Michael Lucas lives in North Charleston and writes his poetry under the mentorship of poet Richard Garcia. Lucas is a longtime PGA Professional who specializes in teaching the game of golf. He is a graduate of Greenville Senior High and of Furman University.
Manuscript Title: Historical Droplets
to Richard Garcia,
my writing and publishing mentor.
Ballin’ the Blues
After Yusef Komunyakaa
1.
Goodbye, I’d said with a wave;
it seemed no supreme sacrifice,
the Ride of the Valkyries covered me.
I wrapped myself in choking weeds,
the thought of short breath strokes,
and satin sheets were all I’d need;
and through that phase a C Blues Scale,
with rhythmic locks and turns and shifts
would grab me by the throat;
Leadbelly, John Lee, and BB,
wailing lost causes in my ear,
while I smooozed the next short skirt,
and ran to darkness headlong.
2.
Reciting McKuen at the Chart Room
to a long-legged fancy face,
and Buffett came to sing of A1A,
but blues would grab my throat,
and I’d be on that mournful train;
suck and blow, unsettled riffs––
Howlin’ Wolf, T-bone, Jimmy Reed.
It was late, the movements slow and slight,
with flashing lights and bodies tight.
There is no rhyme or rationale
for short-lived songs of ecstasy,
except to dodge reality;
she said she was passing through.
3.
I’d been dry long so,
and painted pictures in my head,
walking out of Tupelo,
until the blues grabbed me by the throat.
She drove a diesel rig,
and invited me to share her cab;
stretched jeans and taunt t-shirt,
an easy riding coffee grinder.
I woke up somewhere on Bourbon Street
under dark and rainy skies,
but how I got there I don’t know,
and I was looking up at down
with Big Bill Broonzy in my ear.
4.
The Shipwreck of Don Juan by Delecroix
hangs in a library’s golden frame;
I’d visit from time to time,
and blues would grab my throat.
Jimi singing, Am I happy or in misery. . .
purple haze all in my eyes, uhh.
It wasn’t hard to make a riff––
Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie––
I feel like somebody has shipwrecked me. . .
cause it makes me think,
I’m on my last go round.
Byron’s line goes: who should die
to be his fellows’ food?
5.
I spent discerning days
reading Hemingway
while Chopin tinkled keys,
and soothed unyielding lines.
But, night would come,
and blues would grab my throat;
Lightin’ was no twelve bar man,
and Blind Lemon told him,
Boy, you got to play it right;––
and shoe taps kept the beat,
until a Cajun sun came up.
The waitress brought ham and eggs,
before a working man’s reward.
6.
I tossed one shuriken,
then another into bark,
the best oak tree in the park,
before the blues came to grab my throat;
two bars to break in four riffs,
and Muddy Waters’ Rollin’ Stone.
She was blond and willowy,
a jogger, tightly built, surveying me.
I gave her a shot;
she fluttered metal stars
that stuck deeply in my tree,
and luck was with me,
I had two nunchakus’ in my bag.
Bouts-Rime: Recalling That Freckle-Faced Girl
I always glance at the freckle-faced girlwhen I see her walking; kinda hokey,
sliding through her serendipity world;
a reader of books to guys in the pokey.
The sparkle in her eyes, no longer prime,
keeps alive the memory of Duhamel’s
audition. She’s gone through poets in her time;
the art of scraping wine from tooth enamel.
It wasn’t long ago that the routine
was evening strolls in any weather,
and riding the merry-go-round machine
at Brickell Park . . . when we were together.
There are angels in this world that I’ve sought,
goodbye to a dream that would not be caught.
Passing By
In my piney clad retreat,the hearth holds cedar crackling;
I teeter on the fringe of sanity,
and courage to die dwindles.
I trace the lines of age,
and pinch my sagging jowl,
and watch a woman clothe
her nudity by pulling up a sheet.
Streamers from radios;
a strand of Wagner floats
across the man-made lake,
butting heads with laissez-faire refuse.
Mental illusions swim through,
And broken colors leach;
the wheel lock of my musket breaks,
and bounces out of sight.
My dreams are floating links,
that blot the memories;
still, all in places that I’ve been,
identify me passing by.
Humanity is closing in,
without a sense of soulful things,
and two dogs growl inside my head;
the one I feed will eat his brother.
This Broken Land
Come let us cross the river boys,And rest beneath the shady trees;
And there we’ll watch the long convoys,
And listen to the shouted noise
Of those who bear the single star,
And have not come across the bar,
To share in glory’s crystal sea.
The serpent scaled the eagle’s nest
With no regard for mortal men,
And wrapped the South in bloody test
That sends a soul to endless rest;––
The curse of death is on our heads
And none can say our courage fled,
We stood our ground against the din.
The Woodlands willows drooping low
Foretell the tears of Charleston;
We hear the flapping wings of crows
That brought the Salkehatchie woe;
And in the turmoil of the night,
Columbia is burning bright,
And flames contrive to meet the sun.
The bugle blowing winds of change
Is heard across a bleeding land,
And few will smile at the gains,
For rights of states have left the range
Of honest men and little glows;
Dishonesty in swooping crows,
And withered faces in the sand.
Ellison’s Lamb
I watched the man, café au lait and free,
he led his string, a bonded line of black,
in front of the Charleston market throng;
his name was William Ellison.
There were four strapping lads devoid of shirt
and eyes of hope, but wasted resignation;
and a woman; heavy, dark as coal,
and blue-gummed when she showed her teeth.
At the end of the rope, a child, maybe five or six,
a darker shade of coffee, but not black,
with tear stained cheeks and slender nose
below a thick and curly not so wooly crop,
and darting eyes that sought escape;
he tasted whip for tug-a-ways.
I thought of the Romantic gleaming star,
deserter of a bastard daughter,
jeté sans des craintes en France,
but for a paltry poem.
The final quatrain on a lamb:
It will not, will not rest!—Poor creature, can it be
That ‘tis thy mother’s heart which is working so in thee?
Things that I know not of belike to thee are dear,
And dreams of things which thou canst neither see nor hear.
Ballad of the Road to Yellow
He retreated out the kitchen door,
and didn’t look back as a vase
of daffodils whizzed by his head.
The sky faded from yellow
to fox red as he walked aimless
down the country road to nowhere;
maybe Mexico, or Canada;
Eureka wasn’t what it used to be.
They found him one morning,
beside an empty Mad Dog bottle
in a field of lemon yellow daisies
behind the Bradbury Street Café,
with dew drops sparkling roughly,
and fox red around an upturn
that time had taken slowly down;
one hand clutched a bronze star,
and there lay the knife that took his life.
They’d called him drunken Johnny Pace,
he won’t hear that anymore;
just a drifter who’d hung around.
He’d told of his dog, Amarillo,
and a yellow tang he’d fed romaine,
and the war that took his childhood. . .
and the dreams of his deprivation;
the acrid stench of napalm,
the cinnamon plumes and swirling smoke,
and the bare bones without legs
that lay in disarray aside a road.
There wasn’t much yellow in him then.
Bullfighting in the Living Room
Sometimes I wish I were a maestro,
a Mexican toreador in satin pants,
defying sleek attacking bulls,
fencing forth with la espada and muleta;
olé, olé , thrust home, olé, thrust home.
Sometimes I wish I were a hit man,
with a break-down rifle in a leather case,
a maestro of sorts with shady types;
my friends would be broads at night,
the ones who don’t ask questions.
Sometimes I wish I were hip,
I’d hold margaritas by the rim;
I’d be cool and wear a wide sombrero,
sit cross-legged, naked on a bed,
and taste Cohiba Esplendido smoke.
Sometimes I wish I were Pierce Brosnan;
I could act out the dangerous parts,
evading Pamplona’s charging bulls
along San Fermin’s Estrafeta,
and dodging bullets on Barcelona’s Rambla.
Anagram Poems
I
Potential
He’d come back plain and pale
from an alpine reassessment plant
deep in the heart of a panel of pine.
The cadenced tapping and roll of platen
let us know the poet
was releasing pain,
pent up by the prolonged penal
incident he’d referred to as penile;
envy bred at a pottle-deep toilet.
He’d assured us that his latent talent
was pliant and he’d make his point
in a tale about an eagle’s talon.
II
Frothily
The seafarer’s trunk in the loft
of grandfather’s house at Hilo
was where I found amongst the filth,
a litho-
graph encased in aluminum foil.
A note said, taken from The Chesters Fort;
it still stands off the frothy
mouth of Scotland’s Firth of Forth.
The image illustrates a trio;
Marc Anthony, Thor, and Helen of Troy
on a chariot ride through a rift
of billowing froth.
