I, too, know the weighted knap-sack
Walt Whitman, you crazed-eye'd old fool,
You marched in Selma, and in D.C.,
The dream, the buffalo, and that totem spirit,
Why, we've perfected killing, Walt Whitman.
I wish it to be a drought,
I'd swap my occasional soul for that simpler time
Are they the lost blue eyed tribe?
"Croatoan"
Some say they are the blue eyed tribe.
Some say they have been released from hell.
and man's mistakes,
I turn my skin to the rusty crooks,
I like to walk their ranks and rows,
Winter white stalls the movement
Tracks tramped the whitened slopes,
The swag'd knot of worn-out log,
Iced breath looks of smoke.
Briars latch to movement and to me,
A distant movement of life and breath,
Some hurt in the lungs remind me, I'm cold.
Bridled fate, the life bestowed,
Dog day sweat on blacktop road
Gum-boots splay on sockless feet,
Equal now, and on the even keel.
It's black as old lightning,
I head to the stars
M. D. MYNHIER
or yawping his words on a corner,
singing the phrases of a land
seen only in his mind.
Just another long-beard pirate without a ship,
who lived a hundred years ago,
and a hundred years too late.
of being the wrong somewhere in time.
I must linger, along with wildlife
in my wooded lot,
wanting to know -- life's still wild.
But all I sing is ugly in tone.
and of the cell of the free-most men
and the razor wire of interstate,
the reckless bounty of the common hand.
what song would you have me sing today?
I know you've seen this place many a time before.
It's you sitting on that hickory stump in my woods.
And you're drunk on grass and wine,
or drunk on life itself.
A bearded man, as the Vietnam vet,
who'd out-lived his useful play of the war.
You gander at the limbs on a tree,
amazed that you have all your appendages too.
It's said, war does that to the lucky men.
Did you nurse yourself away?
Did you burn the draft card and go to jail?
Were you a brother of Ali?
Did you float?
Did you sting a slant-eye'd boy or two?
Or did you become a white hazard to your nation?
You stubborn mule,
and you Preached.
You brought your own body bag
to the Memphis balcony,
paid for with words from the mountain and love.
If you still have the stomach for it,
tell me some truth.
So many who live still breathe
your words as their air,
and slither the yards for what they mean.
That freedom you sought, with talk and music,
festivals of love and the concert on a farm
is still the lie, a dream used to push buttons.
Whom do we trust over thirty?
Was that really you in that west-coast supermarket?
Were you wearing beads around your neck,
and sipping free love in leather sandals?
that proudness of destiny, wasted,
they were led to the slaughter,
then slaughtered in gangs.
Skin walkers of the forest
are on me, riding my back,
talking to my ear.
They tell of a sameness, a disease,
Saying, "Jews were not the first,
nor the last."
Tribes of man have perished for the ages;
The red ones were yours alone.
The Physicians, the Surgeons you walk behind
with your bucket of pus, bloody parts of soldiers
and red caked gauze,
and those roughnecks who maim the belly of earth;
sawyers who circumcise rain forest,
and continuous is the gut wrenching wallop;
a general procedure,
performed under local anesthetic,
as, at last, the night, like weeds, creeps in.
and not the cause of you -- poet --
you long-hair'd dreamer of boyish lust;
all want their dream, but it'll escape me --
I fear.
Whitman, see what you've accomplished!
Yet you sit on my stump and scribe -- you ass.
Sing your song of yourself,
and twiddle in the leaves and grass.
the Pound -- Pound -- Pound
sounds of hammer to nail
drives crazy rhythms through the ear.
You thumble in your journal
and watch the thermometer rise,
as tall-tall timber is felled
and tacked up as the better fence
for the border-shooters.
that exists only in past tense quirks
of the old in mind.
A time when the Colorado was free
to white-rapid for miles
the Missouri ran muddy and wild;
the open range peoples followed
an unknown inclination
season after season,
pox and whisky had bought no claim
to soil and streams and beds of rock.
A time before ghost-dances and Sand Creek
turned red.
When the smell of cooking fires smelled sweet
and welcomed friendly visitors;
not the fire of awful stench --
that lived-in wood hold's.
The truth, Walt Whitman -- you knew it.
Didn't you!
are the chosen few of the spirit.
They are from where the earth is humped.
And late at night
and up the hollow's head,
sounds scorch trees and ears and me.
I think they're angry or maybe lost,
they could be dead,
but killed too quick.
They should lie down and rest.
Bounded by the white-rock cliffs,
limestone lurching up
and over the blue watered lake,
and the rolling hills of green and haunt.
Their shrieks too hard to be so paced,
and from deeper than fear of heat,
or aching lungs.
Still lost but no longer carving the unknown word?
Melungeons -- or a ship-wrecked crew
that were never found nor claimed.
Others know of rumbling sounds deep
below, where smoke and fire belch.
It's the earth that's coughing up the coal
and the miners' dead.
dowl'd round holes, and stallion's breath,
a cracked leather collar, a mule once wore
the peg'd side-post, the ragged bull whip
and the great horn'd owl hooted and slept;
the cobweb'd corner where the hanes once hung,
a bench in a stall where the holster once worked,
and the riggings were mended by many a man,
the slab-trimmed room where the single-tree stay'd
the rusty double-shovel once stood by the wall,
and the cracks of the boards pulled a summer drift in;
a six-foot black snake curl'd in the corner to shade
the tin of the roof rolled back by the storm,
where a three legged sawhorse, for years stood lame
the pommel like creature, where saddles took night
and fieldstone prop'd corners now lean to a dip,
tobacco once hung like the knife and the spear
years of weather and seasons plow'd by;
a sweat stain'd whiff of farmer's felt hat,
saddle-soap and liniment once covered a shelf
buckets of milk and the skimming of cream,
hay once baled and stacked toward the sky,
the cracks of the boards let winter pour in,
the mice in the feed bin, and a tabby old cat
chickens and pigeons on roost through the night,
a packed dirt floor once pasted with tracks,
an old western-flyer lay wreck'd by the door;
with cracks streaking down the four corner sides,
and mud-dauber nest like warts on the post:
the needs of the past; settle now to their rot,
still full of usage, and of volumes to tell,
left unnoticed and swag'd to the field,
death rattles and rattles on gust of roof-wind:
the pulse of the lumber carried far from the ear;
boards creak'd their ghost-moan to no one at all
then died on the hour there was no longer barn-smell.
hangs high on Wildcat Knob,
as barbwire squeaks its bugle caw
through nails and locust whine.
I grab to pluck that sweet barb'd twang
the song of woodsman's pride,
dug up from time of grandpap's day,
and stretched like banjo hide.
The raw cadence march of boots pulled snug
of all who've climbed a fence,
heading down to the hollow's creek
or over the gobs of hills.
The tune is that of crosscut art,
and rustled wire and air,
bending like the guitar string,
to ears that wait to hear.
that latch at will my old blue jeans,
and the belly-nap of deer,
while the posts stand lined in soldier walk
and gray'd like old man's hair.
They bend and weave and weather storms,
like men on sailing ships,
to give-out one day or melt away,
as ice in summer wind;
soon to find their granite names,
erect and row'd in bottom fields,
or chipped-out words on creek-rock slabs,
up atop the hill.
and salute their stretched-out wires,
all pulled up snug, and nail'd down tight
to those wrinkled knots of souls.
I touch their grain and pith'd old tops,
that have been weathered by the strains,
of skyward limb and nettle weed,
and water from the branch;
to tunnel-brush and rotted logs
of what the forest holds.
yellow blends with red and green;
it happened sometime back,
an effort to prove a thing.
A blended top of pine and pitch
locked in smother-dread.
the bugs and such know their time,
but rest inside a peaceful bleak.
Catalpa nest above my grasp,
their web like spider string;
white-weaved in oddest form,
like tormented ghost of stone.
of my hands and gait.
My breath blows white into my soul,
on a midnight raid for winter treat.
Snow flakes deep; make light to see.
Snow freeze covers limbless log
as it lay upon the ground and long.
Inside a hum: a swarm of bees,
and honey-comb'd wax and sweet,
all the needs for them within;
at home till winter's end.
through ridge'd needle thickets of bench,
along trails made wild at night,
where deer lean against laurel brush.
My grandfather's dad had known the same,
on winter moons and dark, dark nights,
with a notion that it was home.
lying long upon the brown and dirt,
split from stump a natural thing:
but frozen too, in time.
The rot inside droned a tune.
bees toasted from the cold,
on honey-comb'd drink so sweet.
I looked upon that long-dead tree,
a hewing ax at hand,
but now content till winter's death;
to let them be till spring.
a sound old as man and buck.
Moon glow skips and bends around limb.
Daylight but an hour, frosted whiskers know.
Glint eyes stop to the rake the skyline.
Squinted skeletal out-takes of crook'd tree,
wetted frost and moon make them bone.
Leafless gasp are silent prey of sapling stab.
ripping a sound when pulled to fray long thread.
A warning, the ear'd chipper dark knows me now.
Breeze pulls my sweat to it.
A smooth gray beech lumbers above and ahead
surrounded by oaks, hollow, and filled with tinder.
Every step brings crunch under foot.
The noise I hear is me.
A thought climbs or descends as slow flowing currents.
Warm moisture soaks in the chill of pre-morn
leaving me full of aloneness and shook.
I am but one man, separate and defined by the kill
or the thudded sprig to not,
and I know both too well.
look hard with disbelief,
to aged old lines, callused deep;
with the grip of farmer hands.
each morning waking new,
from cut and dried enslaving sleep,
and know the just of tomorrow's hold.
the stride forever on,
arms that pout and shoulders taint;
and worn stale by a trader's load.
but thankful it isn't cold,
and road tar sticks its eerie pop;
as do his thoughts and knees.
And no longer badger'd by the chain;
and the darkness doesn't matter now
but what is now, is real.
the color of blood
wards off the night
and the chill of the old;
canvas-stiff pants,
as stiff as they look,
and gray woolen socks
shoved down in cold boots;
an orange down vest,
a check'd flannel shirt
my Winchester rifle
my cowboy hat
where I step from the truck
to untie my tied-up,
garbage-bagged stuff.
As my feet hit the ground
I'm set to the lonesome
and sleeplessly cocked,
on the bottom of my boots
drifts the scent of the fox.
beyond naked limb'd trees.
The moon flashes its arbor,
to the hunters like me.
Ice crystals take shape
to the hair on my lip.
The earth way brittle
cold and newborn clean
to a degree it's an aweless crisp.
The ache is the pain
of a frozen November.
A riff of wind brushes my face,
carrying the knowledge and thrill of a shiver,
and my body stiffens-up,
like the last breaths of life,
from the gray weather'd old buck.
Copyright © 2000 by
M. D. Mynhier
E-Mail: Plumb_Wild42@yahoo.com