Six Poems

Robert Wooten

Last Days of Laissez Faire

They came up out of the creek beside the road, which turned into an abandoned car dealership with an active snack machine, one of the older models still without a guard to keep thieves from reaching up into it. Raymond watched for John. And then, they cut across a construction site through a field of flying grasshoppers, taking turns holding the bucket of turtles and eating Bugles, till they came to a wall of forest. Here, they usually either stopped, went straight through or turned aside, depending on the way John chose to make a subject of the secret marijuana, growing in a clearing.

As Eric Clapton Is God

One Sunday morning, Raymond found Dill outside. “Why are you in the bushes?” asked Raymond.

“Do you like ‘Cocaine’”? Dill asked, and blanched. Raymond said he didn’t know. “It’s a song,” Dill replied.

Lightning

Raymond again wanted to learn Kung Fu. Though once inferior to him in fighting ability, the neighbor, T., now carried Chinese throwing stars, nunchucks and a switchblade.

“I could defend myself from bullies,” he told his Mom. One afternoon, she left him at the Karate International.

They were all wearing belts and uniforms, and Raymond thought they were going to give him one, but they all had to do exercises, first, and then, he was given laps to run. He spent most of the evening watching it rain.

Bi-location

The ability to appear in two places at once, ‘bi-location,’ is considered a sign of sainthood.

And, after I had found my defrosted life totally thawed, ready-to-go, I rose, at first, like fog, and then, as smoke, into the vapor of the stratosphere with angels in my ears, singing, and the joy of life, throbbing in my veins, and, with a smile, my ears still ringing. I heard the formerly straight-jacketed man beside me say, “Hah!” And then, he rolled his eyes. In the deeps of angelic space, I found a heavenly vehicle with keys, waiting. It purred as the valet attendants snored who, by drifting off to sleep here, (hah!) had missed me. And yet, I exorcised myself of demons by blasting off into space.

Later in that day on earth, or in the mid-morning heat, eyes found me in my death to the ward. And, beyond the mist, through which, still, I could see my slack limbs hanging at my side, I shattered the cosmic record for joyful overdrive. Once there, my rhythm’s sound carried beyond the other dead, into the high blue earth sky, and across the minds of puzzled people. And yet it is strained, continually, over Dorothea Dix and into the wards, where my warbling lifts the downcast hearts of rubber minds that bounced against iron walls, seeking the final release.

A Counter-transference

Everything’s backwards, nothing’s what it seems, and nothing haunts my dream. I no longer dream at night, but I wake to a world underwater.

Nothing is what it seems, nothing is real. I’m reacting not to what I see but to what I think and feel. And I’m always “right this way.”

Although my mind says you’re an obstacle in my way, I know you through your feelings: “How are you today?” I ask, as you’re as everybody else and I believe you “okay” no matter what my thoughts may say.

Reverse Psychology

It can’t distinguish between a work of genius and a genius at work, and keeps implying it hears to people it can’t imply know, and saying to people it can’t imply hear.

Who is this that follows the day?

Come as a new economic trend or clouds before the cloudy rainy cold day?

Sometimes, winter caught me in the exuberance of spring. Sometimes, the coldness gripped me as I frolicked in the rose gardens of my lifetime. When did you get in? How did you arrive? The evening has come. Have we been formally introduced?

Oh, the lion of winter, you of frosty temper, cold as breakfast the day after, sure as the ice on the pond, frost on the field.

You have bought stock in my life. Take the shelter. You can have the bedroom in back. Take the stock.

AND what a rude one you are! What of Spring and Summer? I mean, what will they think?

If you are having a difficult time, we hope that things will get better.

Sometimes, the coldness comes too quickly. The withdrawal is begun. I shall wave to the receding dulcet waters. I shall have to sell my futures.

Call me if you get in. They take the book. Take care.