Fong's Restaurant
Above the dance floor hang ribbed tubes
softening the florescent lights.
They sway:
confused pendulums searching
for the true path
of gravity.
The dancers, men and their sad women,
touch each other like the sticking
skin of lips
when they part
kissing, a fragile membrane
forever passing
half of each
to half of each.
It does not help to know all people
in all times have danced
for death and life.
Plato saw the Athenians dance
and drink
beyond sense and into
one death. He watched
and did not dance.
The smell of urine
and cheap deodorant
is the breeze
which cools
the dancers. Glasses
of beer and whiskey
make everything
important and less so.
The song ends and the couples leave
the dance floor.
Unimportant words
fall from their mouths.
New and better
words will be found
in the next song.
* * * *
Algorithms and Love Songs
1.
My only brilliant idea in two years
was the use of a Gantt chart
to brown-nose my manager's secretary.
I figure by my next review she'll
have whispered into his ear
what a good worker I am
as they lie in bed on a wet muggy day.
2.
Management has gone to a mountain resort
to study Quality Circles, work modalities,
and the habits of successful executives.
For lunch they had prime rib.
The cafeteria's microwave is broken.
3.
I wonder if the woman from Marketing
thinks I'm a geek. As I speak
about virtual memory problems,
her eyes, so brown and autumnal,
look straight into the eyes
of the QA engineer.
4.
Through my window I see dirty pigeons
perched on a highway light pole.
They crowd each other like in one
of my department meetings
to hear my boss chew me out.
To hell with Theory Y companies.
5.
The guys from marketing are always
telling stories about their trips
to Asia, the whorehouses
in Manila and the expensive hotels
with service that doesn't talk back.
A memo said to watch expenses.
6.
She would swagger into our meetings
and give us vision and enthusiasm;
made engineering the art
of creating fire and cathedrals;
made us feel like Darwin
cataloging turtles in ragged notebooks.
She left. We don't know where.
7.
The field engineer from Oklahoma
really lost it at the annual sales review.
"To hell with your god-damn
bourgeois thinking and morality.
Don't you know what's going
on out there? You're all asleep.
You hear me? Asleep!"
What was the question?
8.
The first rumors of a layoff
spread. No one asks me
if I know anything for
I have no friends in high places.
My co-workers stop talking when
I approach and watch me
without politeness.
For they know I have
no easy way with managers
who whisper knowingly
the terms of employment and life.
* * * *
The Bread Machine
On a mild autumn night my mother must
make bread by candlelight. As I go to a lifeless
market to buy flour I see her consulting
the dancing astrology of shadows on the kitchen
walls, the darting portends on family pictures.
She retreats into the pantry, the umbral cave
where she can observe and take the note
how an unwatched place behaves when she
is thought dead. When I return she moves
carefully into the shadows so that constellations
form safety and undo currents of burning wax.
I read the recipe slowly while she pours rough
portions of butter, sugar, yeast, and flour. I point
to all the buttons that were once so familiar
to mix and bake the inner eclipse of secret things.
In three hours when the sun is ready to walk,
the bread will be done; I know she will wait
until the candle and machine can no longer map
revolutions of softness and metal without reference.
She wakes me when the bread is finished.
The neat slices are hot enough to melt butter
and give slight boil to jam. Cocking her head
to the side as if she is lying on the easiest of pillows,
she smiles at me. The truth is all simple royal
and unobstructed: we learn to live by dying.
* * * *
Like No One
At sixteen you became like no one
among us: standing alone in the park
drinking your father's cheap whiskey,
lost and undone in the shadows of trees,
whispering words no one could hear.
You always played too hard against boys
we met in pick-up games, throwing your
body at them, howling coy threats
and wishing a violent loving dance
where embrace and fists spun together.
I swore never again to help you
in those fights. But you would call
and invite me to drink beer in your
bedroom. Strife between us ended
as the alcohol and friendship softened
our lost lives. We talked and laughed
as our bodies evaporated and disappeared
until the morning sun charred the mist
and I awoke alarmed by your strange
body, whose loveliness I could only fear.
* * * *
Broadway, South Boston
One long snake. A thick skin
of double parked cars and buses
peeling scales. People pelt the beast
with drunken shards.
* * * *
The Tour
You show me the wilted corn stalks where last
summer you grew your first garden since
the divorce. Next to the corn lie the bodies
of tomatoes and a mound haunted with potatoes.
In the other corner, the weight of apples ripped
two large branches off a trunk, and the cherries
were good for pie filling, but not much more.
Your son stomps into grass held together by moss.
Drainage is a problem. You walk for me the path
of trenches you will dig, stop and point out
the remaining path to the house, and explain how
the buried pipes will suck away the run-off.
Near a rotting row of two-by-fours you want
to put in a hot tub with an unobstructed view
of the suburban sky. It's all you seemed to own
the past year. From the center of your yard,
you scoop a handful of moist dirt from a flower
bed and walk to me and smear it across my
white shirt. I finish the tour thinking sanity
is all connection, and all the color black.
* * * *
I Saw My Brother
I saw my brother's soul in a happy mason
building a fountain in the morning light,
his muscles laboring, his eyes listening.
Crafting his work, he slowly sanded pagan
blue rock to make the floor and water ignite.
I saw my brother's soul in a happy mason
pondering how to place limestone in a basin
and find a tight intersection; with his slight
muscles laboring, his eyes listening
he chiseled water spouts to cool sons
and daughters on humid unbearable nights.
I saw my brother's soul in a happy mason
who shed smiles as he saw the unison
of his skill in the final orange twilight,
his muscles laboring, his eyes listening.
This cold morning's dream will fasten
my dead brother to me on tranquil nights
because I saw his soul in a happy mason,
his muscles laboring, his eyes listening.
* * * *
The Left Fielder
For Floyd Skloot
You lost your throwing arm going
After one in the left field corner.
You ran into a makeshift fence
Held together by barbed wire.
In the major leagues, left fielders
Can easily run with abandon
Into the left field corner,
Their fences are high
And padded. Now you run
Poems into fences more twisted
And dangerous, testing their
Courage, their ability to run
And catch the thing that counts.
The catch is always made.
* * * *
Notes on some of the Poems
Title. Vilkas is the Lithuanian world for wolf. The vilkas of Lithuanian history appeared in a dream to found a nation. The old relatives in my mother's village would often discuss the dreams of the previous night as messages from another world. Strange, my earliest memory is a dream.
Who Remembers the Armenians? This is a paraphrase of an infamous comment by Hitler. His staff was worried about world reaction to the extermination of European Jews and Hitler replied with the question.
Dosteovsky's Whores. At one end of St. Peterburg's famous street Nevsky Prospetk is the Necropolis, where the great writer is buried. It is enclosed by a wall. When night starts, prostitutes begin to line the street.
Despair in Disneyworld. A fantasy poem. Klaipeda is the major port of Lithuania.
The Family Watches Reruns of Bonanza. Who remembers this long lasting TV show about a mother-less family of males and their loyal Chinese cook?
To "Max Stern of Paris, 1944. Outside of the city of Kaunas is a prison used by Nazis to gather up Lithuanian Jews among other people. Prisoners were held in a special room before being executed. In the walls of room prisoners would etch their names. Hard to miss Max's name.
The Photo Booth. Anybody remember how poor people took family pictures way back when?
Kryziu Kalnas. Means "Hill of Crosses". Starting in the 1950's Lithuanians would go out in the night and plant Christian crosses, any type of crosses on the hill as a protest against Soviet rule.
The Minija River Has No Current. The river that runs along side my mother's village. The reference to the graves is about the Partisan War. This area of the Lithuania saw the heaviest and most vicious fighting against the Soviet occupation.
Family Plot, Vezaiciai. This is the area outside Gargzdai, my mother's village. After the Lithuanians gained their freedom, thieves stripped the cemetery of any metal worth selling. Also, on any Sunday you could walking into any cemetery and see many people busy sweeping, pruning, and keeping in order the family plots.
Birute, Dream. True story about the daughter of my mother's grade school teacher. Both my mother and her were the same age. During the Partisan War she was wounded, and rather than let the Soviet soldiers capture her, she bit through her wrist veins to ensure she would die. Birute was a pagan princess who began a goddess worshiped in Western Lithuania. Very powerful female force and symbol.
Los Bukis Play the Salem, Oregon Armory. The Bukis were a very popular Mexican rock band. Very slick, high tech concert with smoke, etc. Nothing down home for sure.
The Left Fielder. Learned much about writing poetry from Floyd Skloot. One of the best poets in America.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following magazines in which these poems first appeared.
Acorn Whistle: Los Bukis Play the Salem, Oregon Armory
Writers Forum: Fairy Tales
Painted Hills Review: Instructions on Catching a Salmon
Snail's Pace Review: Latkes
bite to eat place: Pig Roast
Red Wheelbarrow: Oh My Beatrice
Oregon East: Season’s End
Northwest Magazine: Steelhead
Acorn Whistle: Throwing Snowballs
* * * End Vilkas by Vidas Mykolas* * *