Let these grackles be “in addition” to the news, instead of “instead of” the news; however, I’m questioning including the news in my poems: does anyone’s travesty cavity really need additional filling? Furthermore, when do poems containing the news (especially the bloodshed) become a funeral parlor trick? to poeticize tragedy, especially tragedy happening across the pond, for me, seems cheap, too easy, and continuously fails to garner any change. Just because I put some stranger’s untimely and tragic death in a poem, doesn’t make the poison of that death a medicine — I guess I don’t trust in my abilities as a poet to do that.
A poem is not volunteering on the front lines, not an ambassador fighting for peace. I’ve been wondering how many of my lines are simply a signal of my virtue, a beautifully rendered signal I’m on the “right side”, that I’m one of the “good guys”. This poem I am sharing now, born of five grackles, did have F-16s on their way to Ukraine, it did have lines about the wars in Africa, about the skin dead Middle Eastern children bubbling away to the marrow… I’m tired of picking the “good guys” and the “bad guys” just like I did in Montessori kindergarten when we played cops and robbers, or worse, cowboys and indians. There might be “good guys” and “bad guys” when you look at the top of the pyramid but down at the base, where the corner stones meet the dirt on the front lines, there are no “good guys” and “bad guys” there’s just humans, humans with families and brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents and minds filled with their thoughts firing around.
I used to find poems about birds annoying and cliche but now I say to myself: don’t shoo the crackles out your poems. It’s the poet’s job to notice the world, the parts of the world that the world has forgotten. Nobody can forget the horror happening on our planet right now because it’s everywhere you look. See the polar bear with oil on her lips and plastic in her stomach? Have you forgotten about the polar bear? I don’t think so. Yet people forget the birds every day. This one teacher at my work thought the crackles were crows, let’s just start there. I’m going to start there.
This video aspires to inspire empathy for the homeless. Each writer or spoken word artist in it hopes their talent and time will motivate viewers to support a charity of their choice. To that end, kindly refer to this link, which has a list of the best organizations helping the unhoused: https://nonprofitpoint.com/best-homel… Although the video is more concerned with assisting the impoverished, I must shed some light on the work of the cast. They are as follows: Dr. Anita Caprice http://tinyurl.com/39dwvdrx, Tim Staley http://tinyurl.com/yc4v4sdh, Maxwanette A. Poetess http://tinyurl.com/ms7haaxw, and some guy named Bob McNeil https://www.flexiblepub.com/compositions.
Besides the list above here are 2 charities helping the unhoused that are especially important to me:
Whenever there’s talk of the Grateful Dead in media there’s also often the inclusion (implicitly or explicitly) of talk about drugs. This type of talk perpetuates a boring stereotype about Deadheads.
I’ve never heard enough discussion in the Dead community or in the media about the wrecking ball of drugs. I’ve never heard enough talk about how Jerry died while he was trying to get clean. Never heard enough talk about Pigpen dying from the bottle. Never heard enough talk about Brent dying of drugs. Never heard enough talk about Vince dying with his body full of drugs. Who discusses Phil acquiring Hepatitis C presumably while briefly using needle drugs and continuing to destroy his liver with wine? Who talks about Keith Godchaux dying in a car wreck after a night of partying? Of course drugs were mentioned in the news articles at the time of their deaths, and in some of the biographies, but why is that commonality among the founders of the Dead community so quickly glossed over? so quickly forgotten? Actually in Phil Lesh’s autobiography he does say, “The irony was undeniable: Drugs had helped create our music together, and now drugs were isolating us and tearing us from one another and our own feelings, and starting to kill us off.”
What about the next generation, people like John Mayer? why don’t we celebrate more his sobriety? There’s a video online where he admits putting down the bottle for good six years ago in order to give his art 100% effort.
When I was using drugs and alcohol regularly, I was always defensive and didn’t want to hear anything that was not reinforcing the idea that drugs, especially weed, is indispensable for a Deadhead. But again, this insistence on the namedropping of drug use seems so trite, amateur and unflattering to me now.
I saw Dead & Company in July 2023 for 2 nights on their “Final Tour” at The Gorge in Washington. When I was sweating at the Gorge with my family including my 12 year old daughter, I attended my first Wharf Rats meeting. I was on a grassy hill at set break with 50 or so heads listening to their stories of strength, struggle, thankfulness and clarity as they passed the yellow balloon talking stick. We were in that beautiful circle glittering in a sea of drug use. I felt that this was my new family and they looked just like any other Deadhead except they all made some choice , some choice toward sustainability and clean living and who knew it could be true, they still loved the Grateful Dead.
The Wharf Rats are a group of Grateful Dead fans who have chosen to live drug and alcohol free. The group formed in the early 1980s and is named after the Grateful Dead song “Wharf Rat”. The song tells the story of a wino named August West who chooses alcohol over everything else. The Wharf Rats wanted to create a safe space for Deadheads who wanted to enjoy the music without the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The Wharf Rats began as friendships between Deadheads who were bonded by the Grateful Dead music and their mutual recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Some members feared disclosing their status as Deadheads at AA and NA meetings. They also had to be very vigilant at Dead shows. The Wharf Rats have a combined at least 100 years of sobriety and have attended more than 1000 Dead shows.
We keep saying Jerry’s been dead almost 30 years. We keep celebrating the new sounds and new energy and how the music never stops. When will our thinking about the desperate necessity of drugs as it relates to the Dead change? Who will be the ones to drive this change? Will any of the old guard step up?
If you look for for it, you can see that yes, some in the old guard will stand up. Nancy Pelosi was recently in an LA Times article talking about being a clean Deadhead. Besides Nancy Pelosi, and all the Wharf Rats, I am now also a sober, drug-free Deadhead. Besides writing passive aggressive emails to David Gans, or being annoyed by media coverage of the Dead, or enduring endless deadheads bragging about drug use like a teenager desperately seeking clout, what can I do?…oh yes, I’m a poet. I can write a poem.
So please enjoy this poem below where I reflect on drugs and rock and roll, and drugs and being a father and drugs in other ways. When you talk to people who use drugs about being free from drugs they say you are being “preachy”; I ran with this and wrote the whole poem using the diction of the church:
Last Rites of a Shook Monkey
for the Wharf Rats
If this is preaching, it’s from the pulpit Jerry built
in rehab before his last breath.
If this is preaching, it’s for those who reached
between the feet
to pull the plug
from Jim Morrison’s tub.
If this is preaching, it’s for the families
of the six who die
deaths of despair each day
in my state. It’s for those
sons and daughters
cleaning out their parent’s houses,
smashing in trash bins
secret stashes.
If this is preaching, it comes down
from the altar of fear. Fear my daughter
will get hooked like me, age 15.
If this is preaching, it must be
the beer commercial
between the liquor scene.
If this is preaching, I must be
the battery acid bubbling
from the megaphone
of Big Alcohol in the boardroom
praying you keep
poisoning yourself
“responsibly”.
If this is preaching, I’m the mock
funeral for the Summer of Love.
I’m the casket paraded
down The Haight. I’m the buzzcut
riding clean behind cowboy Neil Cassidy —
isn’t the point of LSD
to see something you can believe?
No, this ain’t preaching,
I got ordained by my dealer,
got this smug tone from the plug,
got my weed card
in the parking lot of Sonic.
I pass-pass-coughed the chronic,
I collapsed my lungs on hydroponic –
I return it all to sender,
back to my budtender.
If this is liturgy, it’s from the lips
of the mockingbird who sits
atop the ATM,
who knows your PIN.
If this is communion, it’s the water
bruised faceless from the wine.
If this is eulogy, it’s me moving
through my excuses.
If this is lecture, who’s to blame
for your dismay? Even Bob Marley
says you’re running and your running
and your running away, but you can’t
run away from yourself.
If this is a sermon, it’s what burns
between every line of Bukowski.
It’s what I’d say in my mind all mousey
hiding high from my family.
If this is sermon, trust me, I earned it:
every car seat until now
my cherry’s burned it.
Visine, Clear Eyes, breath mints,
every cover up — I worked it.
If this is sermon, the Yellow Submarine of bile
can’t break the surface — but naw, ya’ll, that’s a lie,
that’s fatalistic, to break the spell
you don’t need no rock and roll mystic,
or delphic oracle, you just need to hear me —
addiction’s treatable.
If this is religion, the burning bush
snuffs the bowl, and baseless bravado
lies at the bottom of every bottle,
and every bong hit bounces
your locus of control
from the wake and vape
bistro of your brain
so convincingly, so
insistently — please don’t miss this,
I used to think booze and weed
made me free, now I see
there’s nothing free
about a monkey, on that there’s no
bustin’ me, claws on your tired
shoulders diggin’ in — Dry January?!
that’s no means to an end,
that’s extending a leash
to a fair-weather friend.
If this is miracle, it’s thuribles
inhaling smoke, suffocating
those buzzing coals — hold a hit
long enough, it holy ghosts.
If this is born again, it’s Sylvia Plathian, as in
poems are a way back from the dead.
If this is confession, I’m an alcoholic
and a fiend. Before those labels
I had no spine — now owning those words
my blueprint of inner smile.
If this is antiphonal, if you work it,
it works.
If this is beatific vision, it’s the first trickle
NEW RELEASE: Poet Staley was accepted to be a “conference teaching fellow” at The 2023 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference in Tempe, Arizona! He will be teaching a 60 minute workshop on poetry performance. Several of his biggest heroes will be at this conference like Joy Harjo and Naomi Shihab Nye.
Today we’re treated to thought provoking readings of some works by two local poets. Our guests are Joseph Somoza, retired NMSU English Professor and current Organ Mountain High School English teacher, Tim Staley, reading selections of their own poetry. These writers reflect on their personal writing processes, and concepts of poetry in general, and more. The conversation touches on how language and poetry both shape and express the seen and the unseen aspects of who we are as individuals and as cultures. It’s a fun and thoughtful peek into the personal and professional realms of poetry. Their poetry books are available at some local bookstores and at online booksellers.
At the grocery store Lois searches in her wallet, her pockets, her planner, her purse, her phone… The girl at the register eats Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Her fingertips are stained bright red.
What Lois searches for bleeds through the paper and the paper has faded away.
2
From 8,000 feet up in the basket of a hot air balloon this town could be OK.
Beside the propane’s roar the dementia ward could be just another rectangle fume of white elastomeric roof dotted with swamp coolers.
From the middle of the troposphere this town may be even better.
If I concentrate, my left foot can feel like a water moccasin on my right. The phone rings and the nurse says, Lois punched a man in the face. They’d been laughing.
It’s cold in hot air balloons so much closer to the sun.
3
Suzanne writes a novel inside her head about her mom, Lois. It’s called Sister Amadeo. There’s being born in Pittsburgh, 1942. There’s leaving the convent with an acoustic guitar. There’s her and Tom’s babies scrabbling on the floor. There’s a divorce. There’s a bungalow on the South Side of Chicago with sandwich fixings in the fridge: Lebanon bologna, Limburger cheese, horseradish, stone ground mustard, butter lettuce, bread and butter pickles, pumpernickel rye. There’s a jar of fire roasted red peppers glowing on the counter. The dining room is soaked with soft light and poetry. Marge Piercy open on the table. With a pen from Chesterfield Federal, Lois underlines a line. She makes notes in the margin for a dissertation she couldn’t finish. I tell Suzanne to start the brain damage part like this: That year the yellowing of the trees came on like an aneurysm. Suggesting line edits for a novel in your wife’s head is dangerous. Is it empathy or something worse? There’s the live-in lesbian lover. There’s the pop-up trailer in Saugatuck and the clatter of Yahtzee dice on the laminate table. There’s the sway of Merit cigarette smoke out the mesh window. There’s the year she moved to New Mexico, and the year we gave everything but her clothes to a family who lost their home in a fire. There’s the Memory Care Unit, and there’s the lime-sherbet-Sierra-Mist punch of the Christmas party. Suzanne says, easy for you, I can’t write those things until she’s dead.
4
There’s walkers studded with gutted tennis balls. There’s women half sleeping in a row of recliners. One clutches a wolf. One sucks her thumb and cradles a baby doll. There’s John Denver on a SANYO stereo with detachable speakers: Take me home, country roads. There’s an efficiency kitchen though lunch rolls in. There’s coffee, aerosol freshener and pee. It’s nobody’s fault. There’s Lois meeting her granddaughter every few minutes for the first time. There’s a nurse telling us, Lois needs new shoes. There’s us looking for the size in each one. There’s no use, she’s rubbed it from the tongue.
5
Lois kisses you goodbye on the forehead and on the neck. This the only skin showing between the shower cap and disposable goggles that keep fogging up and the robe that ties and folds around you. Lois whispers, mother and dad and a few others, but you can’t hear because the shower cap over your ears and your 45 years over your ears and you race to the bathroom and scrub her kisses from your forehead and just above your collarbone with antibacterial soap until your skin rips from the cracks and 45 years pour out as you walk past the nurses and in the hospital’s parking garage you disrobe and burn your clothes.
6
Suzanne says to her sister, mom died at 8:30.
A train punches through a moving blanket of fog. Richton Park, the last stop south of Chicago along the main branch of the Metra Electric Line. See all the people shifting from one stupid foot to the other.
The optic nerve of a hummingbird on a spool with common thread. It smells like wire burning. It hisses like a Ziploc bag of vinegar and baking soda taped to the showerhead. It sticks to my fingers like tapioca pudding.
The Memory Care Unit puts her stuff in 2 boxes with a lamp on top. All her stuff in 2 large U-Haul boxes with a lamp on top.
How many boxes would you be? How many lamps on top? They call Suzanne, say, ready for pick up.
7
Suzanne burns Lois’ papers.
Phone numbers. Dates. Addresses. Fax cover sheets to the neurologist. Polystyrene windows. Blue flames.
Suzanne says goodbye to Lois’ papers.
I tell her, create more area crumple but not too tight. Suzanne rips and crumples. Fire pages flex and glow like bellies of ruby necked turkeys leaping sometimes the pit completely. Ember toes dissolve in cut weeds.
Is there overdraft protection in heaven? Staples of unused checkbooks pop at the moon.
~~~ Parts of this poem were originally published in The American Journal of Poetry and in Staley’s 2nd full length collection The Pieces You Have Left.
Tim Staley, poet 