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Blue Light Room Poems by Mebane Robertson
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poetryUnBound series Blue Light Room by Mebane Robertson www.undergroundbooks.org 2014
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Table of Contents Access to the James River How it is Done Corporate Gifts As Long as Men Do Live Lucky Lines Composed During Minor illness Now All is Given Drivers Wanted Pleasure Lost Discipline Flood Cameo Profile Child’s Pose The Egg in the Office Society of Friends Flawlessly Foiled The Swaying Grove Deadline Ledger Going, Going, Gone Last in Line A Short History of Drama A Sense of Place A Sense Of Direction A Sense of Destiny 5
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Wrecking Ball Pinata The Day Mostly The Benches of Westbeth Despite the Rain Say the Word Half-Lotus Posture Harvest Crown The Driver and the Drive The Garden Under the Garden She Raises a Good Question Too Simple to Title Eleven Journaling…… Letting On…… Another Effigy Evens and Odds One Version… 9:00 A.M As if it Were that Easy To Be Misunderstood The Following In Transit Table Scratch A Walk Toward the Waves 6
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Blue Light Room
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Access to the James River So that’s the gist of it – You have to start and work Even past all possible endings. What is preposterous is to put The end before the beginning, But for now lets just swing the vines, Or out over the water on a rope swing, Embracing the tire at the end. Often what is simple is best – Like their cooler of long-neck beers Hidden a ways up the sand bar Far away but never far enough.
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How it is Done You are easily shattered, a wild one In erratic sprawling. A melanoma – black spot of ink, Frozen like the ink of this poem. Sometime, someday I wish it would rain And rain for a hundred years. In the meantime, I get my kicks Texting you swatches of checkered love.
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Corporate Gifts Yes. Your way is not without its merits. It’s when you’re dealing with a constituency, Such as ours, you are inclined to give grapefruit Or a Smithfield ham – perishable food items. But you have ruled out citrus and pork altogether. Given our clientele, all food gifts should be Ruled out. Keep in mind that we’re a green company. It would be better to give badminton sets. But not everyone has a lawn. A certificate For a tattoo? A nose ring? We need To put together a team of consultants outside The company – one to widen our basic approach To our “Thank You” gifts, To let clients feel they are special and appreciated. “Golf balls?” No. That will not do. What about nonsense from a place they’ve never been?
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As Long as Men Do Live And so many, so many of them Sway like a grove of fir trees in the wind In the wide-open field around everything. Ever opening, my love for you – You whom I’ve never met, you Who took this from a soldier’s hand Who had orders to burn everything in sight. Everyone thanks you for finding this page – Poignancies and passions, the antidote You contrive pent up in a vial. We might still become friends – Of that I’m sure, sure as my sin.
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Lucky I’ve struck in on this, struck Into a vein of AAA grade gravity. Maybe you, if you let yourself, feel This pull beneath the glass floor Wherever you are situated in the moment. Maybe you’re in class. Maybe you have yet To be born. If I overcome the odds And you grow in understanding – Understand what, Mr. Poet? Good question And your circuits are turning inside out.
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Lines Composed During Minor Illness Laughing’s fine, but try to hold it down. Everyone is levitating. Saying “Hi” by text or phone. You, the servant of sweat, must heal yourself. I have a bit of a sore throat. Your doctor does not wish to cure you. Your true love must not see you enfeebled. You are seeing red and green everywhere When you close your eyes in your infirmity. Swallow back on what it stuck, And take the white pills of our oblivion. I’m guessing it’s inevitable you get better, But I’m not taking the odds you will get well.
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Now All is Given The leger of time Hurts eternity’s feelings. We swing the trees To other trees, over the river And drop off to sleep. The young mother is giving birth To a child who will swim when comes time And will dry off in the summer air In the plastic chairs by the pool. You were once somebody but lost it Saying odd things at cocktails – You and your frequencies went outside the lines Like the lion you kept, kept trying to color in.
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Drivers Wanted I flagged our car in because her back Right showed signs it might give Before scheduled, without notice. The stands are littered with beer cups. The cadets are wearing motor oil baseball caps. Mister, some of those women in tops – Short shorts frayed down to the partings. God, we’re nothing but rumors down here. No one calls us by any angel’s name. In the pit we have a job. That driver is our charge – his place, Yes, but where he goes after the final white flag.
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Pleasure Oblivion in the summer clouds is silent. You can pause here and take it in stride. The rain falls on manic and depressed alike. We eat strawberries and mango – Drink of darkening evening. The world Is filled with people lost in the hills. They say you took this from somewhere: The flash, glitter, falling and falling in your sleep To awaken to muffins and marmalade. O brown bat of twilight, these are creations Of caution tossed to the wind. Your chains rattle. Let us Share the weight till your hairshirt catches fire.
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Lost Discipline Yo, American river, don’t let them Trash your spray and spiraling eddies – Your course through the deep ravine. Yours truly, brook bound in a pastoral tone. Your arrow flies through the critic’s visor And monolithic friends of four aghast. Dig heels deep in the horse’s flank side In an English saddle clearing the brakes. Leap the gate and head toward the sandy Firmament – your gray sheen the patina Of the bit in a beast’s mouth. Your nostrils Flare and blow like a tuba’s silver stops. All in the name of brandy and hangovers, Bringing us round to a promenade streetlight. She was lazy – the lady of the road – Trailing fingers in your current.
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Flood This sudden forgetfulness blots it all out – Unable to recall, remember, cite, First and last names, license plates, lost In a poppy field that makes you think slower. But the list is lost. Pressure Clouds the names and faces below consciousness. There’s no chance of the actor getting off book. An echoing of the blood pulse begins With a loose association. Voila! No, not it. Sounds like a set of teeth out in the cold. It is futile, but the clouding out doesn’t matter. The tongue is at home in a mouth that forgot to exist.
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Cameo Profile You would keep it light – the child Incapable of guilt – running a finger Around the rim of a white wine glass To make it sing and hum. At the round Table set for six, someone is absent And didn’t feel quite well after the service. The rest of the family is laughing In the robin’s egg blue wallpapered room While one, in solitude, lies in the dark.
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Child’s Pose The neighbors turn things over – A scrimmage on the landing. You have learned to love people In spite of what mask they wear. Staring from below the window sash Sits a blue-eyed cat, and in the boxes An unrolled yoga mat, stained With childish questions texted to heaven. How far, Father? How long till we get Home to the place you told me was waiting. I’ve watched the star you told me Would guide me through my life. Sometimes I drift off, and the light Seems even brighter with my eyes shut – Whiter than all the thousand stars Dancing in the sky tonight.
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The Egg in the Office They built the machine So none of our speckled colors And black dots resembled anything Except maybe a pony looking in a mirror. You gaze alone Into your reflection. The sick man saw two eye holes Cut out of the gauze. Your own gauze is invisible. You used to want to see Vermeer When you shut your eyes and pressed the lids. Somewhere the experiment went terribly wrong.
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Society of Friends You are clucking your tongue, in the mood for this Only by position that is. You turned to this out of duty – Turned to it, and away, and back like someone Who fastens their glance in a full-length mirror. The warm sounds of the amp’s tube circuitry And what it lends to the music is worth the extra bucks, But the reel-to-reel has given way To digital audio workstations. We lament the past Of the white noise the singer allowed for, Worn all the way to her snow white throat – But so it goes by rule of thumb. She clenches her gloved hand around the gray micro phone. Basically, we make for a pretty good couple: mixing nonsense Into the minor progressions – transcendent harmonies. After we depart the meetinghouse together, We hold hands and get caught up in a spell of spells. 23
Flawlessly Foiled Again, after silence long in the cabin, The solitary facets rebuke the topical – The red radish of politics. In truth, You do mean to me – always have, always will. You are good at hacking systems. I’m not one for an abundance of imagery. I work my gig by getting voices in your ear. I would have the twin pugs be just twin pugs. It’s true. We’re constructing something in the extreme. In its velvet reading it belches like a fat monarch. The tree belongs to us all. We carve in its bark. And, my love, some things they surprise.
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The Swaying Grove Despite the triplicate accusations, no more Evil is in the lint brush the rector uses Before his homily. What I’m bad at saying Is you rid the attentive congregation of all foulness. Even in passing, you encounter and accost, With every drag of the cigarettes you sneak, Ridding the poison in you exhalations. You clean the heaven crown of the everyday. When you pass, the graffiti disappears. You are the very tree of life. And we are wary of getting too close too you – Your sword and fireflies in a jar.
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Deadline Ledger You can mark it by its style. You went to all this trouble just for us. It’s a time-sensitive signature that bubbles Farther off than the horizon will allow. The entries must be anonymous. Please Please don’t place quotation marks around what I say. You’re the editor who rents out green floats. Your erosion control fuels our delight. Please don’t say this is not your thing. I get that a lot. Even you Are polite stepping into this world When all you want is to be adored.
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Going, Going, Gone Nonsense. Dear, Dear Lady You seem normal enough, but pick Up a pen and there’s not a speck of sense – Even in the cedar trees and honeysuckle, Even in the bats swimming in the summer sky At your weekend getaway: Corn on the cob, grilled venison. The neighbors up the road think you’re a flake. God gave you the butterfly book by your bed And your book on synthetic cubism, Yet you would not have your confusion published. The doctor cannot speak of your condition. I admit all this, mainly as a confession, Rather than out of pride. And I want you to know I know you better than the sky, And the birds in your heart are all aflutter.
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Last in Line Mmmmm. Positively buttery. The corn Glistened with your mother’s deep south. We snuck into the whitewashed barn And made out in a cove of straw. “It’s almost a manger but in reverse,” You said, picking a fleck of tobacco from you tongue. “I will own all of this one day,” You said, “And all my childrens’ children.” And so we seek rest and solace Under the heart-of-pine rafters that bear witness. You were a flirt of ample intelligence – Greater than my own though I could still follow You into the bonbons of meaning And your white lies of restrained desire.
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A Short History of Drama Fidgeting in the cramped seat you wanted For the curtains to catch fire. I held your hand And took notice you had chipped The rose colored polish of you right thumbnail, Biting off what was meant to lure. I caught your perfume. It was a good scent That reminded me of all those times in your room When you entered the errant history of my life. Like the letters of a game spelling Help, We inspected each other’s damage. We walked The back carpet of everyday catastrophe. Then a fire in the hall sent us spilling out-of-doors. Outside the pink castle, we shared a dream Off into the mottled sky of the everyday, But sitting here and now you have nothing to say, And I can’t take back what I gave away.
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A Sense of Place Without flowers or a narrow wind Now Friday’s sunset in Brooklyn’s deep Is an introspective glimpse of parlors and patios. Gentlemen in dark suits pawn off their cards. They can’t get you out unless you’re in A no-fly-zone. And the detailing shops And the tattooing joints run along Coney Island Avenue in the falling rain. Gazing at a woman with child-bearing hips, I think of you back in high school days. Your tussled good looks. In my heart Life comes pitched like a hard curve. In this basement I jot down our lives, And head out to get cigarettes at the corner deli. I have made the trip so many times, So many times. I fear no one is counting.
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A Sense of Direction The French weathervane Told you to go, breaking you out Of the glass box and trashing Your identity, smashing your self-esteem Like an ugly vase. Your maid claimed you knocked her up On purpose. But what did she have to gain? The truth was clear as ether. Misplaced, flying a colorless flag, Signifying you belonged to nowhere And were going nowhere with nobody In your dirigible with its slow leak. The big sky loomed over your island. You are busy in your field of onions – Your glassine fruit, the apples of the moon That made you laugh and cry at the same time.
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A Sense of Destiny Embryonic, truly alone to be— You will both love and hate your solitude. Who could have known? Not you – Certainly not me. There was not even a you yet. But the players who held the script Made for an extra act all for your sake. Imperceptibly you grew into your role – Your many roles – that came with all your stages. If you would know the truth, it was Not all of love you were born into. Neglect is now nodding his assent, someone Knocked at your door nightly. Where? To what final act are you headed? Who or what was the author of the script? Was there even a author? Your destiny Is to live out the questions to these answers.
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Wrecking Ball And when all is said and done, this ruined house Will be emptied of casual squatters And razed by the swinging ball of neglect and disuse. The half-vacant rooms will empty out into the world. What I’m trying to say, and not very well, If you have trouble spelling it out. It had been your house. The only son of a landlord who did not care for what was his, Who let the place go to shambles without a blink. It didn’t happen at once. Doorknobs fell off. The bannister creaked. Little omens. Still he expected the tenants’ rent on time. That’s where I became involved and made my first visit. The house, like this universe, was past just running down. Your father laughed when I pointed at how it leaned. There was the copy of an oil done by an old master. You had in the beginning sang carols in season. 33
Piñata A pack of gum, chocolate wrapped in foil – How to acknowledge, commemorate, and morn The final goodbye you waved to us. I turn on, break up, and break down When I remember how we bullied you – Kicked you in the ribs when you were down. It was to make you cough up the goods – Standing, kneeling, scooping the colored haze, Coughing up flowers and butterflies. I am guilty of letting it go on – The secret envy once past the gate, the mocking When you turned toward the arsenal of heaven.
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The Day Mostly It turns its back on you in your haste For the thoughtlessness of giving themes Gathered from impersonal histories of suffering. Let’s try to make it cut that out. What about The lead veins of the stained glass – windows Of the spirit reading a red and blue hornbook. The last of the leaves is wise to sketch The history of a turning spectacle. Outside Everything is green and goes unnoticed underfoot. You made it this far with your puzzles and canteen To give up on the purposefulness now. You’re off To a place not less than everywhere at once.
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The Benches of Wesbeth Skimming over the channels, you dismiss How hard it is to come up with interesting nonsense. It must be of a piece and keep turning the engine over. It must be, in a word, shipshape. It’s your mostly being yourself, this cozy coaxing Of your true friends to make the walk up the block In a clandestine race where the trick Is jogging up and breaking the red finish ribbon. The legends are vanquished. Their feet govern The saying chasing around their thoughts. There are No winners or medals – no kiss for first place – Only a vague but tolerable sense of vacancy. Nonsense has no place on the roster. And the girls don’t color in – they color on – The arm of a daughter dragging a swath Of the moment in eternity’s lighted museum.
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Despite the Rain Horses stand alongside one another Beside the ivy collared brook. I have loved you all of our time here – Whether together or apart. It makes no difference. Like speckled trout in the creek, People have tried to lure you in, Into their fern lined baskets. Out of my private vision they would take you. I stop at the old oak bridge And wish we shared the same element: You breathe my air, I would Not disturb the picture of the forest in the water For all the loveless words I’ve spilled. Tonight I light the candle’s wick and take Down the bag of coins you gave me Knowing this is the end, and you are gone.
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Say the Word You pay, pray, and scatter – Childhood’s game caught up with you The way you kept your room a mess. “Glass” – even the word, the name Gives flickers behind your eyes. Beware Manhattan. Be aware O city. The climbing tempered and tinted facades Of hubris reaching for the heavens. Who would we send up and who bring down? Over average citizens in the street Everyone seems to be dallying. And if I touched Your hand, I fear you would shatter.
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Half-Lotus Posture No. Not loveless. I forgot to lock the door Of the portal I made my way through, always Bent over my notebook filled with Flashes of urgency that need to ground out. They came out in a lambent wakefulness at night. I was a man possessed Like one obsessed to achieve the perfect lawn – The emerald insignia of the life I led before. You are the one – the dream filled stranger. You are the friend I can call past eleven. You are the one I wronged and you forgave. You are the one with a nose ring and tattoo. I would have some place in this world. But let’s face facts. I live in a shabby basement. I am unemployed except for this scribbling. I’m led around by voices. Voices sometimes lie.
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Harvest Crown My friend came through today. Such kindness, you know, is a rarity. I feel better now. Her words ran The fear away, cleared the brush from the field. The almanac and lunar calendar And Gus at the seed store all agree The damage we weathered last season Is giving way to a pagan ritual. The sacrifice is brutal but necessary. For now it’s a world of hanging red geraniums. The union men have deflated the rat Outside the door they take as my own.
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The Driver and the Driven The way this thing drives I wonder If we will get home in one piece. Land O Goshen, don’t be kissing on me. I don’t know If we’ve crossed the border or even if The border we’d be crossing is the one Between the altered states you think they should be. This is one nasty snowstorm, and the tank Says gas. We’re plain lost In the middle of some place I must Have been a dozen times, but never Been like this with the last tail light Turned off ahead wherever it went and only Snow and sleet curving down Against the windshield. And now You’ve nodded off, and I’m talking to the hills.
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The Garden Under the Garden The laughter isn’t aimed at us. It’s just too far off in the distance For our radar to pick up the signal That beckons the people in the clouds To clap and dance. You and I – In this room alone with only windows – Have been together as long as I can remember And sharing the miracles of the gifted Keeps us innocent from actually talking. Only touching is as lonely as the rain.
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She Raises a Good Question Chaos can’t spell its own name or where you are. It can’t pick you out in the carnival crowd. It’s pretty much clueless As it scatters the jacks of ruin Across the floor every which way. It wants white lies To fill its motley sail, and, rudderless, To turn like a blind school of fish – Some menacing and some of godhead. The spirit would have A leviathan swallow you, dozing off, Dreaming of the corruption that heedlessly Governs the city, but when you show up they chuckle.
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Too Simple to Title Here, in isolation, you are miles off Ranking friends away. You waste Too much time cataloguing everybody. You press the Jack of Hearts into your vest Thinking he is the best of buddies. You go to the deli for milk and crackers. Don’t kid yourself that things will get better. Why don’t you give me a call, “a shout.” The radio is calling for inclement weather.
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Eleven You close in, tightening the bolts One more half turn, and just over Ten minutes countryside flying Past the fallen fences. You remember when you took forever And forced it through a sieve. It looks as though no one took time To keep the old haunting place up. Out initials are beneath a bed of ferns. But the old pond mill still stands. It turns when there are no witnesses And turns back again – no one the wiser Save the half-standing scarecrow, Governor of the gully, half mad, held Together by a dozen black scarves.
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Journaling This stillness focuses. The pupil Palpitates in the green iris – an amoeba Of squid ink in a clear pool. You were in a gown with a book On bereavement when your best friend Died in her sleep. I remember her slightly, But said something stupid about probability, Not meaning to be callous. I slumped hours For you to forgive me. Then you went back to the book, captivated By what the dead deserve of us – Antecedent of a sleep’s deepening dreaming.
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Letting On I like the way you let me Bring you things. You point Me in the right delusion, equipped With catalogues and sighs to make it clear What things you have chosen and which Have only a vague calling. You try to make it run true Until all the silver spoons are bent Out of frustration from your blind attempts. The stuffing meanwhile is coming out Of the sofa, and there’s No fixing it despite your witchery Will ever make it whole again.
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Another Effigy Patiently you waited, feeling odd, Out of uniform in the crowd. Horses reared up for crowd control, And hoses were ready for the reserves. You ducked into a tea room Just before they slammed shut the door, Fearing the cagey administration Would ask why they hadn’t done so already. Was this the place she tied The red thread on the blinds In a beloved friend’s chapter and verse? He was tough. No one could stand In his way. And you are wary And count yourself a believer.
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Evens and Odds It’s here so we can practice Finding a grasp not too far out Of reach – a fissure or fracture In the mountain’s face. We climb each Of us alone, and most of us arrive Intact but thirsty for some fanfare – A small following that knows Our names, favorite riffs, and racing thoughts As they bring out the roses Brought forth to check a box on the board, So whose identity is whose won’t get confused. Let’s take a breather.
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One Version In dreaming of island transport Of all the reds and greens of the coral You would be looking through a mask The adventure company would provide. And the silver colored fish would swim is schools. And the brackish water would taste of salt. But once in the snorkel you were torn Between returning to the glass Bottomed boat and just swimming Without intent into the sun.
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9:00 A.M. You slid your hand into your pocket To be sure you had your cell phone, Wallet, cigarettes, and wallet. It was glorious out – The trees blowing in a covenant Written by nature’s shaky hand. Even the street lights were with you As if the everything was fresh Pulling you toward a destiny And destination nowhere in particular. After yesterday’s rain who can blame you? You and your winking pink clouds.
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As if it Were that Easy On the river rock you take in The articulation of water rushing. I would be a no one if not for you. I would leave no fingerprint. The wind picks up – the gray froth Makes it as if the spirits like Seeing us composed in this bright type together. Your leg refracts where it enters the water. The alluvial silt obscures your feet. I have something I’ve been meaning to ask. Where and when did we meet? I have no clue of a time you were not there. But you laugh: silly. Somehow we were both swallowed Back in the day – two voices Echoing one another out of time.
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To Be Misunderstood Under black umbrellas Faces hide as I pass – A peek of drab routine Ducking in and out of offices. I am a rumor confined To their elbows at the bar When they stop for a beer. I never claimed to be perfect. I am a listener without A desire to interrupt The thoughts they would keep Quiet as a mistress.
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The Following Angel, confined to the page After the page, cunning and casual. We follow the trail of crumbs You let fall In your postured passage of winking periods Behind you as we pull the shade. There is a line – a he, a she, a them. It doesn’t amount to much. People don’t pay much attention. It suffices the sun will rise. It is enough the sun will set. It suffices we have bodies.
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In Transit This is late in the game. They are lost And losing heart at being found. They invented hope for the sake of prayer. They skimmed over the contract. They had only a frigate in a bottle Tossed in the sea with a plastic crew, Expecting to find its way back to you. You are not in the mood for games. The spring runs pure and classified. It is the hope of castaways – The flat line of people who never met Outside the kiosk for a cherry slush. The wasted distance increases every day. The waves flag in the inlet. Everyone’s changes are running out, But we are still climbing toward a voice.
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Table Scratch You remember pinball machines – The flashing spectacle of it all. You tilted my turn and died laughing. We hung At the university commons above the lake. I heard you dissed me after the show. You were one for images: chalking the stick With the powder blue square, racking the balls, And running the low balls into the pockets. You denied me an ability to feel pleasure, And now I don’t know your last name. You were the type to give your own up. The balloon kissing the ceiling is gone forever. Do you even remember making out behind the library With the gearshift poking us in the ribs? I came across letters in the back seat That you wrote, it seems now, to no one in particular.
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A Walk Toward the Waves Hold onto the bar and don’t stand up. Age is nothing but a sinking deeper Into time, in which the eyes grow cold. But there is more. The world spins Faster, as if to shake us As we fade into shadows of shadows. We look at the young go by. We went by once. We had our time. Now and then old calendars pop up, Challenging our ability to forget. And our ears can’t make out voices – At least the ones that people speak aloud.
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