Autobiomythography

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

b. 1979

The stories of BD’JP.

Contents: Royce—Hollow—A Room Forever—[etc.]

1. West Virginia—Fiction. I. Title.

2. IA, NY—Wishful Invention of Life & Praise

PS0102.A100 2001 2007’.1 56-7681276

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, pitch.” I was convinced we’d gathered there

for sport, to spy on sassy jailbait plucking fungus

from the wet earth, 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 leaves but red words;want

not;man reduced to math/myth/moniker.

I worked the mines until the bank foreclosed

our home and level went the logging acres.

I prayed for chokedamp, swampgas, whatnot—come

what may. Come chariot of fire, come long drunk,

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 any 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,

Dear Royce. Spit-shined moon what waned above this helpless

ne’er-do-well, reflective. I hitched from a trucker 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 street signs, 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 new 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—but 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 door frame, slants between 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 inside that’s junk. You notice

everything’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.”

Hey now, 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 all 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, rivers and union church. Soon Royce.

Royce arrived with nightmares, brought the Unborn.

Wrote that. Wore that. Swore and wept that. Won that rebirth.

And buried myself in our tragedies and hopes, mining life.