2.6.06

"Green Green Grass Of Home"

The old home town looks the same as I step down from the train,
and there to meet me is my Mama and Papa.
Down the road I look and there runs Mary hair of gold and lips like cherries.
It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.
Yes, they'll all come to meet me, arms reaching, smiling sweetly.
It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.
The old house is still standing tho' the paint is cracked and dry,
and there's that old oak tree I used to play on.

Down the lane I walk with my sweet Mary, hair of gold and lips like cherries.
It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.
Yes, they'll all come to meet me, arms reaching, smiling sweetly.
It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.

[spoken:]

Then I awake and look around me, at four grey wall surround me
and I realize that I was only dreaming.
For there's a guard and there's a sad old padre -
arm in arm we'll walk at daybreak.
Again I touch the green, green grass of home.
Yes, they'll all come to see me in the shade of that old oak tree
as they lay me neath the green, green grass of home.




We Saw The World, Stayed In The Best Hotels

It is hard to visit the newly dying,
those that feel the thrill
of the grave come suddenly near,
to listen to the confessions
and regrets while discussing
the attitudes of earth signs in June
and the charisma of Aquarians.
Michele hauls out the wedding photos
taken in London, Liz in a chinchilla,
stepping out of a cab, almost Cheever.
I am in the Green Rooms once again
with Tom Alvarez, the last time
I saw him and it was I know, the last time
I ever will. It was summer.
He showed me photos of his young Regina
using his one good arm, lifting one at a time,
turning it over and over again until she was upright.
The stink in his pants unmistakable, pure and so human.
Tom talked about deer hunting in the Whetstones and the war
while he struggled back and forth in his wheelchair
and spoke of her between his hearty sobs
as if he was caught in a terrible disaster,
as if it would never be over, the way we cry in dreams.

Now the dog groomer Liz has lung cancer
and will die and leave Michele behind
with his Arabic students, some old jewelry
and their star charts in his green rooms.
All their riches exhausted long ago
but never, ever their love.
His neighbors will come down and talk
about how things used to be when Liz
was around kissing dogs and running off
in taxicabs. Michele will still have his students
and neighbors, one of us a Scorpio in denial.
There will be no more empty bottles to throw out.
He'll continue to blame her death on the dogs
and begin to hate them for taking his lover away.
Michele will continue to smoke cigarettes
by holding one end between his pinkie
and ring finger while inhaling through the circle
he forms by bending his thumb. His lips
never touch the filter and no one
will comment on the ferocity of his inhalations.
He will want to leave the Church of Scientology
because the manual was all wrong. He might
make it for two more years
if the statistics don't lie about the widowers.


The Green Green Grass Of Home

The wall opposite held a population
of blue Virgins reaching out
and down gracefully with hands open.
He fumbled in the drawers to find Regina's portraits
as I peered into the bathroom from the locality
on the edge of the bed to witness
a commode chair, no rugs and the water heater.
He hoped to give me a reminder, a clear view.

When they were young and I was close to it all,
very inside of their home decorated
with stout Mexican ancestors' souls staring
from the walls, everything smelled green there:
Clorox and wood, the highly polished floors,
a cabinet full of gemstones taken from the mines.
I was just a child then and held no prejudice.
Our neighbor Regina rolled out tortillas
stirred something in the kitchen, always.
I used to be afraid to look into the room
where they slept. Something in it
would have been forbidden to look upon,
the holiest of places I’ve ever known.
I entered the verdure of their room
in Tom's last summer so we could cry,
we had to mourn the only way we could, in a hurry
and the graveyard just full of concretes anyway.
I’d come of age and passed the milestones, had come home
to join the ranks of those in passing to testify.
He told me she would have liked my visit
and began to sob again in the helpless way
a stroke victim out on the left sobs, a man
who had shed very few tears until the day his Regina died.
She never gave him any reasons for regret
and the two of them never violated a single vow.
Regina and Tom were good people, kept
our secrets, sat around our tables.
Regina waited for him during the war, she waited
for him after the hunts in the Whetstones and during
the long stints of western work that took him away
for months at a time during strikes and recessions.
She waited and cooked.
I was compelled to tell Tom that Regina waits for him still.

4 comments:

ozymandiaz said...

They have much heart. They are sad and compelling, just a bit discombobulated it seems. The second seems a bit more sured up, the first, though, seems to have more of your narrative style I like so much.

Tasha Klein said...

gotta love Merle Haggard!


:)

Tasha Klein said...

gotta love Merle Haggard!



:)

the lost geographer said...

that is an especially memorable title. I might have to steal it from you, being a travel agent by day and a travel agent-off-work by night :)