We Were Fish,
Poetry
by J M McDermott
***
All Words Copyright 2011 to J M McDermott
Smashwords Edition
Cover Art is Public Domain
Parks/Library of Congress.
TITLE: New York, New York. Fisherman holding a large catch at
the Fulton fish market
CALL NUMBER: LC-USW3- 028719-E [P&P]
***
“Yesterday and I Have All We Need”
i have to leave you, tomorrow
i’ve decided that yesterday and i belong together
we’re moving in together
we bought cats
we’ll stay in this big apartment, north of the city with our
cats
don’t worry, tomorrow, you’ll be fine without me
ignore all those people that say
we belong together -- we don’t
you’re no fun.
you’re cold, and responsible, and i think
well, i hate to put it this way but it’s just that you seem like
the type to kill
the person you’re with
(and don’t even get me started on how you’re never home.)
go ahead, tomorrow, and get
the dog we said we’d buy. get
the house on the island without me. get
all the electronics and automobiles we dreamed about
because yesterday and i have all we need
***
“We Were Fish”
Used to be, we were all fish. We ate everything that fit in our
mouths that was moving like it was still alive. Didn’t matter
what it was. I ate an earring once, and it's still in there,
cutting at my stomach lining. I wear the hooks and lures with
pride. I got the worm - and the worm did not get me. My boss
wants me to remove the hooks because it looks unprofessional,
but I want to remember the old ways when we were fish. I
remember swimming in an ocean so deep and wide it was everything
that existed. There was no such thing as rock. The closest we
had were mollusks and barnacles stuck on bellies that had gotten
too big and slow. Sun was nothing. The water was our warmth. We
pushed ever onward, mute with sputtering mouths, while the
whistles of the whales were our sparrows and parakeets and
pagers and cellphones. We were fish, in flashing silver swimming
always. We made big schools because back then traffic jams kept
you safe and we were grateful to be packed together like that,
pooping in each others’ faces. It was a good life when you
didn't know any better.
I'm not like them. I remember exactly what happened when we were
fish. We swam into swirling matrimonial beds of softest kelp and
whisking grasses. We spawned en masse and anonymously like some
kind of primordial shadow of internet pornography. We left the
babes behind because we were fish and we had to swim to live, to
find food and good water, chasing the calls of the whales who
had gone on ahead. Years later these fish would find us - all of
us. It takes a village to raise a fish. No one knows who is
responsible. We are all equally responsible for all of them. The
young ones looked at us with our huge, muscular, shimmering
tails, and our hook badges of honor and our empty-eyed pride in
being fish who swim in schools and eat anything and keep
swimming. The young ones, some of them joined us proudly. Some
of them yelled at us for abandoning them as babes to crabclaws
and terns. The angry ones swam off.
We were fish. We weren't supposed to care.
But, then, some of us did.
***
“Have You Seen My Dignity?”
i know i left my dignity around here somewhere. if you find my
dignity, please give it something to eat. it's malnourished.
that's why it ran away. give it something to eat, and maybe give
it a bath or something. it's probably not very sweet-smelling
right now.
do you know what my dignity looks like? usually it looks like a
knight in rugged denim. usually it tools around on an imaginary
motorcycle that totally exists because you'd never disbelieve in
dignity, now would you? i would never call my dignity a liar.
that a-hole rides a motorcycle most of the time. no helmet.
golden locks blowing in the wind like some kind of burly lion.
not lately, though. motorcycle went missing somewhere. don't
know where. how do you find an imaginary motorcycle? it's like
finding wonder woman's invisible jet. my dignity's been
stumbling around barefoot in old running clothes. my dignity's
been begging for food on the corner like a junkie.
happens sometimes. dignity tends to just up and leave, like a
dog chasing trains with whatever it had on around the house.
if you see my dignity, feed it, clean it, and bring it back to
me, would you? I miss it.
***
“Philly Versus Dallas in the Old Texas Stadium”
just once i knew the way of all flesh
texas stadium was older than the players on the field.
the roof had this black fiber decayed beyond repair
tiny torn fragments swam through the noise
to land on hooded sweatshirts
into plastic cups
one piece as big as a locust landed
on my leg, and i freaked
my father picked the thing on my leg.
he held it up. i told him that the sky
was falling.
just once i knew the way of all flesh
the black fibers sank in little strips
from the concave stadium roof
the stadium lights like noise
and the crowd still because the players
sank in little strips into their cups
of gatorade. (Philly kicked our
Cowboy asses that night)
a young woman held a sign
limp in her hand from the 30-yard line
an hour ago she was calling out to her own,
private gladiator, an hour from now she'd
sit in her car in a muddy field and yawn
behind her headlights’ twin yawns.
her sign on the stadium floor
all the lights off like muted choirs
the little black ceiling fibers like black snow
and empty cups
and moonlight
just once i knew the way of all flesh
my father has trouble climbing stairs. he looks
up at the distance between the guard rail
and the row of seats. he has a look on his face
like he's an old man. he gets to the top just fine,
but i'm thinking about how in another ten years
i'm going to have to hold his arm. ten years ago
we were in martial arts together
beating the shit out of each other
beneath kickboxing pads.
we climb over the legs of the people on our row.
we take a picture of the crowded stadium for my mom.
he tells me about the last time he went to an nfl game.
he and my mom lived in Denver (“This was 1975... 76?”)
and they went to a game between Tampa Bay and Denver.
he couldn't remember the quarterbacks' names.
all anybody talks about
these days, instead he tells me
what he remembers about the snowy hooligans
in parking lots and the magic time
between weddings and children.
birds fly around the stadium lights, hunting
for the flies of winter.
black insulation from the roof
falls through the sky like moths. birds dive for the black
strips
taking bait, choking on it.
the last time i was at a football game, i said,
i was at a college game with a sousaphone on me
like an octopus in love.
a whistle blows.
i almost miss the kickoff.
and that's why the whistle blows:
everyone will stop talking - look up!
Look!
just once i knew the way of all flesh
some of the black bits are bigger, like large crickets.
most are just light black dandruff,
jarred loose from the stadium’s scream vibrations,
they drift into your cup of beer.
i recommend – if you’re ever in this old stadium for anything
now they’ve built that new one a town over –
drinking from the plastic bottles
or holding your hand over the cup’s drinking lips
while microscopic flecks of your own skin,
jarred loose in the vibrations of the screaming
blood inside of you, falls into your cold beer
tiny flecks,
can’t even taste yourself falling down like that
wasted.
***
“Ice Cream Man”
in a bank lobby, a very intense man dressed in a business suit
like a business-man, but with the wrong sorts of bags, takes up
residence at one of the tables. he has a large, black duffel bag
of unknown contents, and a grocery bag with only one thing
inside that he immediately opens. he pulls out a large quart of
ice cream. he opens it carefully. he fumbles in his pocket for a
spoon he carries in some kind of swiss army knife of cutlery.
he starts at the top of the ice cream – I can see now that it is
orange-flavored – and he just starts eating.
I mean, this really happens.
he is over there in pressed slacks and a shirt with a collar and
a shiny watch flashing out from under his sharp suit jacket.
his body language, man that dude looks scared, like it has to
hurt and he doesn’t want another bite. he looks like he is
running from the law. like any minute now his mother will reach
over his shoulder and smack the spoon away, and take his ice
cream.
he’s eating it by the shovel-load. he’s eating it frantically.
he downs huge spoonfuls in three bites. his jewelry flashes in
my eye in the slanting light from the sunroofs, and he devours
the ice cream.
this isn’t some little pint-sized ice cream tub. this is at
least a quart. he stops to read a paper, to adjust the newspaper
in front of him. he breathes heavily when he does this because
he is in so much pain. he is not a small man, and he moves with
the darting intensity of a large man with a mouth full of frozen
dairy product that never has time to congeal in body heat before
the next painful swallow. he groans, his throat never recovers,
and he reads the newspaper between frantic, dizzying competitive
devouring of the ice cream.
he attacks the ice cream again. eight giant spoonfuls gone in a
blink.
in the time it has taken me to write this, he has gotten over at
least half of the way through his ice cream. he hasn’t really
gotten very far in his newspaper.
when he’s nearly finished he leaps to his feet over the ice
cream. He struggles with it, wrestles with it. he has to stop
and breathe with his arms out at his side between furious bouts
of devourment. he’s almost finished. he breathes heavily with
the weight of the food. He closes the empty carton. with a look
of defeat on his face, he staggers to the trashcan outside. he
has a look of genuine sadness on his face, as if this compulsion
was something painful. then, he paces the lobby. he paces the
lobby. he picks up his belongings. he walks out the door, with a
look of genuine fear on his face.
***
“Last Days of Swamp Man”
the moss in the stagnant gutter in southside, below downtown,
was juiced up from the chemicals from a dry-cleaner and a
carwash both next to each other that both funneled run-off down
this little hill to this little gutter. the huge bubbles of moss
looked like swamp thing’s corpse left in a ditch.
Oh, wait.
Yeah, that’s him, all right.
this was the fate of the monster, after all. he saved the girl
from death. he exposed the wicked polluters to the justice of
men.
arrested, the polluters spent a few minutes in jail pending
trial for bail. the lawyers haggled a while over probation for
these upstanding friends of bosses’ bosses. the polluters
promised not to sin again.
swamp thing never had to testify in court. He lost his woman the
way all women are lost: people grow apart.
swamp thing, alone in the world, fell in with activists, but
indoor conferences weren’t really his thing. all that dry air
conditioning and unnatural light where wheelers and dealers
changed the world. all that talking, and none of the action of
the old days. swamp thing longed for gunshot wounds and damsels
in distress. he took to the darkness again, leaving his dewy
footprints in the factory halls, his green thumbprints on the
manila folders and window panes. he was caught. he went to trial
he did eighteen months in a federal pen, more time than any of
the criminals that had made swamp thing. afterwards, swamp thing
got addicted to gardening supplements while pushing a broom in a
greenhouse during parole. he started to go through the jobs like
poets do, never there for two paychecks. he started moving
through cities, convinced that if he could just find somewhere
new, he could start over – a place where no one knew who swamp
thing was.
he’s juiced all the time on miracle grow. he’s popping rose
boosters at lunch break just to get through his work day at the
carwash in south fort worth, where all fallen heros spray hoses
and towel off the single, greatest source of pollution and
political tension and social injustice on the planet:
automobiles.
then, he notices how the chemicals in the back of the cleaning
supplies might be worth a shot if he can take them where no one
sees the theft.
he pours it on his skin with no proper investigation into the
chemistry. part of himself prays for a high and part of himself
prays for death.
the latter is his, at last. he dies with no fanfare, no funeral,
not even a human corpse. workers who never knew the creature
hosed down the parking lot and pushed the big bubbling blobs of
moss into the gutter in south fort worth.
i walked past, and i recognized his death in the mounds of
bright moss. rest in peace, swamp thing.
grow back if you can.
***
“For Inghe Pohl”
at a poolhall in munich, we walked in and asked the bartender in
english for a pint.
he glared at us with his glass eye.
he did not blink.
he did not smile.
after a few moments of confusion,
a pint that had that sharp acidic bite of piss beer.
bad beer.
a glass with the loamy feeling of something not properly rinsed.
he ignored us to watch a video in black and white
ruined pinball machines covered in german from 1977 all over
that place.
indiana jones pinball gutted open, intestines exposed, like when
the priest rips out her heart in the movie
all in mid-repair.
we were alone in the bar with him.
he had bright white hair.
he had a massive limp as if he had only one leg.
one had the distinct impression inghe was hiding a weapon or two
behind the bar.
we played a round of pool.
he limped over to show us how to put the euro in just right to
make the balls tumble out from the mouth of the table.
he returned to his bar without a word.
he said more to the pool table than he did to us.
when i gave in to beer boredom in the empty bar, and played a
pinball machine, then
then,
then, did he smile and become helpful, show us which ones were
working and tell us which ones were not ready. still, when i was
losing coin in his machines, he mostly rubbed the glasses with
his rag, watched german cinema.
i sat down at the bar with my fellow traveler. there it is:
an american certificate from bartender's school.
he is certified as a mixologist after 40 hours of study at an
american institution in san francisco.
his qualifications include customer service.
his name is inghe pohl.
look for him in munich.
tell him i said hello.
Tell him I think about the pinball machines, all busted up, guts
exposed and him pouring over them all night with one eye and one
leg so it’s hard to lean for long,
making the lights flash, the music play glory
glory alleluia when the steel ball
strikes.
***
“Can’t Whitewash the Heart; the People Will Be Free”
i went to st michael's church around the corner from my hostel
in east berlin.
the building was in a state of organized undecay, bits of half-
construction everywhere. stained glass windows had been replaced
with blank, clear sheets of glass.
all over the walls - the bright white walls - the empty canvas
glow. in one, hidden corner, a single curve of angels remained
unsmothered, unforgotten.
metal bracings like a splints for broken legs hold up the
decaying walls. they're ugly, but they keep the walls up. and
all the people were here. the old, the young, the strong, the
proud, the dumb.
the damaged organ could barely hold a tune.
dusty missals smelled like mold and cheap perfume.
people came to their church, and prayed. Always had.
nothing whitewashes that
after mass, i walked around the corner to this webcafe I’m in
right now to type.
i know i'm in east berlin because of the poorer buildings.
i know i'm here because of the graffiti.
children in the night spraying loveletters to lost tribes and
nothing you or anyone can do about it
good morning, berlin,
on a quiet Sunday,
fifteen years since the bombs didn’t fall.
can’t whitewash the heart;
the people will be free.
***
“Nein, Kein Euro”
i asked a brown kid auf Deutsh if he had change for a five in
saint mary's church in dour, old berlin.
the kid was there with his school.
he pulled out his wallet. he said that he had change.
he gave me four euro for my five.
he peered into the darkness of his wallet as if he didn't have
any more euro in there
(he did, and I was tall enough to see it).
he told me, with this paling fear, that he didn't have any more
euro
asked me if that was close enough.
cute kid, and brave.
maybe he's growing up hard. maybe not.
i didn't push him over one euro in a church.
i dropped a coin into the box to pay for the candle i was about
to light.
i said a prayer for the brave little boy.
he's got courage, and maybe someday he'll do something good with
it.
good luck, little boy courage.
i lit that candle for you.
berlin can be a rough town.
i'm in a webcafe on the east side, surrounded by tough looking
turks with nothing to do but smoke and stare at the skyline like
somebody owes them something.
***
Remix Sonnets
I:
boy, tin pan alley be the toughest: all
that whisky, wine, and gin. a woman screamed,
no hero, i just peeked around her door
poor annie beat down by a 2 by 4
then pistols shot – fat forty-fours – and no
one shot the pimp to save the girl, they got
a gambling man whose dice forgot to count
“hey, everybody here be killin’! whisk-
y, wine, and gin!”
this cop all by his lone-
some strolled the lane. he stank like hussy per-
fume, hand upon his gun and he don’t stop
the shooters at the craps and he don’t stop
the bastard swinging boards. this cop dragged me
downtown like i was tin pan alley’s sin.
II:
the sheriff told the deputy to go
find lazarus, poor lazarus, alive
or dead - oh lord! oh lord! - get lazarus
and when they found him, strung him up between
two mountains with his head held high, oh lord,
they shot him in the chest - oh lord! - with great
big great big forty-five that banged so loud
might scare him dead. they dragged poor lazarus
to town, they dragged his body to the prom-
issory gathrin’, people screamin’ knives
these lawmen draggin’ him with stallions, great
big men that left him on the porch, oh lord!
his mother sang “i’ve never seen a sign
like this one, lord! my baby boy’s still breathin’!”
III:
don’t claim to be no gambler, i don’t know
my dice from bones, but then my baby rolls.
you know the way the story goes? you right:
that blonde is my hard gamble driving me
to mad. We make a proposition first,
the good old give and take. then woman took
it all and i’m left holding: love’s no fake.
don’t claim to be no gambler, i don’t know
my dice from bones. but she knows who’ll be crap-
pin’ out while her sweet ass all come and go.
she left again this mornin’, didn’t both-
er with good-bye. some pretty girls, they love
you good, they never care ‘bout eyes. but i
still love my baby when she makes me cry.
my blonde be throwing sevens, and elev-
ens like a cheat; I’m feedin’ all these snakes.
IV
i went on down to that saint james infirm'-
ry. quiet folk all watched with their numb yawns
hung black and wide like paper flowers ear-
ly in the morning mists, them fogs of dawn
and snowflakes drifting on the paper sills
their pains all icy fingers, sleeping pills
i saw her lying in the snowy bed
all sheets; so pull her pretty body to
the basement furnace room where every low-
ing cow, and every screaming insect fold
their hand, and even lucky souls get tak-
en, chorus girls with roses, dukes unbreak-
ing. i thumbed down her carriage, climbed inside.
you'd best pour me some more of that hard rye.
***
“How We Stop Nucleur War Because You Hate Me”
if everyone who fell in love with anyone always had their love
returned, the world would lack in necessary confusions.
with this simplicity in our love, we'd seek to confuse our
hatreds. we'd cause confusing arguments for no reason with
strangers instead of lovers. we'd break into neighbors homes to
smash dishes. we'd fly to foreign countries to shout "what were
you thinking!" at the top of our lungs to our enemies who had
done actually nothing that was really so bad.
wars would arise not from conflict but from gossip. one nation
would be so irrationally angry at another for taking the
patriotism of the citizens that whole armies will jump out of
planes drunk and itching for a fistfight just to prove their
hatred. another nation might have heard that two others were in
collusion, thus needed immediate nuking. in fact, with simple
loves, all of our wars would reflect our confusing hearts
instead.
thus, it is for the best that our loves are rarely answered. let
us be confused in love, not war.
unrequited love is actually a nucleur war averted.
you do want to stop nucleur war, don't you?
***
“Tooele”
an old man with hands like gnobby tree roots scribbles on a
napkin the letters
T O O E L E
and he tells me a story from when he was in army, in utah.
he said he was staying in this scandinavian town near salt lake
city, but up and over a mountain. he said when the mormons came,
back in the day, their fearless leader told these scandinavian
settlers to start this town at that spot on the mountain,
because none of them spoke english. they did what they were
told.
this mormon - not the greatest speller or grammarian in the
world - had fallen in love with a scandinavian woman. he wrote
her letters regular enough.
town didn't have a name, but it had a beautiful woman. fellow
scrawled the words "too ele" on the envelope, gave it to the
guys that he knew were headed that way.
men wandered up the mountain for their reasons. they walked up
the hills with these love letters. they wandered house to house
saying "tooele" to all those scandinavians that barely spoke
english, anyhow.
fellow didn't stop writing his letters for nothing.
someday the mapmakers walked over the hills. they pointed at all
these men and women in houses and farms laughing in the campfire
light. “What town is this?”
“Tooele,” they said.
Only name they ever knew.
the old guy with hands like gnarled white roots who told me this
story about this time he was stationed at in the army handed me
the napkin, and the pen. he had this look on his face like he
was thinking about his youth, when he met his wife, and got his
first job out of the army, and made something of himself up
until today, where we're sitting in this old church cafeteria on
the western edge of civilization sipping orange juice as if it
were coffee.
***
“Help Wanted: Apply Within”
ever meet someone as excited, organized, multi-lingual,
cheerful, energetic, hard-working, honest, selfless, team-built,
and team-building and professionally clean as these ads seem to
suggest people are in the world?
of course i take heart that these are advertisements seeking
such people.
these ads, they never go away.
thus, there must be a shortage.
god, let there be a shortage.
perhaps they don't exist at all.
this must be some kind of hidden code: a conspiracy of sane
people search out the crazies so we can lock them up somewhere,
with too much bureaucracy to notice them.
that must be it.
***
“Invisible Eggs”
when the eggs are all invisible, we'll make vegetables and
cheese and marvel at the miraculous flavor of omelette
we'll juggle nothing like mimes and marvel at our miraculously
sticky floor
no one will know who can or cannot lick the bowl
we'll all die with cake batter, cookie dough, and brownie mix
smeared all over our faces
except for the ones that don't lick the bowl for fear of eating
invisible eggs
then heaven will be on earth,
for all the sinners and chance-takers and temptation-makers will
be in hell
and when we are in hell, we will make love to whomever we bump
into.
heavenly bodies will look down at the torn, red, satin, funereal
gauze
that separates hell from the rest of you.
our invisible writhing will look like pain.
***
“Dead Bang”
I shot a gun at a tree.
I wanted to watch the ricochet off the tree.
I mean it.
I just shot at the tree to watch the ricochet.
But I never shot anything more alive.
I shot things after someone had shot them,
like deer that were already dead, bleeding out,
already, and I fired then just to hear the bang
just to see it, to feel it
My father asked me what I was doing,
and I told him I wanted to watch
the ricochet off the tree.
***
“Congratulations, Graduate!”
left side of card:
"congratulations,
and best wishes!
the recent article in the paper about you
did not go unnoticed
here at white's funeral home.
please feel free to call on us for your pre-arrangement and
funeral needs."
right side of card:
"congratulations s_____ r______ on having been named
to the honor roll for the 2006 fall semester at tarleton state
university!
your community is proud!"
back of card:
"white's funeral home,
serving weatherford and surrounding communities
for four generations."
she said, "it's a small town."
***
“Simplicity”
the mosquito - the fool - did not realize the paint was not
truly skin. it landed on the luminous breast of the maiden, all
aglow in the perfect spotlight. the mosquito - the fool - dug
the needle into the craquelure veins, sucked the blood.
it wasn't blood. it was old canvas and dried oil paintings.
the mosquito - the fool - flew away believing in the painter's
masterful strokes. she found her mate, and laid her eggs with
the blood food from the painting in a small patch of water in
the old, leaky roof.
for years, afterwards, these moths were everywhere. they had
mosquito-like bodies - small and dainty and jagged angles - but
they had the dusty puff and gorgeous wings of moths.
guests go home, and find moths hiding in their clothes.
hiding in their hair.
***
“Blue Jean Birds”
i was buying new jeans
walking somewhere air conditioned
with all this summer heat, horrible heat
inside, birds flew overhead.
they had slipped into the cracks
lost in the rafters, they swooped down to the floor to sift
through the food court trash and the flies and mosquitoes that
had made the same mistake as the birds.
in the springtime, they will make nests.
they will lay eggs.