D. R. James

You Know Us!

Soul is made up of a multitude of subpersonalities,
the “little people” of the psyche, complexes that
have a consciousness and will of their own.
—C. G. Jung

I’m the types of people you’d dream
scooping the Panama Canal
with their hands, who’d
look for change in the breast pockets
of fire dancers, apprentice plumbers,
and over-dubbed, on-air personalities.

Yesterday, for instance, when
the ten-o-five brought traffic
to a frantic standstill—
and I mean in all directions—
we were the ones dumping ashes on oil spots,
like Hendrix at Montreux,
worshipping his axe.
You would have panicked,
rolled your window to our hawking
of rare vinyl, hotdog joints, and hard woods.
We were frisking vehicles for encouragement,
any signs of usable madnesses.

As for a social life, we were once voted
“Most Likely to Succeed” and
“The Turn-About King and Queen.”
Just note Mann’s Magic Mountain
anchoring our Venetian blinds for all the proof
you’ll ever need to see.

Meanwhile,
Dickinson, Aeschylus, and Solzhenitsyn
roam free on every other of our sibilant shelves,
our Emily plying her gauzy fan dance,
our Aleksandr fiddling Aeschy’s golden show tunes,
the catchiest of those Oriestia! greatest hits.

But it doesn’t stop there. No,
if our people were to Act Now! Today Only!

for a hipster’s limited time,
glinting icebergs
three ragged ridges off a frozen beach
would pitch the perfect rhythms we are prone to keep.
Only Miles’s muted trumpet could also tap that time,
finding form between the notes,
deep down in the troughs of waves.

In a nutshell,
we contain Walt Whitman and still lie grazing in the grass,
here, under your sandal soles and, there, through the sockets of your eyes.

And if we grew up,
we’d still want us,
want us all,
to have been a poet.
We’d still want the Sunday geese
and the Wednesday evening blues
to have been the lonely tonal keys
to the meaning of our belovèd meaning.

The Truest Thing

What if there were just one
in each woman, each man?
Many true (and untrue, which fact
could be the truest), but
only the one. And if it could
testify? Not to land us in
some trouble or to shame us or
blame us into changing.
Just to show us, anomalous honesty,
what greatest truth resides
within us, for better or worse,
best, worst. Would the telling
then become the truest—but then
no longer in us, et cetera?
Or would the telling, being telling,
withhold more than it really told,
with motive behind motive no telling
could ever tell?

Wanted: Real Poet to Muse

Self-employed muse seeks poet at new end of old rope.
The rope can be coilable or uncoilable, bio-degradable
or one that will withstand all time. A menace to society
or decorative. Sold by the yard or…. Forget the rope.
The poet, though, ah, the poet, the one I seek.
Seeking a real poet, one who would be real, identifiably so.
Said poet would be unencumbered, that is to say free,
free to be himself or herself. (Let’s make it himself:
male and proud of it, but, you know, quietly secure.)
Willing to consider being available inconveniently,
at the drop of a hat, when the spirit moved, muse-moved,
though subject to staunch values and steadiness of purpose,
but not hung up on values or purpose—or steadiness.
Dedication important, the kind that favors walking in nature.
Nature in the broadest sense, which could mean microscopic.
Big or small, size wouldn’t matter—does it ever?—
but the thought would count. Which is not to say over-rated reason
(well, since, what, the late 17th century?  When it became Neo- ?)
In ANY case…, seeking unreasonable poet open to whimsy but serious.
Here would be a sensibility that didn’t privilege being sensible.
Here would be a sensibility that didn’t privilege being translatable.
This poet’s poetry would begin where others’ left off and then—just go.
Gone would be the shackles of a cookie-cutter poetics.
Gone would be the vestiges of ‘verse,’ word play, clever endeavors.
I’m seeking a poet who would challenge himself but not worry.
This poet would care not about reception, being above reception (or is it below?),
below notice, unlimelightable, under the radar, nothing wouldn’t register.
Or if it registered—yes, it’d have to—this poet would empty himself.
This poet would be empty enough to engage his observant mind.
Yet I’m seeking a poet who wouldn’t let his mind go to his head.
His heart would be his compass, that is, next to his emptiness.
Yes, his empty heart would have to fill up but without trying.
Trying would be the worst, a sell-out looping back to the old rope.

 

D. R. James (james@hope.edu) is the author of the full-length poetry collections Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press, 2021), If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press 2017), and Since Everything Is All I've Got (March Street Press 2011); and seven poetry chapbooks, including Why War (Finishing Line Press, July 2014), Split-Level (Finishing Line Press 2017), Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box 2019), and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press 2020). You can download and print his foldable micro-chapbook All Her Jazz at Origami Poems Project. Individual poems have appeared in a variety of print and online anthologies and journals.