Poetry

My trip to Memphis with my college marching band, mens’ conference basketball tournament. I am keeping this journal as if it were my friend.  I don’t know what I expected.  I have no friends in band now  I wanted to write  I wanted opportunity.  Secretly, I never told anyone before I left or on the trip.  Now  I have this      ring.      An heirloom. 

            Donald Ivory

H         H

H         H

HhhhhH

H         H

H         H e   said, “Man, I’m about to cry.”

He said, “You can’t trust nobody

not even your kinfolk.”

He said, “Man, are you on the streets too?”

I looked at him and opened my mouth waitin’

for words of gratitude

for his not asking

for union shelter money,

only asking that I listen

for the wisdom in his story

He said he’d tell me

if I stuck by him

for a while

hung out downtown

met some of his people

I didn’t know

who was crazier, him

for his hair knotted into

four obscure dreadlocks

the stitches across his left eye

his filthy blue jeans with

the perfectly ironed creases,

or me

for falling for his bullshit

he only wanted money

something tried to tell me

this guy is a conman.

but my thoughts were conflicting

this man could be Jesus

he said, “Man, every time you think you got it good,

somebody lets you down

then you got nothin at all.”

and I knew he was right

we were never crazy.

I jumped in

but I couldn’t tell

this man

I loved him

“If you need some money

to get into the shelter,

I’d be glad to buy your ring.”

He said, “Man, I ain’t never spent a

night of my life in no shelter

if I want a bed

I got kinfolk

across the river there.

I just gotta walk all night.”

he said, “man

I’m about to cry.”

and the tears

really were there  

I could see

 his reflection

in the leaves

 sitting there on the ground

until a breeze comes

 and he disappears.

They closed the public mental health hospital three years ago.  What were we

supposed to do?  A few, like ol’ Henry, had families with

money.  private care.

and a bunch of us went back to jail

myself included

The rest have been out there  in the square park  in the alley ways  surrounding Beale street  “You can’t hustle here, man.  You’ll go to jail.” 

just waiting for us.  Shoot, I’ve been in jail for total ten years.  I tell you, man. 

 Some people need to be in jail. My uncle, for instance.  He killed seven people.  First he killed, four then they let him out you believe that?  They let him out, and he killed three more.  But I don’t need to be in jail.

 You see how we sit here,  we don’t even know each other, and you say to me that you just got to Memphis you ask me if I want to smoke some grass, I don’t even know you, but man, I’m watching out for you. This city will hurt you. These stitches from three days ago.  Man, you can’t trust nobody.

I know you can’t

Now I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say

 Alright, man, I’m gonna take you downtown, I’m going to introduce you to some people, man, then we’ll get some beer.  Now don’t get me wrong I’ve smoked before

 me and Gerald  used car dealer  we used to smoke and laugh  sing and walk 

man, the sun just

                          hugs you sometimes

*     *     *

 prima noche

IIIIIII

   ii

   ii

   ii

IIIIIII   went out alone on the first night.  I didn’t know what I would find.  How could I know?  Everybody else was either too tired or too determined to walk in a huge group.  I’m only twenty years old, and that night I wanted to lose myself.  And besides, what’s the point of tagging along with a group of people who don’t care if you’re there in the first place.  So I walked alone, down Beale street.  Tourist attraction, but the only thing open downtown after eight o’ clock.  I went into the smallest and most busy bar I could find and walked all the way to the back where the band was playing.  Lead singer, forty something, white, cigarette, long straw colored hair and leather skin.  He was ok, knew the guitar.  Sax player, knew his shit as well.  A groupie past her prime was holding a tip bucket and dancing with anyone not sitting.  What’s the biggest bang for my buck? I asked the bartender.  Barbara.  The Big Ass Beer.  I said ok.  Two of them eventually and wouldn’t you know it, I was dancing with old groupie.  But she got to be too much pushing her ass into me, not pleasant.  A nearly forty skinhead was going for her, and I let him move in. 

 Man comes in, a large man, cream colored, pinstriped, three piece suit.  Vest and all.  Cane, and everybody all turning and looking.  The singer even gave him a little salute.  He sat right up next to the stage, his gorgeous daughter following and taking a seat between her father and a guy who reminded me of my friend Anderson.  This guy is big. 

So I watch the band, shout here and there.  I’m taking it easy, I cash out, take the bartender up on a two dollar jello-shot.  Twenty dollars and I’m off.  I walk around, till I hear a song from high school days coming out of some really big crowded place.  This is where the young people are.  And I guess I do like to be with people my own age.  So I go in there, 21 and up.  Oh well, no one seemed to care.  I went to the bar and ordered a big ass beer.  It’s the chief export. 

 I see my friend Anderson’s doppelganger.  He says, Can we smoke in here?  English accent.  I look around, ashtrays, smoke.  Yes.  I say, do you have a light.  Fire baby.  comin at me.  Feelin’ a little drunk.  I kinda fall toward this guy as we’re talking.  I say, man, I can’t yell for much longer, let’s go outside.  So we go outside.  He’s got a glass bottle, back inside.  Just a little.  We stand there, music’s not so loud, dancing girls outside.  They’d had too much to drink.  But we all seemed to be having a great time, so we just kept on yelling.  I say, did you say something about weed earlier?  He says, yeah, do you smoke?  I say, yeah, let’s go smoke. 

We walk a block down.  And my instincts lead me astray into a man standin’ there in an all blue jumpsuit.  A short guy, and he says, “Hey man, where’d you get all that hair?”  I call back to him, drunk, “Man, I just sit in the sun every now and then, drink me some water, and it keeps on growin’.”  So we talk for a while, English Anderson talks, the blue jumpsuit guy likes English Anderson, obviously favors him, keeps saying stuff like, “Now this guy, he knows what he’s talking about.”  and I try to impress him, I try to show him how badly I want to be down there with him, how I wish I could slip out of this high-class, money cushioned world.  And he says, “man, I don’t want to be a bum, but I don’t got a home, I’m homeless.  If you could help me get into the shelter man?  It’s gettin’ late and not many people are gonna’ be about.  If you could help me out...”  So I give him three dollars, and we walk away. 

And we walk outside the tourist area towards the falling apart centurion buildings, down an alley way.  Dumpster, and it’s lit.  I like this.  It feels nice outside, I’m just drunk enough.  Oh, and being high just makes everything better. 

*     *     *

             mea culpa

Band, band, give me a hand

the best dressed in the land

doing it in memphis takin candy

from babies Large Pepsi 4.00

We go out again, that is, me and some band mates.  We get barbecue, not at the Rendezvous but at Jazz City Cafe, oh well.  I eat some good ribs, I’m there.  But I don’t feel so there.  I get a call from my friend, it’s terrible.  Terrible news.  And it shakes me up, bad.  Then I walk around for an hour with a freshman and we get carded on every attempt.  It is college night. 

I swore not to talk to any homeless people today.  They robbed me like a preacher dipping into the offering plate.

What kind of sick and lonely am I, to look for comfort in the homeless  What is it, I believe there is substance under the one track mind, hunt to gather, but underneath it all, something bigger, built with experience, built by the Hebrews, a sort of openness to the world, a detachment from things, but do I want this?  Mea culpa, can I let you in?  Mi casa es su casa.

I want to, as they say, “fling open the door ... indeed, rip the little thing from it’s jam.”  But Herod put those locks on tight, and, mea culpa , I will dance, I will let you strip me of my money, paper thin.  Here, get yourself into the shelter, get outta here.  C’mon, I’ve given you five dollars.  Two only, that’s all I have.  I’m going to sit in the alleyway.

Read this slowly

O, baptize me.

When I went into this thing,

I didn’t know what I was getting

my    self

    into

 but that’s ok.

Times in the timorous

 centurion timbers

All coming down soon,

but at that time

I wanted something, because

man, the sun just

                        hugs you sometimes.

 but suggesting

suggesting the

digestion of a

world I have no

place or do I

?

Prima noche, et cetera

              Do I?

   this guy is a conman

 this guy could be Jesus

Where did all of my people go

    At the dawn of time, 

            I was

            lifted

           b  u  t

lifted from the very creek bed

         b  u    t

      at    that  time

the world looked to me

to me and due me,

through me they worshiped

and I spoke to them

in a tongue I

never really knew

but they were

            due me

they spoke right through me

and Memphis blue

            me

speakin’ right through me

   Now let those golden rays

gather me up

I’m giving up.  I’m going back to the hotel because I can’t make it out here.  And worse, they had told me, “They will take you down, not gently.  They will mock you, entreat you with their tales, spit you out.  They are a scourge on the city, and you could die out there.”  I told them, “No, I will go down there, they will give me sight, and I them.  Three days later, I will return home with the world, the true world flowing from my hands.”

Yet, I still walk blindly through the streets.

What am I but a lowly beggar myself?  What do I want besides my sight?  Would I scream to the derelicts if I did not believe?  Believe that they, the lowest of our kind, would cast out the devils in my white-bred mind, that I would learn to speak in their new tongue, that we ain’t scared of no serpents, that we will drink together, in the park, by cannons, and ain’t nothin’ gonna touch us, that man, when you think you got nobody at all, we can lay our hands on one another, and we will recover.

*     *     *

            Memphian Bellum

I looked to the sky, and I felt the river ebbing,

 the moon, with his lasso, his hair so black,

he thesters in the gutter.  and the blood on

 his lips, three guys jumped me last night,

We are voices crying loud in the wilderness.

            D

            D

       d

d          donald Ivory.

That’s Donald as

in Ronald McDonald.

That’s Ivory as

in the soap.

I walked next to him, lagging slightly behind.  One block passed us, and still no words exchanged.  He glanced back at me twice, an odd glint in his eye that spoke of innocence, or maybe something not so tragic.  But something about this guy told me I would have no trouble.  So I walked closer to him, found myself right next to him soon enough.  He said, “Man, I’m about to cry.”  I wanted to tell him it would be ok, but we both knew the truth.  We’re both a little crazy, both a little down on our luck, slaves of a world that tells us we aren’t enough, aren’t agreeable, our families aren’t opening their doors when the road’s gotten tough.  And we aren’t gonna make it.  He must feel it.  Does he know my downfall?  Does he know my blame?    As we walked, we passed one last club, blues band from muse land, the Twelve o’ Clock Special.

He said, “Man, are you on the streets too?”  I said, “Sorta.” 

He said, “Man, I’m about to cry.”  I said, “You gotta

hold up,  Man.  The world ain’t all bad.”

He said, “Man, every time you think you got it good,” I said, “I’m listening.”

He said, “Someone lets you down,” and I caught the glisten of his ring.

“and then you got nothing at all.” 

I said, “Let’s go to the park.  Let’s watch the river.”

He said, “Man, we’ll never get across.

Take a look at this ring.” It is the giver

who meant to bless the world for the sake of the takers.

That I might fall down at the world’s expense,

live in the gutter, take from the mothers

but give them their freedom

  from consideration

   from initiation

     from their own salvation

And I spot the river, dug quietly through the nation.

Two men asleep behind the bus station.

We walk to the park bench.  It gives us a false sense of elevation.

I offered him a chance to go to the shelter, for satiation.

He said, “Man, I ain’t never spent a night of my life in no shelter. If I want a bed, I got kinfolk across the river there.”  I say, “Man, is that not the temptation?”

He said, “I can’t go there, not a homeless man.  You don’t go down by the river, this city will hurt you, and the river will kill you.  What you gotta do is hop on man’s creation.

But man, I can’t do that.”

There are cannons

pointing towards the next state,

too afraid to move apparently, petrified by the Great River. 

Memphian Fighters, Postbellum Aeroliths

stuck in their bellies. 

And I wonder

            should we shoot them

                        what would happen?

He looked to me and actually said, “Nobody gets across.”

And I knew he was right.

I knew we didn’t stand a fighting chance

New worlds like these, they are to us

 like so many depleted convenient stores

that homeless men can’t touch or go in.

He said, “Man, if I want a bed,” 

 I said, “The river’s so black in this night,”

He said, “My sister lives over there, in West Memphis,”

 I said, “it’s a black that’s begging”

He said, “That’s where I lived before I came out here.”

 “begging to be crossed.”

We sat on the bench, in the park, over the river, talking for more than an hour, the wind biting, and he told me his story.  I tried to put in my two cents, but each time he would tell me to listen very carefully, and I was no fool, I abided.  Gradually the tide subsided, and I wanted to go inside.  When I went into this thing, I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into.  I wanted to help this man, I wanted to be this man, I wanted understanding to fall like change into a bucket.  He wanted to go home.  He said we should reconvene here in this same spot every day, we should stick together.  He wanted to get some beer and he would take me downtown, meet some of his people.  And despite myself, I wanted something to remember this attempt, of whatever it was, and he did want to give me his ring, he liked me.  I thought I could help him out, and I gave him ten dollars.  He didn’t want me to buy my friends, and he gave me the ring.  

He said, “Man, you wait around here, or wander about, but in an hour, I’ll be back, and you just keep your eye out.  You see that bus station, two guys asleep, I’ll be right over there.  And when you see me you just come out and put your hands up, stick ‘em straight above your head, and I’ll see you, I’ll have my hands up, and man, we sit here, and we gonna make it.  Across the street, we’ll be from each other, hands just up in the air.  And man, when we finally make it here or there, you tell me all about your family.  Man, my sister’s going to like you.”

I went inside, no cigarettes, no money, nobody, nothin' at all. 

Lonesome Memphis