Soapbox Where I Can Shout It Podcast

Today is Easter, the culmination of the Lenten season for Catholics, and today’s pod features one of the great spiritual and Catholic poets, my high school English teacher Mrs. Schmitzer’s favorite (such that she wouldn’t teach his work lest us a******s ruin it for her) Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem fits the day: “Easter.”

We heard selections from the hymn “Were You There,” a bit of delayed closure from Friday’s episode and a favorite hymn from a very different kind of church, The Hold Steady’s “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” (from their highly allegorical concept album Separation Sunday).

Like people of good faith and my Grandma Marian always likes to say, “He is risen,” and all you people of good or questionable faith reply: “Indeed He is.” Happy Easter, see you tomorrow for more poetry.

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A quick one today: Bruce Snyder’s “Map,” from the book Paradise, Indiana.

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I was so excited to invite Mia and Claire, the hosts of the Pretty Undone Podcast to come on and talk about the poetry of faith, Lent, and Good Friday. Our conversation was so fun and I hope you enjoy it. Give them a follow and subscribe to their pod where ever you subscribe to pods.

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Two poems from Jim Daniels’ Having a Little Talk With Capital P Poetry, the titular piece and also “Ariel View of Warren, Michigan.” One poem by me, possibly influenced in some oblique way, by Daniels’ “Ariel View,” its “An Aerial Photo of the Cincinnati Subway.”

An Aerial Photo of the Cincinnati Subway

all those poems I wrote about living in the sky

were wrong, all those would-be-blues sang

ears so deaf they hung like withering ferns from this

fine cheek-boned male, I come from

Cleveland, for reverie, come for

business, come, that one pleasure, come

home from the effervescent sky. Heritage

transcends flesh, isn’t bloody lineage rooted in rock,

an aerial photo of some rocky mausoleum,

Crusaders’ bones Mistletoe-ing their way around

the Ohio River, where above, bodies of the living

kiss –– nothing of the world around I’ve seen

Lebanon & Ohio, different than Lebanon, Ohio,

a cedar securing my shape into a Mediterranean

coastline, murmuring not cedar but fir grows shade

around my Ohio body. To cut tradition out of

rock, incomplete subway held up only by

roots tying a You & a Me to the sky–

ward facing ground we love upon.

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“Elegy” by Natasha Trethewey, from her 2012 book Thrall.

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Two originals from maybe 2016 or 2017.

Ode to the Front Porch Birds

1

This poem is an apology because

this poem is about me, sorry

small bird with your ruffled

plumage, your first flight.

That’s real impressive. Eat

worms, chew straw, suck teeth

you little beaked b***h. It is

five AM. I am thinking about

Death. Go back to sleep,

Mother bird will be home soon.

2

To my credit, your front door is

above my front door, so don’t get

so huffy when I startle you. We almost

cross the same plain –– good

morning dewy mid-spring mid -

West frost. Good morning cup

of portable coffee; straw falls

on my welcome mat, OK, you

redecorated. You see the world

from a weird view. What do

we look like down here? Does

it scare the s**t out of you?

When the door slams shut.

3

It was sad the whole day

when you took off. We saw

you lift up, one of you

(a bird brother, feather fraternity)

got stuck in the chain links of the

fence. So much for freedom.

You, flower tree. Watching us

watch you right back, our strange

land bound bodies weathered to

Earth in terror. Your third,

the youngest (I’m projecting) with

the wild hair flies a bit. Lands

and hops. Doesn’t walking suck?

Compared to flying everything must

suck. Hops into the street. That

night, no suitable metaphor for

the not-song Mother bird sang.

The next morning, a thrashed and

vacant nest. The dew. The air.

Carries us away.

Ode to Other People

If this poem gets published today,

my author’s biography will tell you

I am a full time poet

and a part-time barista.

Latté-to-go Wisoncisn

sits on the porch, cools

in his cup, all stoically frothed

waiting for a sunset to dazzle

the pants off of a pink

envelope of artificial sugar.

Cool, the sweet intentions

of granulated love-letters.

I’d rather, at date of publication

today, or any day my

biography read that I was

a land-worker, pink upper arm

and dad-jeans farmer’s tan

farmer. You see, the thing about

the agriculture of our bodies

is that something would grow out of us.

Something like love

some harvest of knots

and stomachache kisses

on the sandy foreheads

of our freckled childhood

crushes. Oh, paper mâché sail

barge of tip-less receipts,

carry me to where the soil is

ready to reap.

I want to feel the stalks

of seeds of every person

I ever met on a bus

I want to unroll my sleeves

and watch their pollen

spill onto the floor.

I want to lift the brim

of my Detroit Tigers’ hat

and watch you walk

back into my bedroom.

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A new album by Bon Iver came out on Friday, but wrapped up in all the Jack Whiteness of this past weekend, I’m only getting to it today. To celebrate, we hear from another great poet taken up in Wisconsin (by way of Kentucky and Iowa), the delightful and austere Max Garland, and his poem “The Postal Confessions.”

There’s something interesting to discover between the poem and the intense connection I had to the music of Bon Iver that has now cooled. Maybe to heat up again?

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We had to talk about Kerouac at some point on the podcast. This being the second weekend I’ve dragged four wheels and my sleepy ass up and back to Detroit, I figured it was time. Here’s two haiku and a passage from “October in the Railroad Earth” Okay here’s a poem I wrote during my senior year manuscript project at Otterbein, too.

December in the Railroad Earth

The sharp reflections of the moon

glimmering on the unsure surface of the bay

are caught in the groovy disco-ball reflection of a

secondhand store’s mannequin’s fake crystal

earring (fat breasted, big boned)

sitting underneath Oakland’s unfashionable headdress,

is San Francisco.

Before you can lift her skirt to kiss her thighs

below the Bay Bridge in the shadow of SFO

where the breeze in eyes isn’t from the water,

isn’t carrying baked goods out of Height Ashbury bakeries

airplane exhaust, honking cars heading headlights first

towards San Jose.

It is cold the next morning.

It is chilly in Chinatown, where squat men open their shops,

small women wield butcher knives the size of their children

chopping the heads off of fresh ocean fish;

so close, so close to the waving cats

and infinite plastic Buddhas muttering mantras,

and at the gate at the corner of Bush and Grant;

its concrete dragons pause to take pictures with tourists jamming their

hands into their pockets.

Other side of town,

North on Van Ness on top of Russian Hill

and its booksellers and old wooden doors and expensive sushi,

a different kind of cold worms its way into the sleeves of a flannel.

For as bright as the sun is in your eyes,

that wind coming off the ocean is worse.

Alcatraz and the rising sun sit alone out over the water,

other parts of mainland California further.

Here is where the railroads stopped pushing West.

Golden Gate Bridge, all red in defiance swings in the morning haze,

water lightly slapping the arm of the pier where

a fish jumps, a bird swoops, spray flies.

All those railroads are obsolete now,

I can fly across the world in a matter of hours.

I have flown across the world in a matter of hours.

You could leave San Francisco for anywhere if you wanted,

sitting in SFO aimlessly waiting for an anonymous airplane

with its own romance etched onto the wings. Sleeping upright

in a seat you can only claim as your bed,

home is the white knuckles hanging on to the armrests,

home is the homeless sleeping in the tunnel on Columbus Avenue,

near your favorite beatnik bookstore.

All your San Francisco will have to fall eventually,

until the promise of new frontier is worn as thin as the

cinder blocks a wrecked and rusted out Plymouth slowly dies on.

That wind, that chill wakes you up again.

The world doesn’t end here friends.

The satin sheets will be waiting when the souls of your shoes

are worn out.

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Celebrating a concert date night with Rachel on the podcast with the poetry of Mr. Jack White. “Alone in My Home,” from the album Lazaretto. “We’re Going to Be Friends",from The White Stripes’ album White Blood Cells. “Courageous Dream’s Concern,” poem.

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Content warning: the poem “Animals” (third in the episode) contains graphic depictions of violence towards animals.

Today being the last Friday in Lent before Holy Week (the actual last Friday in Lent is “Good Friday,” an even more somber observation of the Lenten spirit, categorically different than the regularly somber Fridays of the season) and I am thinking about fasting. I am also thinking about the Holy Month of Ramadan, which recently ended for my friends and family who celebrate, and fast in a similar manner to us Catholics during Lent. There’s something poetic about fasting, about withholding, about finding meaning in the sensation of urging, of desire, of craving. A great way to find god, or if not god, ourselves on a more pure journey to finding god.

I miss living near Dearborn and the very public celebrations of Ramadan, I miss the food, of course, the tremendous iftar spreads, but even more than the bounty of sustenance, the bounty of company, conversation, companionship. A shared poetry of the body and spirit.

Today’s poems are all by poets of Arab descent, Kazim Ali, Kaveh Akbar, and Hayan Charara, two of them - “Ramadan” and “Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats” are explicitly about fasting and prayerfulness, the third, “Animals,” observes the kind of violence we might better avoid were we more attuned to our spirits, perhaps.

As Lent wraps up I’m left to wonder, in my own craving, what I can do to better serve myself, my family and friends, those around me, and those not around me. It might be naive to say ‘poetry is the answer,’ surely, it isn’t. But spirit - clear, pure, unobstructed spirit - that might be getting on to something.

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