Boat Abandoned Far Inland

I find her flipped over in a field
Her mast has snapped, her paint has peeled
A boat abandoned far inland

The sea is calling her to come
Back to where she came here from
This boat abandoned far inland

But she’s too far to hear its voice
So she has no other choice
Than to be a boat abandoned far inland

Someone must have towed her here
To rot without the ocean near
This boat abandoned far inland

But her hull remembers salt and sand
Her tiller remembers the helmsman’s hand
This boat abandoned far inland

She should have been given a better death
Her sails raised and filled with breath
This boat abandoned far inland

May the rising waters continue to rise
And take her wholly by surprise
This boat abandoned far inland

Then it will be as if she had never been
What she was back then
A boat abandoned far inland

Visiting Horses

Before I was caught thrashing in the internet, 
I used to walk out to the barn at night to visit horses.
There were several over the years, they were all the same.
I would cross the dark yard, over grass or snow, 
Over the shadows of trees thrown by the moon.
I would swing up over the bar gate like I was in the rodeo,
The pigeons cooing like the poor boiling water.
I took a good minute for my eyes to adjust.
At first it was just the silhouettes of derelict equipment,
The feed wagon with its chute wired up like a boxer's jaw,
The dinosauric auger with its brontosaurus neck,
All long ago broken down for parts across the Midwest
Like the debris field of a space disaster.
Finally I could see the woodcut of her body in the dark.
She was trying to understand what I was doing there.
So rare for her to be visited at such a late hour.
Hard for her to get even her huge head around that.
It always ended in her coming walking towards me
To see what it was I wanted. I wanted only to feel
The warm puffs of breath from her nostrils 
Like checking the heat coming off a radiator,
To tug on the tough rubbery skin of her chin, 
Then feed her a handful of oats for her trouble.
Now, nights, I reach for my blacked out phone,
Touch it awake, fill both my eyes full of its light. 
There are no horses in my life anymore, fewer stars.
But I can remember those nights I came back
From visiting her, slipping quietly back into the house
In which everyone I loved was asleep
And lay in bed thinking of her standing out 
There in the dark, probably wondering what 
The hell that had all been about.

Moving Walkway

Always the choice whether to get
Where we’re going before
We would have gotten there anyway
Had we not chosen to get there faster

No matter what choice we make
A doppelgänger will appear 
Ahead of or behind us
Who we’ll always have to follow

Or always be followed by
One of infinite instances 
When lives split off from our life
Like we’re a branch a boy

Is sitting whittling into an arrow
And this isn’t a bad thing
The more shavings there are
The more arrow

Man Juggling Knives: Mexico City

Into stopped traffic he stepped.
Had it not been stopped, 
He would have stopped it. 
Two in one hand, one in the other,
The juggler’s mudra,
Though I didn’t know at first that
They were knives. 
We leaned, my wife and I,
Towards each other in order to see
Between the front seats
What he would do,
Our Uber driver watching too.
As he began throwing them so high
We only saw him catch them,
I thought, I could do that.
And I can, juggle that way,
That is: golf balls, river stones, oranges.
But when he caught them all at once
With a theatrical clatter
And glared at us through the windshield,
I knew they were knives.
He whetted the two with the one,
The blades sharpening each other
The way two unique minds can.
Then he started juggling again,
Eyes up, watching the highest one spin,
Though it was only the one whispering
Its handle into his palm 
That could have cut him.
Every so often he'd catch them
And clang them together
To prove their danger,
Knowing the more we knew
The risk, the more we'd give.
Meanwhile the light behind him
Had started blinking red
The way the lights do in Mexico City.
I could feel him feeling that
It was about to change.
Before it could,
He caught them all, with finality
This time, and then, 
With all three in one hand,
Began begging the cars,
Beginning with ours,
To pay him for what
We couldn’t not have watched,
Like St. Francis’s brother,
Who took up juggling after
Praying for the stigmata in vain.

Our Way

Life doesn’t always go our way.
There are so many other ways it can go.
When it is going our way, we think
Of course it’s going our way.
Our way is the way it should be going.

Then, before we know it,
Life is no longer at our side.
It must have taken another way,
A way we didn’t take because it wasn’t ours.
It’s going someone else’s way now.

We hate this someone else
Whose way life is going the way
We hate the new partner of an old lover.
And it is always when life isn’t going our way
That night lets go of the sky and falls.

Trouble is life had the lantern and the map.
Though we have the road to guide us, 
We’re not so sure now that our way
Is the way we should be going.
Without life, we're lost.

But life always appears out of the dark.
Apparently it changed its mind
And decided to go our way after all. 
So we walk arm in arm with life again, which is nice, 
Though we never seem to get where we’re going.

Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger Meet in Hell

	— For Dave Wright, who said he just wanted to outlive Dick Cheney

At first it was alright. No hotter
Than the hottest day in Houston
When he would walk between cars
On his way into Halliburton,
The sun glancing off the windshields
Like a blow that misses but still kills.
He saw some who’d been burnt badly
Like pictures of children he’d been shown
So he could say, if asked at a hearing
Had he seen the pictures of the children, 
He’d seen the pictures of the children 
Without perjurying himself. 
They were like those wounded who,
Coming back from the front lines,
Turn the faces of the crisp reinforcements
Pale as they approach the battle.
But the burned seemed busy
With something that didn’t involve him.
Indeed, no one paid him any attention,
Until he spotted Kissinger in the garden,
Sitting in a charred wicker chair.
“Hi-ya Dick,” he called out,
Waving his arms extravagantly.
“Welcome to Hell. Oh but it’s not so bad. 
Best tan I’ve ever had,” he said,
Admiring his forearms. 
“Food’s atrocious, of course,
Always overcooked 
No matter how rare you order it.
But what I really miss 
Is a good martini. Good luck
Finding any ice. But you get used to it.”
“Is this as hot as it gets?” 
He asked hopefully.
“Not even close,” Henry said.
“This is just the outer ring.
But it should be awhile for you yet.
Here, let me see what number you are.”
He handed over a scrap of paper
Small as the fortune in a fortune cookie.
“Oh yes. You’ve got plenty of time.
Just enjoy. There’s a pool over there
That’s nice to sit by. The water boils 
Away but they fill it every few days.
I left some magazines over there 
If you feel like reading. You know, Dick,
Movie stars used to really know how to live,
Unlike now.” For the first time,
He heard faint screams. Maybe the wind
Had changed, or maybe he had heat stroke
And was imagining things. 
“How long before they take you, Henry?” 
He said in his signature snarl.
He hadn’t lost his voice in death.
“Could be any minute now. 
But it was good seeing you, Dick.
Say, before it’s too late, there’s a question
I always meant to ask you.
Now might be my last chance.”
“Go ahead.” “Who was more evil,
You or me.” “I don’t think I was evil at all. 
I tried to make the world a better place.”
“Same here. Communism, terrorism.
Those are the real evils. 
They made a mistake.
We should be in heaven,
Lounging around on clouds,
Not down here getting barbecued.
Well, speak of the devil.”
He turned around to see two demons
Approaching with tridents,
Their tails sparking behind them
Like live wires. “Take it easy, Dick,”
Henry said as they took him away
Without a struggle.
At first, he was at a loss as to what to do.
He decided to go find the pool.
The chaise lounges were burned 
Down to their frames, and only the poles
Of the umbrellas remained. 
The water in the pool was set at a low boil.
On a table was an issue of Silver Screen
From 1954, the smiling face
Of Rita Hayworth nibbled away by flame.
Reading whatever text was left,
He began to relax a little.
Like Henry had said, it would be awhile.
Might as well enjoy himself in the meantime.
And before long it was easy
To tell himself that
The screams were the laughter of children.

The Tick

I watch the tick climb my pants leg. So serious. His tiny legs work both independently of one another and together, like a crew of rowers. He wants my blood, can smell it through my jeans. Can you imagine how blood must smell to a tick? Good enough to draw him out of the grass where he has been waiting for me all his life. Surely, he thinks, there is a gap here, a chink in this denim armor. He dreams of dark, moist places where he can latch himself, secure as a padlock. Then he will drink and drink, like a man in a dark bar on a bright day in a town he's just passing through. But no bartender, it’s all for him, and all for free. He can’t know I’ve seen him. He doesn’t know what seeing is. He only knows my blood and his hunger and his need to fill one with the other. I let him climb. These are his last flat seconds alive. I pick him off and split his body — tiny enough to fit inside a watermelon seed — between my nails, then blow the mess off my thumb. Later, in the shower, I will search my body for his body, and, not finding him, feel inexplicably lonely.

The Sound of Rain

Into the new quiet came the sound of rain.
The sound of rain has green eyes
Like a girl alone at a museum on a weekday,
An art student practicing with the masters,
She sometimes has to wait
Until someone has seen enough,
Her pencil hovering over her sketchpad
Like a stylus over an album
Still spinning,
And walks away.

Heaven

There there will be no more winter in our lives.
Summer will spring back to spring and spring
Click over to summer again.
And there will be no more night in our lives.
The sun will shine all the time,
We’ll have no need for lamps or candles. 
But wait, wait a minute, I don’t know that
I want to go to Heaven.
Seems sad to be where
There is no snow, are no stars.
I’d rather still do good but stay down here
In an old farmhouse on a winter night,
Lighting a few candles,
Blowing into my hands.

Evenings Falling

I remember summer 
Evenings falling.
I would find them in the fields.
They had fallen a long time from high up,
But the clover broke their fall.

Not long after, on the heels
Of evening falling, 
Night would fall, too,
But I never found one of those.
By then it was too dark to see.

Falling is a good thing to do
If you’re an evening or a night, 
Some snow or silence or a shadow.

But if you’re a bomb, 
Or standing on a bridge at dawn,
Or a civilization,
Try not to fall 
If you can help it.

If you can’t,
Fall in a field.

Lovers Point

A place
as well
as what
lovers do
when they
stand there

Winged Wounds

This pair of cardinals in spring woods
Are two winged wounds.
Whose body did they take flight from,
I wonder. 
From the kid shot twice
In the back as he was walking away
From the fight he won,
They say. 
They didn’t want to be in his back
In the coffin forever, they wanted
To be in the trees, singing.
They wanted to be birds.

Dizzying thinking of the world sometimes.

Every fleck of glitter on the skin

Of a girl on Haight and acid

In 1968, the skin side

Of each fleck too. Her parents in New

Hampshire worrying about her,

The unique psychedelic swirl

On each soap bubble in her mother’s sink

While her father was opening the Wall

Street Journal to distract himself,

Every letter typed differently due

To the infinitely varying texture

Of the paper itself, which brings to mind

Ancient gnostic scrolls yet to be found

Under sand in the Syrian desert,

Each grain different from every other,

And the monk who wrote it, the black hairs

Stippling his shaven head in a way

No hairs have ever stippled a head,

Bent over a candle the flame of which

Took torquing forms no other flame

Has ever taken, throwing light like

No other flame has ever thrown,

Particular as the light that glittered

Off a fleck of glitter on her lower lip

As she danced to the Dead, who were still

Alive then, the complexity of the grass

Under her bare feet, Garcia playing

A lick he could never replicate if

He tried, but why would he try?

A gunshot and then another,

Like making sure they’re dead.

The boy who started falsely

Was winning for a moment

While the others knelt frozen

In their blocks like horses

Gone still in the starting stalls.

But you get a second shot here.

He’s lining up again.

He’ll start a little slower

This time and the starter

Will only have to fire once,

Like a killer who knows

There’s no use wasting the other.

I haven’t been posting too many poems lately - been focused on some fiction (that lesser art) - so I thought I’d share a link to a discussion I had with Evan Carlson and Darren Stephens on their excellent poetry podcast, The Poetic Turn.

https://www.thepoeticturn.com/austin-smith-the-poetry-of-place/

I hope you’re all doing well. Thank you for subscribing. More poems soon,

Austin

Watching the War

Make some popcorn, watch the war.
Sit down on the couch, watch the war.
Mute the commercial breaks, watch the war.
Try another channel, they've got the war
On too, from a slightly different angle,
But it's the same war.
The prediction markets are booming
And it's probably safe to bet on
The war not ending.
It's unlikely to get pulled off the air,
It's one of America's most watched shows.
Ratings go up when the war's on.
Advertisers pay more for more eyeballs,
Eyeballs that go dry watching the war.
You can try but it's hard not to
Watch the war. It will always be on,
So long as we keep watching it. 
Say, I don't know what you're up to tonight,
But if you want you could come over
And we could grill up some burgers
And watch the war. 

Glass

I broke
A glass in the sink
Full of dishes 
I’d left to soak
Overnight 
Nothing for it
But to find the plug
And let it drain
So I rolled up my sleeve
And reached carefully in
The way one enters
Certain days

My Headstone

Where is it now, if it’s been carved at all?
Maybe it’s still in the quarry or wherever it is
They dig them up from, 
I guess as one big rock, 
So maybe they get two or three out of it, 
Depending on how big the rock is.
I don’t think anyone chisels them by hand anymore.
Probably they have something now 
To cut them with.
They look like they do anyway,
Smooth as the new ones are.
I wish I could get a rough, hand-hewn one
But I would have had to have died long ago,
Before I was born, even.
Anyway, I’d like to have a look at mine.
Really though, I’d like to squat right down
And see my reflection in its face
Like a father his face in his son’s,
Before my name and my dates
And whatever lines of poetry you chose for me
Mark it as finally mine,
Though, since we’re already talking,
No poetry please.
Hasn’t there been plenty?
Just my full name, 
First, middle, last, 
And the years. 
Years wear well, I think.
One can always get one’s head around years.
But no days and months.
Born in November, died in Whenever.
No thank you.
I’m already embarrassed by the date of my death,
Which is why I look down
Every time I pass it,
Which is every three hundred and sixty-five days or so.
Just the years will do.
Four numbers, a dash, four numbers,
Like a mouth neither smiling nor frowning,
A mouth set to the truth.
I know in the end I'll never see it.
Can’t through the coffin lid and all that ground.
And even if I could,
Not the right angle.
But it's somewhere,
Even if it isn’t it yet.
In a way it's already got my name written on it,
Which is why we're moving towards each another
Inevitably
Like a ship and a rock,
Slowly or quickly,
Hopefully slowly.
Hopefully it’s a pink one,
The color of a salt lick.
Nothing fancy.
Something simple.
I want the kind people
Visiting their dead at the cemetery 
Point out to each other and say 
Pretty, isn't it?

Too Easy

With less force than it takes to turn my phone off
They killed Alex Pretti.
With less force than it takes me to turn the lamp off
They put a bullet through his head.
Do you know how long it took to make a head like his?
Fourteen some billion years.
But it took less force to pull the trigger
Than it takes to thumb the blossom off a dandelion.
The force needed to fret a chord on the guitar
Is less than the force it took to end a life.
I’ve used more force to open a bottle of dishsoap.
To flick a lighter.
To crush a peanut shell.
They make it so easy now, any coward can do it.
The less training the better.
Better yet, find the ones no one will sleep with,
The ones who always wanted to play with the big boys,
Who get so excited putting on their little outfits.
But if you take a life you better be ready to carry it all the way
To the end, there’s nowhere to set it down.
Which is why it would be easier for everyone 
If pulling a trigger was hard.
It should be hard, should be near impossible.
I mean two hands, leaning back with all your weight.
Shooting someone should give you a hernia.
And you should only be able to fire once an hour.
Oh and can we slow the bullets down please.
They should move as slow as a huge fly in a hot room,
One of those flies you can’t catch but could if you really tried.
Then I wouldn’t care if it was easier to pull a trigger
Than to pull the cap off a pen,
Or the lever that makes the shower a bath.
In that world bullets would tickle,
You’d hardly notice you’d been hit,
And children would pick them up like broken sand dollars
Their parents won’t let them take on the plane inland,
Like pennies they don’t even make anymore,
Like candy scattered on the street at a parade.  

Ice

Where the river bled out into marsh 
The water grew thin enough to freeze 
All the way through. 
An insult to us boys, 
Who were so used to breaking
Any ice we came sliding across. 
We were known to put a boot or two
Through the window of a frozen puddle,
Pull off one icicle to shatter the others,
Jump on the roof of a pond 
And jump off just as it caved in. 
But none of our tactics worked out there.
The ice didn’t so much as flinch 
When we kicked it, which made us mad, 
Which made us kick it harder, 
Which made us madder still.
Had even one crack appeared, 
We might have walked away, 
Satisfied to have made our point.
But we couldn’t show weakness, 
So we got serious.
Twisting the branches off willows —
We weren’t the ones
Who made them cry,
They were in tears 
Before we got there —
We jabbed at the ice
With the splintered ends,
But the branches kept bouncing
Back into our hands, as if,
Having been broken themselves,
They sympathized
With what we were trying to break.
Remembering the train
That had run years before
We were born, we found
Rusted iron spikes
We brought down with two hands
Like we were trying to kill a vampire 
But only ended up cutting ourselves, 
Sprinkling his chest
With the blood he desired. 
So we pawed rocks out of the drifts 
The plows had piled either side of the road
And took turns losing our breath
Pounding its face in.
But the divots we made were nothing 
More than marks to aim at 
To make the divots deeper.
Nothing we did seemed to change 
The essential structure. 
How had the cattails done it?
We wondered.
Somehow they'd pierced 
The ice clean through
And stood as straight as spears
Plunged in ground
Won hard in battle. 
The warmth of life in their stems
Had melted the ice around them
In holes the shape and size that
Bullets make in glass.
Through the translator of the wind
They told us it was simple.
They’d been there before the ice was.
All they’d done was stay.
Irrelevant advice for us,
Who’d come too late.
The ice had won.
Frustrated, we spat in its face
And went off to find something 
Weaker to break. 
But if I could go back now —
It's January and I know
It's frozen solid again —
I know what I’d do.
I’d brush a spot clear of snow
And build a little fire,
Leaning in to blow it to life,
Closing my eyes tight against the smoke, 
Adding twigs as it grows
Until the ice begin to melt and run,
Betraying what it was all along —
Muddy water.
We never had to break it.
We could have gathered
What we had at hand —
Dry needles and twigs and dead leaves —
Gotten down on our knees
And burned it away our breath.