fistful at fifty

chinacoaster — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:04:41 GMT

Fistful at Fifty Selected Poems M.R. Merris China Coaster Press Benicia CA Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie for the forgotten, the failed ,the forlorn my boys and the people around the tables who saved my life, thank you. Fistful at Fifty. Copyright c 2006 by M.R. Merris.All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. The author wishes to thank all he previous employers for giving him the means to live while writing these poems. First China Coaster edition 2006 Designed by the author. . Intro These raw rants, bull shit musings and stories have been written in the hotel rooms, steam ships, brothels, airplanes, ball rooms , bars and trains of America and the Far East for the last 30 years. Some are “finished” and some are not, just like some of us. Don’t ask me about their meaning, music, lit. influences, style etc. or why should anybody care, I don’t have the answers . After 37 years of carrying these around in backpacks, sea bags, boxes and in the back of my truck I though a fistful to open your hearts was deserved. After 50 years that’s all that is left, a fistful of poems. To paraphrase Doc. Williams; “Ladies please raise your skirts, because the language is foul and the heart pure. Gentlemen don’t laugh so hard that you soil yourself, you might just learn something.” This is way off, but I know Doc Williams is in heaven with Michelline, Buke and Welch smiling, and that is good enough. My thanks to the” professionals” who have read and commented on these poems, it meant a lot. What meant more, and still does, are those in whose eyes tell me they understand them. After 37 years that understanding is still all the payment this poet will take. M.R. Merris Midnight 7/30/2003 In the Company of Wolves Benicia ,CA. all the world and you babe for Marge Gibeau the world beat across the City and back until you found yr. passage into the corner cave. into it’s cool darkness amidst the noonday sun you fell. there among the weak, the wounded the gossamer trapeze artist you found us. and we held you and we laughed and imbibed the grape, the drippings of the grain and forgot who we were. but forgetting forged fiercer screams finally heard only by you alone in a room without a view. and again you found us, now the broken bent gargoyles of your dream and we held you and we cried and we laughed and fought for serenity in our hearts. and we watched you grow into the proud rose of you amongst the wine, gin, tangerine memories. and it was good, and it was enough, and it was gravy, just like he said. but the dampness of the earth has kissed your lips and you left us and I will miss you, will miss you long, long after the last call. cheerleaders for Debbie Gordon after 20 years I can still taste my nuts as i sat on the bench, praying to the Virgin Mother to help me not to peak at their blue panties. i still hear my screams in Olangapo’s whorehouses from nightmares of their smudged waxen lips fresh from their boyfriend’s cocks beneath back seat high school letter jackets admitting in 5th period lunch how their fathers cried to stupor begging tenderness while their mothers drank to oblivion beseeching death. i still feel their porcelain… porcelain hands attempting to touch my withdrawing cheek w/ a word that is still unknown, friend, instead of touching my heart, my body like I prayed for every night. i still taste my rage running rivulets off their perfect boobs bathed in bleached white wool broken off the pedestals I put them on. in my failed paragon I wanted them whole i wanted them pure i wanted them for myself. after 20 years i am haunted by how much I haven’t had to confess by how much i missed. something in the way love moves something in the way love moves that makes boys find themselves into men and confuse the yen for cunt with friendship and find that thy miss both in the end. something in the way love moves that turns dolls and dishes into children and homes that are put together for 3,5 and 20 and makes you scratch yr. head when they fall apart. something in the way love moves that sears the heart with the sterno of quicksilver joy and makes us wonder in 3, 5 and 20 if it was worth it to begin. sat. morn Chesapeake to Anne Waldman this is the nut, you are born alone and die alone. all that’s in between is running to belong, all that’s in between is the poem. crocker bowl i think why i can’t leave this shell, go down or up the tree just, go. and my mother’s blue crocker bowl (cracked 4 years} is out before me. jewel not yet diamond for Stephanie Mines who liked the last stanza and for James Taylor for ripping him off of it. chasm blue streak love stretches ft. to silence. void is the same no mater, here or there. all is in, is in you. i can feel it, can feel it and it is the silence between foot steps on a country road. 2 for anyone who wants them -hot tub- i tremble in the transparent terror of my finger tips stretching for anyone’s heart. -last night’s lover- in towards me is you tasting me in you. but it goes on so holy: irony -poetry- ‘gainst the grasping yield of humans trying to live, it fails. -economics- flat to the face; gear teeth grind down. on the train spineless men watch it die silent. images you always come back to the handful flashing in belly. find the right key for each and the knot would unravel. until then peace just bites your heels. note on love to Jessica in winter full moon silence we stand w/ scars that were fresh wounds to bone. we stare we remember we wait for the next time. Jess’s Xmass poem 1977 jess it’s your 5th Christmas and i’ve missed them all. 5 years of Asia 5 years of sea 5 years of the bottle and battles for my sanity. i’m sick and tired of rummin’ i’m tired and sick of sea bags. jess I don’t know your eyes nor your voice only a remembrance of your mother’s belly 3 months before your birth. before the fall for Marijane McAdams while I cleaned the lube oil coolers in the South China Sea my tears ran rivers in the grease, fish gills, doll’s heads, heaped at my knees. while I cleaned, i bloodied your memory w/ my fists on the deck plates screaming to be set free. a poet is dead for William Wantling our brother is dead. the one who sat us down and told us the truths that we didn’t want to hear. who showed us that we weren’t the only ones that cried from the ache in our gut as it caught the wind pain of the world and ripped it from the mast of our comprehension. the one who forced fear to be a 4 letter word by pushing us into it. who showed us a poet is a man, then a shaman. our brother is dead. the one who cracked the insanity? that engulfed us from birth and led us to discover strength in it’s ruins. who worked under the darkness In front a forge, honing w/ his honesty the edge we needed to castrate the demons in our dreams. our brother is dead. the one who was a monk of the streets. imprisoned in the monastery of the truths he bit his shackled hands off and escapade into death. our brother is dead. in the sunshine they found him. bloody stumps beating the sky tears furrowing skull spittle in beard words stuck to tongue china coaster I the slant eye. the whorl of the cunt. the cantos of the foreign tongue wanderin’ across yr. ocean/mind. ‘nd it all began on the main deck of a T-2 bound for Haifa you were Ulysses and it was before the Great War in London. II (in the looking glass water of the being) the wind caught the seed of yr. wanderlust and held you. you heard false remembrances of her heart you held the hand of Kobe, Kowloon, Yokohama, Seattle, L.Beach you adored the Goddess of Frisco, like your sea daddy 15 years before. you wondered if wandering would reward you in yr. cold aloneness of the Great Northern Route. whores introduction in the broken pain of loneliness they come to you providing; sex, courage escape. into the neon strobe of their protection you run. whores fox she’s the prettiest whore in the bar. she marries every night and divorces every morning. if she takes a overnight she gets cat calls and stares. if she has a steady boy friend the pretty boys, the fighters, the drunkards, wishes she were free to fuck. so in the beer bottle image of last night’s customers the thin veneer of hope in movie magazines fingernail polish and platform shoes is shined by the razor blade formed between the setting moon and the rising sun. whores pearly you met her when she was a kid. she should’ve been home having crushes on seniors, but she wasn’t. you took a shine to her. the shine in her sallow cheeks and the youth in her tease ceased when your lessons filled her body and broke her cherry heart. she crosses the street w/ red eyes and veil in hand. it’s Saturday and you know she has just come from church. you ask her what the priest said. “pray.” and she leaves you a woman. whores cita she was the first in P.I. and that is why it hurts. you picked her up on the rebound when her belly was 5 months big. w/ yr. money she bought baby clothes, bottles white and pink towels, when her time came, she nearly died and there was no man pacing the floor worrying ‘cause you were shacked, drunk and passed out. you talked of marriage when drunk on pity chased with beer but a hard on has no morals so you left. a year latter you went back to say hi and the belly was 3 months big. whores 50 Pesos you put 50 pesos between her teats and she looked insulted, like you didn’t pay her bar fine and her room wasn’t lined w/ names and addresses of one night’s husbands who were always divorced the next morning. you put 50 pesos between her teats and she looked insulted, like her aunt didn’t sell her to Papasan and Papasan didn’t beat her because her boy friend put his drunken Marine head thru a door because she didn’t have hair on her pussy. and you shut her calm voice out of yr. mind in the cool P.I. dawn. you put 50 pesos between her teats and she argued like a bitch because she wanted to take you to the gate. she followed you out in her robe, the money green against the silken green of her night-robe. and you leave her cryin’ real tears cheeks red w/ the reflections of the dawn. and you leave in a cab w/ a junior engineer who raps about the tanks. and you leave her for yr. stomach turned, the whorl of love displaced the beer and you didn’t want to get burned again, burned again in the cool P.I. dawn. whores ending in blue you know you can’t hide but you run anyway. away from when you played with the pressed hopes of glances, lollipops, balloons and Friday phone calls. their profile was twisted in the spring sun by the Monday morning of change and they were past you before you knew it. you know you can’t hide but you run anyway. away into the Mexican hat dance of men hurting women women hurting men.. you know you can’t hide from howls of the wounded in the battles of the heart. Quasar* for Hal Hughes when I read the poems something in them, in me, lives. lives in the streets of Olangapo, in the rats with big cigars, in the beggars, thieves, in the whores who feel me up while I drink and laugh and play the fool, the gambler who has played his luck to the edge. when I read the poems something in them, in me, lives in the final pot of the night, the life and love of the poems. forgive me, i have played the fool, the gambler who has played his luck to the edge and lost. *Quasar was anthology of poetry in published by Hal Hughes and Stephanie Mines. It was the author’s first publication a love poem for the bottle you have been a jaded and scarred lover in the nocturnal past. you have been the jagged curtain between the light of dawn that was inside me and the blackness that was beyond the Jackals. the Whore House of Hell was masked w/ your redeeming mouth juices. “let your soul be clean,” you said and i was desperate enough to believe you. the way back For Gary Snyder “…Forward…” from a letter from Gary Snyder circa 1977 i came back from the woods no half pint of sweet red wine in hip pocket, no 22 slung over my shoulder for all those who love me, including myself. i came back to go “…Forward.”” longing for Betty B. i want you to lay yr lovely waist your flat back into my belly so that i can wrap my arms around the shoulders of your heart and have you whisper the secrets of yr. dreams into my forearms in the selfless still night. held “ i fucked to be held,” she said as my eyes seared her nipples unprotected by bra. the sunset of her smile faded fast bulwarking the ebbing shame simmering her soul. my groin became God and caught my heart before it stuttered, “i did to.” south fork of the Yuba to Gary Snyder it must have been six years ago, in the spring, when I went to look for Lew south of the bridge by 100 feet. it was on a boulder, in the warm sun, while i was sitting that he startled me, ranting from the bushes, “go for it kid.” that rang as loud as his ring of bone had rung 14 years before to this wet eyed wiper on his first trip to Kobe. now, my eyes still swell and my back goes prick when i hear that ring in your voice resonating with what is to be done, while my son sits on my back and shakes your finger. in October’s light for Jonah Merris i’ve seen the face of God too often stuck in a granite valley or in the stretch back neck red wood trees or in the lines of Snyder, Welch, Carver, Buke. yet never in the sunlight as it twirls itself into my son’s curls. never in this October light as it paints itself into place. never. never. i wonder why i need something so dramatic so grand when the small, good things will do. every other night To Beth B. onetime she came over and we talked on that spring lawn. her voice stripped our winter silence as fright flashed its’ vicious teeth in her eyes. she was a moan that I couldn’t hear. that summer while drinking wine in Frisco I remembered that lawn and all I didn’t listen to came back came back, like when I held his scar’s ache in her while she held mine in me. and now i still mourn that i wasn’t there to hold her as i did when she needed me as i needed her every other night. stuck it comes on it the 7th evening stretch. “there she comes walking down the street…” the kids in front of me sing it like i did the first time i heard it, waiting to be chosen 25 years ago on a playground in Illinois. it’s like a song stuck in the heart’s ear always toe be sung over and over always forgettin’ the same words always feeling the same fears, always waitin’ to be chosen on a playground Illinois. somewhere in those little black berry stained hands and frozen asphalt burned knees lies the child still waiting and this unnerves my self-damming din. he holds me as we wait. far past the tide line as TV body bags bulged w/ both side’s children my jeans did with both side’s souls. it was my anger it was all my fear. as napalm flamed neon skies skinning my redden eyes to its’ dark heart Jagger cried,”.. . It’s just a kiss away” in my ear. it was my anger it was all my fear. as i watched a last crusade of hope my parents noticed frightened and silent as my dreams bore fruit in mud and breakfast in bed. it was my anger it was all my fear. as i lay wake w/ night-sweats remembering the nobility of my rage and my cowardness it was my anger it was all my fear. i still can’t forget those who lived and what is remembered of those who fought without and within. it haunts me, haunts me far past the tide line of my youth. bar talk to Cathy Merris-McNealy sun setting in the breeze kids need supper wife in bed with cramps taxes due by midnight. the phone rang the wife took it. it was mom. i could hear the Jackals laughing again and my bones knew it was my sister. the one who looked like an Indian princess in Manhattan before she returned to small town Illinois. the one whose back broke from stocking bars and working kitchens in two different states for 20 years. whose doc finally said nothing could be done, just disability and dope. whose tongue two weeks before was so dope thick that when she called me honey i cried. that one had O.D. and now was in withdrawal. in the town of her birth in the town of her mother's birth. the town of her grandmother’s birth and death in the town where her grand father drank in sweating silent red brick streets and danced other women in full moon snow still nights while the Jackals of the Whorehouse of Death circled laughing. and now his granddaughter, my sister , is looking in their eyes to see if she wants their laughter or her life. this is for the one that you left in the morning a long time ago: warm hands for Marilyn and what I was too scared to let happen i forgot the way i described her skull "..a baby with night attached." and how I warmed my hands on her breasts braless beneath her sweater on those winter mornings. i forgot how when she would laugh ‘nd lean into me my spine shuddered poem to flesh. i forgot how early that summer she wrote that she was late. a week later another came everything was fine and she was moving in with… i forgot after a fall in Kobe i came home for Christmas, there was another from her she was leaving him there was a number, i never called. i forgot her until yesterday when my boy told me that a girl told another girl who told another girl who told him that the first girl liked him and what the heck should he do, run or stay. my hands shuddered cold and i muttered" warm your hands" at a light on Telegraph and 51st. he looked at me like I had lost it. and you know he was right. miracle for Ray Carver sitting on the shitter elbows on knees looking at a caricature of Jarrell it engulfs me, gratitude. what i failed to get doesn’t matter, what i got counts. one day five years or twenty Carver was right, it’s enough. for those who come next listen to the waves hopefully thru the din of loved ones speech. walk the wake and wonder where we came from. look thru the driftwood and find pieces suitable for a box, a bowl or a coffin for some unnamed pain. sweep the cabin clean and leave something for the next. self-flush to Liza Dodd I have stumbled over and scrambled and traced and tied down and researched and retrofitted enough misplaced and mauled and skinned shiny copper wires to last a man a life time. yet still I go about making my daily bread and trying to forgive myself for putting sweat and thought and caring into monkey-paws of wires so that others may speak instead of me. i feel the October air, even in late August, and my heart and mind and soul regrets the copper spaghetti i have laid and how I didn’t seem to connect to you and if i did, somehow i didn’t get an answer-back, and this makes me feel like the toilet I pee in empty. take this as an apology for not giving you what is in me and intern not letting me witness what is in you. Loosing I have been loosing things lately my wife my boys my home my wallet my heart my mind- don’t laugh too hard or too long you might find that you have lost yours as well- and sometimes even my soul. but it didn’t really worry me until I lost my Swiss army knife. for some reason that startled me, forced me to be awake to see that things i lost were lost thru holes. holes in my pockets is how i lost my knife and holes in my life is how I loose things. some drunks have told me that loosing thru holes is a way from separating wheat from the chaff, that what is meant to be stays, no matter what. and our job is to see what we can learn from the loosing from the keeping. i know this might sound like bullshit coming from mouths of drunks and junkies but I have wiped the vomit from these same faces and have seen God smiling and know it is not and know it is not. valentine to an old romantic fool i gave my ex her valentine yesterday so to day i think i will give me my best, this ; i love you, “you silly old bear” and am so proud the way you have walked thru the fire these past three years while the Whorehouse of Hell’s Jackal’s hungered for your soul. thank you for your strength to get down on your knees every morning and ask for help M.R. Merris b. Feb. 12, 1953. in Jacksonville Illinois. Started writing poetry in the 8th grade as a class assignment where his first attempt earned a F. Started drinking at 13 and became a black out drinker by age 15 Shipped as merchant seamen for 2 years and then enlisted in USN. In the 80’s, clean and sober, he returned to civilian life and lives in the S.F. bay area. Married late and became a father early he was divorced after 15 years. 6 months after he left the marriage he was laid off from his job of 15 years. He was unemployed for two years. Currently gainfully employed he is currently working on book of stories titled “Waving Goodbye.”

new poems

chinacoaster — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 22:09:46 GMT

These are my latest. what do you think. valentine to an old romantic fool I gave my ex her valentine yesterday so to day I think I will give me my best, this ; I love you, “you silly old bear” and am so proud the way you have walked thru the fire these past three years while the whorehouse of Hell’s jackal’s hungered for your soul. thank you for your strength to get down on your knees every morning and ask for help. poem w/ nowhere to go To Liza Dodd. it’s warm now shirtsleeve weather in early Novem ber funny, after 25 years I always expect it to be col der full nose blowing weather now, but it isn’t so I will move on. drunk w/ the red orange leaves ocher undercoated hills painted sand w/ dark blue gray washed shadows and almost sun highlights. I miss my turn off twice and twice I must go back to begin again, looking for my destination. but the trees, the trees, the yellows the browns, the rust blow about like dead soldiers in war everybody fought in and no one wants to talk about. ratchet my eye to the brilliance now and all that was said or wasn’t said or done and wasn’t done lays in someone else's closet and I hold its brilliance in my memory as I do these colors, fruits and spoils In a war that I wish I hadn’t fought in. and move to begin again. 3am Poem here I am once again awake at 3AM. instead of apnea or a anxiety bound wife or a scared sick kid waking me it is this poem, this amalgam of words that amaze me with their ability to lift their skirt and get this old man’s dick hard with hope, for what I don’t know. but I wait, wait until it tells me it’s truth and then I can sleep sleep still in it’s cairn studded arms jumping into the sea.

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fistful at fifty

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