AM

In the panhandle of Texas
you can forget FM.
The world is flat here.
People stick Cadillacs
in the sand as an art joke.

Two o’clock in the AM
signals bounce off the ozone—
Chicago,  Nashville,  Del Rio:
A blizzard buries
the Grand Ole Opry,
but Jesus rises,
Saving and Healing
for Postage and Handling.

Four.  An accordion plays
polka and static.
Stopped, the desert is as huge
as the hiss of my piss
on the ground.
Had a friend once
on speed who saw
a 40 foot cowboy
striding toward him
down the highway,
over his car
and into his
rearview mirror.

Maybe it’s that cowboy
on the accordion,
his own broadcast tower.
Maybe it’s him
who can tell me
what in hell I’m doing here.
Maybe it’s him
who’s playing “Nola”
for all these stars.

—Dennis Danvers

THE POET TAKES ALL MORNING

The poet takes all morning to wake up sometimes—
Sometimes days—sometimes weeks.
The poet eats too fast and asks for seconds.
The poet doesn’t know what he’s on about
But he knows there’s a word for it.

The poet doesn’t care
If I make any money,
If I eat things that are bad for me.
The poet believes that anything
Worth doing badly is worth describing well.
The poet wishes we would move to Italy,
That Death was Beauty, and Beauty, Truth.

The poet wants to throw a party
And invite his dreams,
Then go home with someone else.
The poet believes in Blakes’s God and Milton’s Satan
But can’t sit still for the pew religion—
He doesn’t understand why the hymns have to be so bad,
Why the sermon is never interesting,
Why no one weeps at communion.
The poet falls in love with every woman he meets
And loses them because he falls in love with every woman he meets.
The poet lies awake all night
Watching the dying animal sleep.

I’m a novelist, I complain to him—
I don’t have time for these endless moments.
The poet says I need a break from the words marching all the way to the right margin and back again trying to make something happen, never just letting time stop to be here now.
Maybe, I say.

The poet takes all morning to wake up sometimes.
Sometimes he wakes up right away.
The poet laments there are more hours in the day
Than there are things to do them.
The poet rides in the backseat asking,
Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
And before you know it, of course we are.
—Dennis Danvers