Jack Grapes Poems

Some nights I sleep in my tuxedo.
My fingers untie the bow-tie
in my sleep as if I were
swooning to the tune of Begin the Beguine.
The pain in my hip goes away,
a rapture divine
of fried chicken in a roadside diner
where a song of tropical splendor
comes from an old jukebox
straight from the 1930s.

Powell and Astaire appear
on a winding staircase.
The threads of my dreams
take me back to the two-lane highway
on the way to Baton Rouge,
snaking through the swamps
and cypress trees,
swearing my love would last forever
in that smoky bar where we met
over a bourbon and Coke.

I've seen people die from clutching
gold coins too tightly. I'd rather fling them
from the caboose of a train
crossing the Mississippi River
over the old Slidel Bridge, and there,
tap-dancing on those steel girders,
Eleanor and Fred
dancing at the speed of light
and the world surrounding all of us
shrinks to the size of a peppercorn.

I join them for a moment, tap-dance
between them, an apparition
they hardly expected,
an ember between the fires of their love,
and then, in my tuxedo, I dive into the river,
swim the Australian crawl
like Johnny Weismuller
promising the girl (that's you, sweetheart)
in the bar
never never to part.
...

A line that goes nowhere
starts in Spain where bats
through the low trees
make morning needles
in my hair but I'm relent
less about austerity something
you can cry forever and it fails
to absolve you like the unfamiliar
cross on that hill where travelers
like you having found what was
lost and lost what they'd found
dream the distant cries of yokels
looking for a handout right there
where the woman lifts her dress
on a dare and dusts off the park
bench she's been sleeping on
all night and nothing you say
to yourself or anyone can
replace the notion you
had of yourself growing taller
in that chevy bel air with
blue seat covers stopped
at the red light on Earhart
Boulevard at 2 o'clock in
the morning on your
way to see the cajun girl
who promised you
her body as ransom
for the prisoners
you denied the king
...

Lord, I'm 500 miles from home,
you can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.

- "Five-Hundred Miles", Peter, Paul, and Mary



Driving west out of El Paso,
the sun coming up behind me,
I look for a diner or roadside café
off the main highway.
Maybe I'll just follow those dust clouds
that cars coming the other way
leave in their wake.
Maybe it'll be
just a scratched formica counter
and a waitress wearing
jeans and a T-shirt.
"Eggs any style," I tell her,
waiting to see if she gets it —
the joke, I mean — but she doesn't.
"Anything on the side?" she asks.
"Yeah," I say, studying
the menu as if it were
that calculus final I barely passed.
"Yeah, gimme the bacon,
the hash browns,
. . . . you got grits?"
I look up from the menu
and admire her frontage.
After seven hours driving
in the dark, then heaving away
from the sun, the mouth waters
for the old breakfast roadside
standbys: toast, butter,
greasy bacon and eggs.
And frontage.
The urge rises from my toes,
through my stomach and into my chest,
the urge to reach out and touch them,
those well-fed breasts
inside that hefty bra
inside that white T-shirt.
"Yeah," she says, moving the eraser
of the pencil back and forth
behind her ear, "we got grits."
"I'm up for grits," I say,
making the word grits sound
like I'd already eaten a mouthful.
She shifts her weight from one leg
to the other, writes on the pad,
then says it,
— what I came in here for
in the first place,
not the food,
but to hear her say the words:
"Three eggs,
any style,
side a bacon,
side a hash browns,
side a grits."
I almost swoon,
almost lean
across the counter
and place my head
between her breasts,
almost blurt out that I love her,
that I've been loving her
all night long —
loving her as I drove through the darkness
on this two lane highway
filled with nothing
but tractor trailers
and 18-wheelers
and tank trucks and boom trucks
and freight liners and box vans,
two-ton stake trucks
and Scammell ballast tractors,
not to mention the flatbeds
and the pick-ups,
all heading west,
just like me.
I want to tell her
that I love her
right now, here in this diner,
thirty miles west of El Paso,
and will always love her,
love her to my dying day,
love her any style,
side a bacon,
side of hash browns,
side a grits.
But I don't.
The sun's already breaking
the water glasses on the counter,
rousting the silverware,
dashing the flies to the floor
where they languish in the heat.
Five-hundred miles to go
before I hit L.A.,
before I take the big curve
where the I-10 turns north
under the overpass,
and heads up the Pacific Coast Highway,
white beaches to my left,
brown cliffs to my right.
Five-hundred miles to go.
"Yeah," I say, "that should do it,
and gimme an order
of wheat toast, butter, jelly,
jam, marmalade with those
little pieces of citrus fruit
and rind, and coffee,
thick black coffee,
coffee that's been sitting
in the pot for days,
just bring the whole pot,
and sugar, lots of sugar,
and cream, lots of cream."
Then she sticks the pencil
in her hair behind her ear
and looks at me, finally.
"Mr. Poet," she says,
smiling as the sun
begins to creep up
across her face.
"Yep," I say, relaxing
onto the stool
and putting both elbows
on the counter,
"I'm Mr. Poet,
and I got
lots of poems,
any style you want,
side a bacon,
side a hash browns,
side a grits."
...

My father liked being on a boat
in the Gulf of Mexico,
anchored near one of the oil rigs,
pulling up spade fish and red snapper
and swigging from a bottle
of Jim Beam.

Fried chicken, ham sandwiches,
burgers from Bud's Broiler,
the bagels and lox my father brought
and who knows what else
he and the men ate with their beers.

The boat was slimy with fish
blood, the men bare-chested,
yelling out instructions
as the fish dangled from their lines.

The one time I went with him,
I was ten-years old,
and all I could think about was
would he be able to drive the car
all the way home, would he end up
falling down drunk as we walked
to the car carrying the ice-chest
full of the day's catch.

But now, when I think back on it -
God, he musta had a good time!
I'm so glad my father had a good time.
These men were not Jewish -
his drinking buddies from AA -
they had all that gentile good-ole boy
razzmatazz, red-necks for sure
slapping their hands together
and howling at the midday sun.

My father, who never finished 8th grade,
who read Kant and Hegel and Lenin and Marx -
God, he musta had a good time!
I'm so glad my father had a good time.
Maybe it brought back the days of summer
on the lower east side,
during the Great Depression,
when he was in his early 30s,
without a job, without a home, a man
riding the rails like Jack Dempsey,
and like Dempsey, he fought
in the ring for chump change
so he could rent a room for the night.

I want my father to have a good time.
I want my father to taste the salt of this life,
to carouse with the men and spend the night
with a woman he met in a bar,
to come home with no money in his pockets,
just the matchbooks we found
from Gentillich's Bar on Rampart Street
or the Econo Lodge Motel
a mile from the airport.
Live it up, Dad. Hook those fish,
spray that Jim Beam all over your face,
guzzle it down and stagger back
to the shed where the fish are gutted
and puke your guts out in the parking lot
and drive down the Airline Highway,
turn right on Carrollton Avenue,
past Borden's Ice Cream Parlor,
past Jim's Fried Chicken,
past Ping Pang Pong's Chinese Restaurant,
then a left on Fontainebleau Drive,
then slam into the driveway of that two-story brick
colonial home you bought
selling eye-glasses to the country folk
from Houma and Gretna and Bogalusa,
then fling open the front door and charge
up the stairs to the bathroom
and slam the medicine chest cabinet
to smithereens,
to this life,
to this fishing trip
on the Gulf of Mexico
where you're finally
and irrevocably free.
...

Fire ain't
what it's
cracked up
to be
but that's
another story.
If I say the door
was open,
I'd be lying,
but that's
how it is
in a poem,
the lying
I mean.
It's all a lie.
Like you think truth's
gonna save you
and it ain't.
Mary's gonna weep
no matter how
you slice it,
Jesus gonna get nailed
and you're gonna warm
your toes
by the fire
when you think
life's all cushy and cozy
only to burst
into flame
when the unseen hand
pokes its finger
into your business
just to see
if your legs curl
from the heat
and if the smoke
from your heart
be white
or black.
...

Here's a poem that has not

been revised or rewritten

or read aloud or cut

or extended or given to a lover.

Here's a poem that

has no code word, no

name for something else,

no intended meaning,

no axe to grind.

Here's a poem inconsequential

as a thumbtack.

Give me a penny for it

and you've overpaid.

Lose it and it's still there

for all it was worth.

Here's a poem less than

twenty lines.

Defend it.
...

We're going to get married
and have kids
and live together
and be bloody
...

The summer sun, strong and bright,
sits down on the bricks in the front yard.
Cars which have nothing to do with bricks
go by on the street heading home.
It's Wednesday afternoon,
middle of the week,
when you can put everything you'd planned
on Monday
back on the back burner.
A lady goes by; I nod and smile and say hello.
She's carrying a bag of groceries.
I think she lives down the block.
I should go back inside,
the sun's hot on my face,
and I'm not wearing my hat.
Lori admonishes me
"Don't forget to wear your hat."
I came outside to fill the fountain
and forgot to wear my hat.
Now, I'm just standing here,
looking around, saying hello
to the neighbors as they pass by.
When we first bought this house
when Josh was two years old,
I used to go outside after the sun had gone down
and hose the grass on the front and side lawn.
Such a peaceful time, and the back spray from the hose
cooled everything down.
I was Mr. Homeowner watering his lawn.
There are flowers blooming here
that Lori knows the names of, but I can't
seem to remember their names.
Jasmine, Bougianvillea, true geraniums.
I can't keep track of them all.
I've tried, but the names elude me.
Even the grass has a name,
but I've forgotten that too.
This is what heaven will be like.
Anytime I want, I'll be able to water the lawn.
All my friends will walk by,
I'll nod, say hello, watch them pass along
going wherever people go in heaven.
I won't have to do anything but water the lawn.
And the water, you should see the water in heaven.
Crystal clear, light as a feather, so to speak,
diamonds of light.
The back spray will cool my face and head.
And the grass. You'd think grass
in heaven wouldn't need watering,
but you're in for quite a surprise.
Everything up here needs watering.
Even the bricks, the bricks that sit in the sun
getting hot.
Even God, who soaks up all our prayers.
Even God will need a spray or two
to cool down.
I'll be the waterer.
The man in charge of watering everything
and everyone,
the man spraying water in heaven.
That'll be my job.
When God comes by, asks how I'm doing,
I'll say, "Fine, just fine."
Then I'll turn and ask,
"Need a little watering?"
And God will nod,
say, "Sure, soak me down, just
don't wet the groceries."
And I'll give God a good spray.
That'll be my job —
the man in charge
of watering God.
...

I was driving back from a music recital
this evening and found myself cruising
down a street I used to frequent 30 years ago
but haven't driven down since. So many
of the places I used to go to are gone.
A favorite Italian restaurant, now a fitness center.
A bookstore, now an antique store.
A café where I read most of One Hundred
Years of Solitude, now an ice-cream parlor.
It isn't as if I was planning to go to any
of those places, but it makes me sad to know
they're gone. It doesn't really matter.
I'm 72 years old, a lot is gone.
It's all going to go eventually.
By the cafe, a boy was walking his dog
along the sidewalk.
One day, the boy will be gone,
along with his dog.
My dog is gone.
Jessie used to lie by my feet as I sat
at the computer trying to write a poem.
She's gone now. No more Jessie.
After I'd written the poem, I'd take Jessie
out for her midnight walk. Sometimes
we'd pass a house and the people inside
might still be up, sitting at the table,
talking and drinking.
But mostly the streets were quiet,
and she and I would enjoy the night air,
the way the leaves rustled
when a wind came up from the ocean.
Maybe a poem would be buried
in someone's front yard,
and Jessie would dig it up
and bring it to me,
like a bone she'd just found.
That poem about
the man in charge of watering,
Jessie dug that one up, just dug it up
and brought it to me.
"Whatcha got there, girl?"
She dropped it on the sidewalk,
then trotted off,
looking for more poems,
more bones.
No more bones now,
and few poems to be dug up,
except this one,
which is torn at the edges
and I've stopped caring about the
line breaks or the metaphors
or even doing the kind
of things a poet is supposed to do
when writing a poem,
making everything ship-shape.
No more bones,
no more ship-shape.
I'm not even sure
you're reading this poem
right now.
Maybe no one is reading it.
Like I said earlier,
it doesn't matter, you know.
I write the poems anyway.
Jessie will come back some night,
take my poems on our walk,
and bury them in someone's front yard,
and all I'll have to do
in my remaining years
is walk my weary bones
down the sidewalk
and dig ‘em up.
Dig up those poems that Jessie buried,
my good girl dog,
taking such good care of me,
then and now.
Jessie won't be with me,
but I'll thank her,
give her a good rub on the back,
then let her go.
...

Watching the asphalt,
I'm run over by a car.
I was six, moonstruck.

*

I stop at the light.
The woman in the next car
almost married me.

*

All my life I have
counted syllables like this,
haikus of brief love.

*

Let the poets know
that I was a meat eater
who liked haiku raw.

*

Coal mines of my heart.
The canary dies.
It's time to get out
...