Jim Klein

Trinis Talk Like the Birds

1

Just write what's on the end of the fork.
In painting it's called a loaded brush.

A woman on the street below just waved at me.

Time in Trinidad just inches along,
except here on the page where it hustles in cursive,
and blindly in the other room as Micah watches Shrek IV.

He saw his house on Moore Street on Google Earth.
I explained the microwave and oceans and light.

My handwriting is starting to resemble how my father's got.

The rest of life flutters before me like the pages of this notebook
that has to be filled for richer or poorer.

I came here with nothing to read to keep me open
to the dinge an sich and force me back
on my "inner resources."

I just want to do enough every day to be a happy boy.
It's a lot better than being a genius I decided a long time ago.

Now watch me make some kind of a poem out of this.

2

I've been playing 9-ball on the computer with Micah.

Jeter is making an important adjustment in his hitting.
He is doing three acceptable things with his front foot,
and no longer doing the bad thing.

It is just one of innumerable adjustments in his career,
he says, but an important one.

Writing in bed after playing 9-ball is not a great idea,
but I don't know what else to do.

I don't want to go to Kelvin's birthday.

3

My father confessed to me once
he hadn't kept up his own prayer life.

Other than that how did you like the play?

Above, even beyond where everything is a mistake,
there will be a time when I write a true sentence.

"I'm willing to sit here until Hell freezes over,"
Adlai Stevenson said in his finest moment,
a sad comment on a man previously known
for a hole in his sole.

What we know is not it: it is what we bring.

4

Steve Jackson used to say,
"I hope I have a heart attack right now,"
to ward off heart attacks.

Lloyd needs healing.
Someone has to apologize to My Brother.

The Japanese are flooding a reactor with sea water.

Jeter has three weeks to get his timing down.

I have longer, and nobody is keeping track
of my batting average in spring training.

I'd trade a notebook of nonsense for a good poem.
Kathy Kuenzle said I'd kill my mother to get a line right.

Eddie wants me to write something with Percy Sledge in it.

5

"None of us knew the African culture per se,
but there are influences which are useful.
We only know the culture of colonialism
which we have been miseducated to despise."
Uranus Cupidore
Diego Martin, TT

None of us has developed the African part enough,
nor the colonial.

I am reminded of the strong man in the comics
who had a system of strength training pitting
his left and right arms against each other.

I don't know that he sold a lot of equipment,
apart from his booklet.

The maximum of disorder and order at once
is what is called for.

Visualization and punctuation.

A memory expert recommends sex with grandma, etc.

Don't stop and ask is this good anywhere.

The world needs another poem like a fish needs a bicycle,
and somebody should admit it.

I'm Jim Klein, and I'm a poet,
and I can't stop making poems.

We all want somebody to calmly walk into the room
and shoot the bastard.

Look Ma, no hands
is no way to run a railroad.

6

I want to use dengue in a poem
because my wife might have it,
and I think it's funny.

There was a TV host proud that she knew
that the name of Vietnamese currency was dong.
She fell for it hook, line, and sinker,
she admitted.

In El Dorado Village, there's a vacant lot
full of junk and a burned-out car,
and they call it The Bronx.

I'd like to think of a lot more words
like dengue, dong, and The Bronx,
but that's about it.

7

When does it happen
after everything is finished
and the numb dumb
(some word like bastards)
have their way and the thick
oatmeal of mixed emotions
is piled on the edge of a very
thin stick in the sun, then something
like the cheese gets binding.

There is nothing new.
The thing is to keep going keep
innovating despite high inflation
and slow growth.

You don't need a ruler
to draw a truck.
That is so fundamental
I'd like it to be a song
the kids could sing in school.

Now for a white bread
and bologna sandwich
with ketchup. White bread
because his mother's bread is finished.
Some people does call it ends,
and I does call it crust,
and Micah does call it skin.

Dave Brubeck wrote "Take 5"
because he heard Joe Morello
who died yesterday fooling
around with time signatures
and Paul Desmond.

8

Bobby wants to go to Guyana to mine gold
when Miryam graduates from college.
He thinks it will be fun.
It takes tons to make a pennyweight.
Talk about a dangerous snatch.

Bob Hope had a library of 10,000 jokes,
but he found it easier to just write a new one.

The kids are dancing and singing Hindu songs
they don't understand.

So is Wall Street,
but that is such an easy target.

It's all functions now.
And the paradigms are fighting.

All we have is a finger bone, a tooth, and a genome.

Know Who You Are, and Drink What You Want.

I'm as deep as an advertising slogan.
What are you drinking?

9

The Smart Ass in the Hat called my fig newtons
pressed baby shit.

Arky got hit by a clod, it raised a big lump,
and we laughed at the way he talked.

Another Southern guy bought the sun visor
from my '51 Mercury for his truck.

When we weren't bent over digging the trenches
where the forms sat, we were pouring.

Two guys and I in the puddle in hip boots
with grain shovels pushing the mud
against the forms and under the paver.

Two crews in town, and we were the non-union.
7 to 7, with a half hour for lunch.
We made some sad roads in Lawrence, Kansas.

Mud is heavier than grain, but when we were done
I'd go help Gifford and learn to finish.

I got promoted, Tom Black quit

10

Life can only be understood backwards,
but it is lived forwards,

so what's wanted is the crack of a whip,
an electrical storm,

the long tail of ignorance turning on itself
unto exhaustion and quiet.

Mapplethorpe had to push himself over the edge
to feel alive and die.

One night, when he got disgusted with Guston,
Pollock drove a nail into his own living room floor.

Now that's a work of art, he said.

I love the way John Marin's Weehawken cityscapes
eventually smeared into abstractions.

When I'm finished here, I'm going to put those mangos
into a triangle of graphite and turn it every which way
until the pencil fruit blooms.

11

A woman is preaching on the street below,
but I want to write I'm sitting here in a funk
because Micah bullied me off the computer.

Never grow up.
The rats and snakes of time sneak out into space.

Z is trying to put 60 years with Ma into something presentable.
She has her notebook on her lap. She's eating an orange.

The doctor told Ma she'd be lucky to make it to Sunday.

Am I just talking to myself, or to Dear Reader too,
and can I ever reach the heights
where the poem is talking to itself.

That's a Jesus Ma can never dream of,
but I can.

12

Petty used to be cruel to Simon
and he'd get mad and play the piano
loud at the Pentecostal Church,
and she could hear it from the gallery.

But she was only fourteen.

She has been to five of Roshan's
engagement parties.

13

Joan owned the mango trees.
Mangos were sweeter when she got them,
which was usually just true for the boys.

She'd take two novels up the tree
and lie on the roof in the shade
and nobody could touch her.

She did the stairs in two jumps.

Sixteen steps:
eight steps down twice,
two eights up.

Maybe three up, she admitted
shelling pigeon peas.

14

A spicy sauce is made up of disparate parts
wherein some bitter and even nasty elements
are harmonized into a richer, deeper blend,
a notion good for church and family reunions.
The same idea shows up when the singing
begins, which is better than expected.
And I know right off the bat
when God did his very best work,
though it took a long time to get there.
The only mystery was did the pastor
know there was a south pole.
A good night but too long.
And granny got off.

15

If there are enough words,
it is a mathematical certainty
there is a good poem somewhere.
Even this much is enough.
The paucity of possibilities
can be the best circumstance.

It may be best to harvest the work
from the bottom up.

I've just committed the first metaphor,
having just finished husking
the nasty corn Micah's father supplied.
I know it was organic.
Every skimpy ear had a worm.

What's another word for just.
The curry corn was outrageous.

Joan has glue ear.
She wants to know why germs
are "proliferating" in her middle ear.
I said she is suffering from
middle ear proliferation.
She is hypersensitive to sounds.
She is radioactive.

Form is content,
but content is form too.
Never let them see you sweat.
It's a mixed pleasure to see old movies
copulating in a new one.

Some seek by meter and rhyme.
Some by the ins and outs of history,
or some other method to the madness,
but I'm a blank mind
and a bare space man,
and I'm humble with the results.
I'm not in charge.

16

You play basketball like old people fuck
was a criticism of poor effort when I was a kid.

The effortlessness of the practiced, any seeming
effortlessness, can be taken for lack of passion,
or even result. It happens in sports.

Jerry really did hit the wall talking to Brianna
and snapped his finger
and had to have a plate installed.

Now that's a work of art.

But what's full of heart may be bare of art,
though what's full of art may be bare of heart.

Gifford dragged a pick around in a shambling walk
with a Winston in his puss and a grin on under his straw hat.
The story was if you followed Gifford around all day,
and did what he did, by the end of the day you'd fall over.

I'd like to be like the Gifford of legend,
and really be getting something done.
I do know the kids were wrong
about old people fucking.

17

I was going to try to go all day
without writing a poem,
but Lloyd just gave Z
a bottle of whiskey
so I had to choose
between two bottles
to go with her new coconut water
and she was so excited
she spilled a little on my arm,
so I was, and then she said
Joan was around and
Ma was around and
Lloyd was coming back so
we weren't going to clash genitals
and I didn't, and finished
this here on the plane.

18

What are they for,
I asked Ma about the Hindu flags.
"Worshipping their false gods."