Autobiomythography

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
b. 1979
The stories of BD’JP.
“An Owl book”
Contents: Royce—Hollow—A room forever—[etc.]
1. West Virginia—Fiction. I. Title.
2. IA, NY—Wishful Invention of Life & Praise
PS3566.A559 2004b 813’.54 83-22530

Silently he gouged the double-bark of pine
until it bled. Corralled by limestone ridge and hollers
the August weather seeped into the valley floor,
mercurial, the slate mist cupped and emptied from a palm,
suspending the glass song of a hermit thrush among
the canopies. Uncle Royce wiped the blade along his jeans
as the elder pine giggled out its sap. “You seen
a blue tick matted with this stuff? Best glue Nature
ever gave.” I was convinced we’d gathered there
for sport, to spy on sassy jailbait plucking fungus
from the hardwoods, later skinny-dipping up at
Shawnee Creek. Wed myself to thoughts of near-conception.
“Fun’s plenty. But ass don’t pay the gas.” Later, skunk-drunk,
Royce climbed into a neighbor’s cage to spar a bear
chained to a stump, and lost. Pine glue held closed his casket.

Flat shoes fit on like gaskets—Uncle Royce in dreams.
Lilac, soot, corrosive agents. Words could
not describe the loss, his smells; what makes
a man? Identity’s a lozenge on the tongue
and once dissolved left but red words;want
not;man reduced to math/myth/moniker.
I worked the mines until the bank foreclosed
our home and leveled went the logging acres.
I prayed for chokedamp, swampgas, whatnot—come
what may. Come chariot of fire, come dung,
come factory and chemical, river
water blushed with nitrates, runoff from pig
farms further upstream. Gone Fishin. Gone Fuckin.
I couldn’t hold my alcohol or job
and all was left you couldn’t shake a stick at.

Stuck it out a short while in a motor home splash indigo.
Rehashed a rubbished religion. Reduxed. Detoxed
in a truck stop shower stall: en route, one-way trip.
Left home to let my anchor float freely. Desired clemency:
a star released from orbiters. Dear God and whatnot,
had not help. Spit-shined moon what waned above this well
and not so well. A trucker by the name of Harvey
let me knock off in his cab. Soon my thoughts of West
Virginia fell off a cliff and leapt at verdure foothills
where aphids circled crepe myrtle, snapped to apogee.
Heat glassing up the asphalt, whistling till my mouth
turned silt. He asked where I was headed, said
he would quit near Halifax, VA. The hills
were all I knew, I said. “Well bud,” he said, “You best
learn something new real quick.” I slept the death of colliers.

I longed for coal dusk, concrete streetsigns, jailbirds coiled
by newspaper stands, jaybirds hugging the dark phonewires.
I’d capped my upsets/insults in a bottle and chucked it
to the curb. Sunrise over Greensboro, NC— mopped up
and rung through thunderheads. THE BIG PICTURE gone blank. Pumped gas for board. Barwoman’s belly
cause for breathlessness, grandeur of fleshy thighs
I clutched like death in my motel room; romped
on Frigidaire and foldout—plumb rocked her body
into cradle...but the womb unbuckled.
Here’s the heart performing Hide and Seek,
the heart memorial, like some airy portico
and ancient bust split through by invisible
weather. 2x2 we boarded the ark, and for what great hope?
Two souls arced —snuffed out like a rocket.

Twin aches like rocket boosters=Royce, Unborn.
You wake and have to rise because it’s what you do.
My honey’s note pinned to the lamp like a fresh outlook.
Blinds drawn, bath drawn. Bubbles like a thousand tongues
of regret. She asked me to forget her name so I tattooed it
to a kumquat rind and skipped it ‘cross the reservoir.
Days past, drew breath, upchucked. I went rowdy,
raucous. Wore my special hat. Lost a four eights draw
to four kings, and nearly killed. Were there a trophy
for self-deprecation, I’d have offered up my pose.
“ Robber bees are born that way,” said Television.
That’s a mouthful, I replied, and quit my construction job
for an art less on the level. I worked at making
every home seem emptier while I was there—I stole.
Deprived of all but profits. Depraved and sucking bottles.

Derivation of Fiasco—a bottle.
Corked or screwed, at sea. No note.
Or one that no one wants to read at least.
I found the definition in this book
on the Italian language for beginners.
First Edition, stolen as I stole the rest
to sell online to bibliophiles/colporteur
dealers accessing the legalized
Black Market. Lady at the library desk
got me computer savvy; what duffered less
in cyberspace I bartered at the pawns.
Fiasco—night. The luminous waters batwinged
upside a houseboat docked near lakeside villas,
my hands full with stereo equipment: then
someone flipped a switch to start the motor.

I flip out. My brain: rack and pinion/piston:
misfires. Pretty soon I’m drifting at lake’s center,
listening as the motor cuts, still unwilling
to move an inch. I stay that way an hour, till dawn
polishes a doorframe, slickenslides the shutters.
On some Great Chain of Tension, gravity upscales muscles
and the stereo loses its life for it. The wind
cries through a porthole. Time unhinges and drifts like so
many gulls and still nobody comes to check
the noise. It’s cold. I want whatever is going to happen
to happen, so I rub my arms and walk upstairs.
The fibroid dawn, pinks and yelloworanges, smeared
in the reality of dream. On deck a black man
in blue jeans glares hard from beneath a baseball cap.
A gun balloons one hand like a fiddler crab’s.

Befuddled—gone and worn my guardian angel out.
The shore was too long away on deepish water,
so I propped an elbow on the rail and spit.
Him: “What’s your name son? Where you from exactly?”
I give you that, I give it all away.
Him: “Way I see it, you got two choices. None good.
What was that I heard you bust inside?”
A stereo, but it was junk. Old hi-fi.
Him: “There’s nothing’s junk. You notice everything
Inside’s baroque?” It looked okay to me.
Him: “Not broke, you idiot. Fancy. Paid for.”
He laughed and I was sure he’d kill me.
I’ll do what it takes to make things right. Whatever.
Him: “I know you will. The Sheriff’ll see to that.”
Let’s talk. How’s 'bout I pay you back in books?

I wasn’t booked. I spilled my guts, hoping for
some leniency. Mister R. P. Warren Whittier
was proud, middle-aged, and kind. A writer, he understood
the mind’s not strong enough to kill a heart for good, nor
hold it long before it starts to struggle with the cage.
“ Everyone can find a problem,” he said. “But few
can find solutions.” Pawned my near everything for cash,
him waiting in my truck. When we returned he offered
me a job as he pocketed what all I owed and owned,
including books, which he filed in his library.
I did groundswork/gruntwork: supersaturated
particles in his solution. Slept in a spare room
and read most often. No TV. We fished, swapped
whopper stories of our famous aches and loves;
our nightly walks a kind of peripatetic poetry.

He got me penning nightly my elemental haunts—
brainturf, loinache, deathdrive—drop my guard,
put it all on paper. Said life was less for my
ignoring it. Made me search out over the land,
asked what I saw. Pretty stuff, some. He said “Man is
Wolf to Man, son, and ours alike.” Said, “Parcel out
the newly missing from the freshly lost. Repopulate, Deucalion.”
I read his books and craved my own, my land and place,
my voice. Set out again in quietude: charted the past
from recall: Coffindaffer crosses crowning hilltops,
frying ramps with molly moochers, coal dust, plantlife,
the glass factory, opry, and union church. Soon Royce.

Royce arrived with nightmares, brought the Unborn.
Wrote that. Wore that. Won that rebirth. Swore and wept that.
And buried myself in our tragedies and hope, mining life.