Railroad Songs

An Encounter with an Opossum

Here is a story published on my previous blog. I'm posting it here because it was well received--and I like it.


I’m still a little bothered by last night. A pleasantly cool evening for January, and the sky being so clear the stars resembled salt spilt on a dark tablecloth, I sat in one of the lounge chairs on the back porch to enjoy a rare occasion of quiet and solitude. I don’t often take the time to sit out and gaze up at the stars, and when I settled into my seat, a hot mug in my cupped hands, I made a mental note to allow more room for such moments. Everyone makes those notes, I told myself then, but I was different—converted. Everyone swoons with sentimentality at such times, I tell myself now.
I’d just taken the first sip of my Earl Grey when a possum waddled up onto the porch. Now understand this, my porch isn’t exactly big, so when what I consider a wild animal decides to share its company with me upon it, a certain amount of anxiety will likely be experienced. We regarded one another. At first, I could have sworn I saw a slight smirk curl on the possum’s face. It was inevitable that I recalled that silly saying: smiling like a possum with a mouthful of grits…or oats, or whatever. We continued to study each other with suspicion. Then, to make matters more tense, the possum hopped into the chair beside me. Perhaps to break the awkwardness of the persistent staring, the possum made itself comfortable and turned its attention to the sky.
“How nice. It’s good for the mind to survey the heavenly bodies on such an agreeable evening.”
He said this in a manner so calm I was beside myself. Then, realizing again that it was a possum sitting beside me, I was doubly beside myself.
“Am I in some sort of fable?” I exclaimed.
“Why would you think that? Do you have no sense of reality?”
“Come on, a talking possum! What’s the moral of this?”
“You really must have no grasp of reality to think in such pre-modern terms. There are no longer any morals. Being supersedes meaning.”
Having said this, the possum reclined and withdrew a single cigarette from its pouch.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Please don’t. Cigarettes are nasty,” I replied.
“Yes, I understand. My colleagues chide me for indulging in such a trashy habit—whitetrash, the call it.”
Returning the cigarette to his pouch, the possum produced two cigars.
“Would you care for one?”
“Cigars are so Bobo,” I replied. “I assume you play golf as well?”
“No, actually. Now, wasn’t it Hemingway that said sometimes a cigar is just cigar? I think so, but I like to say ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…but not always.” Having finished this petite discourse, the possum put away the cigars and began packing a pipe.
“Now you’re posing as an intellectual.” I commented.
The possum, apparently frustrated by all my attempts to discourage his efforts to smoke, turned his attention from the pipe and rebutted me.
“You really should refrain from such prejudices and preconceived notions. Quite outdated!”
“Excuse me for being a slightly uncomfortable with a talking possum.”
“Those are your own prejudices. It’s not my fault if it disturbs you to converse with me,” he replied. “And further more, excuse me, but I am an Opossum. As you may notice, I’m set apart from a common possum by the prefix O and the indefinite article an—not to mention intelligence.”
“I don’t believe O is a prefix,” I promptly corrected him.
“Its being supersedes your believing.”
The awkwardness of conducting a conversation with an opossum was suddenly replaced by the returned awkwardness of silence. I concluded that if we were to share this evening—and my back porch—we should at least be cordial.
“And where do you come from, Mr. Opossum?” I asked in as kind a voice I could construct.
“Possum Kingdom, of course,” he answered, adding a wink. This opossum was turning out to be quite the smart aleck.
“And I’m sure you didn’t notice,” he continued, “or perhaps felt it ‘improper’ to have a look-see, but I’m a female. You might have checked, since you obviously didn’t pick up on the whole pouch thing. Didn’t exactly excel in biology, did we now?”
“I did well enough to know possum can’t talk.”
“Right you are.”
I had grown weary of this chatty opossum and her condescending tendencies, so I decided to tell her of a previous encounter I had had with one of her kind.
“I remember when I was eight or so,” I began, “we had a possum get into our shed. My mother tried to shoo it away, but the dumb varmint just hissed and growled. She ended up calling our neighbor over. He hit the thing upside the head with a baseball bat a few times, but the ignorant beast held its ground, spitting and hissing. Finally, he knocked it senseless enough he was able to lay the bat across the back of its neck, and he stood on both ends and hopped till the possum’s neck snapped.”
The possum was still holding her unlit pipe, and, contemplating the packed bowl, she responded.
“Did you ask the possum to leave?”
“Like I said, my mom told it to get.”
“And it merely hissed and growled?”
“Yeah…what are you going with this?” I answered, wondering why she had so many questions.
“Well, let me tell you a story,” she said. “A few streets over there’s an elderly lady with a shed and all kinds of junk, bicycles, scrap wood, lawnmowers and such in her backyard. One evening last spring, after several days of rain, I watched a certain not-so-bright possum go traipsing across a pile of firewood. When he reached the end, he got the idea to leap onto the trashcan that was standing there; and so he did. The problem, you see, was that it was one of those commercial type cans with a revolving top. Who knows why she had it there. Needless to say, the unfortunate possum plunged into the can as if it landed on a trap door. Of course, the can was half full of water due to the rain. The possum carried on for the better part of an hour, whimpering and whining, before he finally gave it up and drowned. A whole week went by until the woman began to smell it. It took all she could not to puke when she poured the bloated carcass out and rolled it with a shovel into the hole she had spent all morning digging to bury it. You should have been there—quite entertaining.”
When she finished telling her story, I knew she had outdone me. However, I wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at, but she soon explained.
“You see, it’s hard to sympathize with someone who doesn’t speak your language. Don’t distress—your intentions to offend me are duly noted. But remember this: Insult is the highest form of flattery.”
Now I was truly confused. If insult is flattery, then what am I to make of the stabs she took at me? I know it’s common when a boy is enamored with a girl for him to tease her, but isn’t there insult for the sake of insult? What of insult for the sake of vengeance?
As if to ease the friction, the opossum said, “You want to see a trick?” and rolled to her side in the chair so her back faced me.
She became still, intolerably still; her breathing ceased, and only a breeze—the first breeze I’d perceived that evening—showed any trace of movement in her silver fur. I anticipated that at any second she might suddenly bolt upright and scare the hell out of me. I could tell she was the type to pull that sort of stunt. I stood up. My tea was cold, so I tossed it into the grass. Watching her seemingly lifeless body, it was hard to resist the temptation to reach over and touch her, to shake her, to feel her chest and satisfy my desire to know if her heart still beat or it she had grown cold and stiff. My hand was suspended above her when I came to my senses. I hurried into the house and locked the doors. I’ve always locked my doors at night.

Patterns Envelop

collage

Sympathy for Polyphemus

collage

A Little Salt for the Wound

collage

The Interpretations of Sound

Pastel, Conte, pencil, charcoal on paper

Oedipus

collage

The Thief

Charcoal, Conte crayon, pencil

Mayday

Collage of trash found Oct 8&9

A recent sketchbook page

Those Were the Days

chalk and pastel on paper

Doubting Thomas

acrylic on canvas

The Path

acrylic on canvas

New Exhibit

My work will be appearing in an exhibit September 7th-29th at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. More info is at Preservation is the Art of the City.

Here is a piece which will appear...

"On a Line by Philippe Soupault"
acrylic and collage on Masonite. 6x6 inches.

Night

She Stoops

Words for the Wind

The New American

Late Nights

The Road

Sold Out

The blue, or sapphire, plastic WAL-MART bag
bulging with black plums and sweet cantaloupe,
a fetus in its amniotic sac,
bursts as it lands on the volcanic dump.

Homer, Trojans, tampons, mockingbird chirps
mingle in the stinking heap, seeking links,
non sequiturs like an Exquisite Corpse.
Solomon’s vineyard feeds Breton’s blue fox.

Tell me, Wallace Stevens, tell me now, what
device can tame these acidic scents born
from the mush of books, beasts, mildew and Donne—

not something jarring like a rifle butt,
but formal, fitted, proven as a worn-
out filter, say, fourteen by ten by one?

Fort Worth Art

Here's a link to my work published in a new online site dedicated to Fort Worth artists. I'll be sending some new work. If you frequent my blog, you have probably already seen what's currently up.

Browse the site and check out the other artists here in Fort Worth.

Fort Worth Art Space, Aaron Roe

The Double Landscape

The majestic eye loosens from its stem.
You must kill the tree to know its true age.
Its rings are wrought of gold, its gold is gray.
The satin thorn wields its fang without rage.

No breath is made in the absence of clay.
But drop by drop the air consoles the lungs.
The pressing storm expands the shrunken field.
The peach tree blossoms quiver like white tongues.

The still lake lies like an abandoned shield.
Spears of rainfall deflect off its surface.
First darkness sleeps beneath the silver roof.
An elusive swimmer seeks his purpose.

A child collects fossils to prove the truth.
Hair, string, straw are all the bounty of nests.
The proof of life rests in nurturing death.
When the hawk drops from flight, the birds confess.

Being

Cage

The Sophisticated Life

Grounded

I've been away from this blog way too long. Here's a poem that was recently published in a chapbook entitled CONNECTION: A Collection of Poems Inspired be the Art of Thuy Saliba.

Grounded

Acorns and the pit of an apricot,
some red berries from the prickly hedge
(not to be eaten), and three spiral shells,
brittle and whitened with vacancy, rattle

as the child drops a spoon-shaped fossil
into the tin can. No museum would suit
her specimens better than this metal
collection cup, and having reached the edge

of the yard she spies a single red leaf
grounded beyond the iron gate. With the tips
of her fingers she can nearly tease

the leaf into her grasp; then the wind lifts
and from the overhanging branches strips
a boughburst of cardinals and canaries.

Upcoming Exhibit

Five of my artworks will be in the 9 X 12 Works On Paper exhibit opening this weekend at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Visit the site at www.fwcac.com

Waking

This poem of mine appears in the current issue of descant.


Waking

When we reach the other end
and say “We’ve come so far,”
what’s left to decipher?

The winter morning rising
glows like the element in an oven,
dislodging our stiffened joints.

Is this a resurrection?
No, we were only sleeping,
at least I was, I believe.

What you dream will decide,
so I read myself to sleep.
The words convince my faith

my will is strong to believe.
The page of night replays the page of day.
The faith I shake shakes itself awake.

The Good Life

inkjet print, Liquid Paper, charcoal, highlighter

Now Appearing

I'm the featured artist in the current issue of the online literary journal Wazee .
Browse through the site to view these four artworks and my profile page:

A Pocket Anthology of the Human Spirit

What you find in the night

Ace of Spades

Place On Straight

Featured Artist Page

Boredom Never Sleeps

Here is a poem Mike Amador and I composed at Cafe Bliss around 1994 using the Surrealist game of taking turns writing lines. It was then 'smoothed out' for better line breaks and flow. Lots of fun. Everyone should give it a try.


Boredom Never Sleeps

Boredom continues like coins
sleeping in her dress, like empty cabinets
and a chest of drawers never full.
But boxes of pillows rob the poor caverns,
find people awake in realization,
waiting for a match to exist, hoping
figures of plaster images
never shatter away.

Still life pictures move, unstill in ice.
A music candles the shadows on the wall,
the wall of bricks and paintingless frames.
The trains of rain slow down with a screech,
as headhunters sweep the streets with heads full of hair.
Wax melts. Hair singes with the song.
I am dying in my coffin.
I am living in my life,
coughing in bed.

What's left to learn? What's left to learn.

wood, paper collage, acrylic, charcoal, glass, metal, pencil, ink, stain




close up view


April 2003

Another old drawing...1993

Voltaire

Exhuming Proof

Jim Morrison sporting a black beret
at a sidewalk café in Paris,
no doubt hung up on Bukowski,
or Elvis cruising Albertson’s
for bananas and Peter Pan,

such rumored cameos pander
to those in doubt, while you have to wonder
whether Lazarus doubted his own
death as he stumbled out thinking
all he needed was to sleep it off.

In Duccio’s Raising of Lazarus
the air provides the proof, as you see
one witness shield his nose
to stifle the resurrected’s stench;
but Thomas had to assess, had to
prod his finger like a thermometer
to warm the mercury of faith.

Some cadavers never turn up,
and you’re lucky to find a loose shoe or a few
strands of hair woven in a sparrow’s nest,
though the fields are combed.

Others are towed up by rope
rather than divinity, exhumed to settle
old disputes—like if the bones in Hico
truly belong to Billy the Kid.
An expert in forensics waits with scalpel
in hand, eager for the word of permission
to scratch the tell-tale itch.

O CURIOUSLY GREEN

An older collage