My Beautiful Janitorial Point of Pride 

I remember this as I fly off to Europe 

in the blue middle of the night 

under the moon and white starlit sweeps of sky. 

I was a janitor, why? Nobody ever told me,

but I confess I was and not all that long ago.  

Thirty years ago, lots of victories and wild western car rides 

in the mountains before and since, books written on the dashboards, even European film festivals with me in the films, 

like where I’m flying off to tonight, but I was a janitor once. 

My supervisors worked with me on the night shift, two women 

in the overnight, overlit office building, mother and daughter, 

with NPR tote bags full of TV Guides and snacks 

and me, embarrassed by this low down job. 

 

This office building with a full unobstructed view 

even in the lower floors, across the highway 

to the hopeless apartment buildings I was a kid in. 

Where my mom said I’d never get far. 

And here I am across the street.

But that fucker, that mother was wrong. 

Because those two women, also wondering what I was doing there, 

seemed to have a feeling about me, so as they showed me 

what was expected by our higher ups in unfriendly suits 

from the end result of our nightly sweeping of hundreds of miles 

of floors in that building, also reminded me how art is everywhere, 

and for me to fucking survive those nights, bless their hearts. 

So, plug the vacuum in, turn it on, see the headlight white flash, 

aim it across the room, let it pull me across 

sweeping a line, a long, clean line across the blue carpet

fresh, pretty, and NEW—

now boy, go back to the start, one space over and do a flair, 

a flow, sweep a flourish in and join into the other line hundreds of miles of beautiful vacuum cleaner lines all night, every working night.  

My life has gone all out of order but there they are tonight outside 

these frosty jet windows, beautiful vacuum cleaner sweeps 

in the sky, now I can reach up and switch off the overhead light.  

 

Distilled and Matured by the Sea

When I walk through my kitchen today and see that tall box of scotch  Old Pulteney (Est. 1826—“Distilled and Matured By The Sea”) I see  

that building in Boston the Bostonians call “The Pru”— it’s indelible!

The sight of that 52 stories’ tall tower is indelible, memory magnetizing, because I walked by it, around it, and under it all the time, and then walked downtown across the far bridge out to Cambridge and work. 

One building in those beautiful old reddish Back Bay buildings, 

between the river and The Pru, was where I lived in 1984; 

three festive months but lost the job in a sudden two month surprise, 

kicked out on my November birthday, I’m homeless all over Boston!

But even then, that reddish building was still home; exciting 

cold nights, down in the basement, asleep by the fire-blasting iron boiler. 

(I still had my key to the building, snuck in real late, last Last Call. 

Come summer of 1985, I threw the key in the river for luck and left 

Boston back to Kansas City on the long train to Union Station!)

 

Born on an abandoned boxcar bridge in Boston 

In a strong, alive house out west in Santa Fe, all the lights are on,      the doors and windows are all attached, installed, they even work now

and tonight I saw something in the new movie about Bruce Springsteen,

a small scene, but it was there, and I finally felt more than small. 

The scene where Bruce takes out a book by Flannery O’Connor,

flipping pages, he’s trying. 

Sitting there with the remote 

I went back 40 years remote, an abandoned railroad bridge in Boston. 

After work one Friday night and the job was nothing

I got my supplies for the night before going home 

which was nowhere

a 6-pack of Budweiser, a Bic, new batteries for the Walkman 

and the new Rolling Stone with Bruce on the cover, 1985. 

Batteries in, beer in, walk to the bridge, musically. 

———

Sun go low, go west—night come on cold!—sky darker blue from pink

I sit in the middle of the bridge, boots dangle over the Charles, 

no rush hour, speed 3 cold beers deep down, feels gold warm cold 

like the sun going down so now get out the Bic pen, make notes 

on the brown 7-11 bag, open the magazine to the sentence 

where Springsteen says he started reading Flannery O’Connor. 

I was trying. 

                                 Now all the lights are on. 

Hush

Before the party the Captain lay on the floor sniffing his paws 

which smell like the popcorn carpet of every movie theater you’ve ever been in. 

The Guest came in with a macho blast, gusting through the front door 

with his woman, what he called her, what she answered to—so far. 

The Captain jumped straight up off the red linoleum floor, red 

in his eyes, with a lot of big tooth barking joy! What a wonderful greeting! 

What else would a dog want to do in that moment? 

Wouldn’t you, if you were a dog? Oh yeah you would!  

“Hush ...” said the Guest, with obvious gravity, an older man; steady, 

reliable, so responsible, his woman’s lover, father figure to her and us all.

 

Except for me and the Captain, we didn’t care. 

We did care about that word HUSH.

I couldn’t believe it, a man coming into a dog’s own home, telling him there 

in his own house, to hush. It was rude, unkind, unthinking, 

unthinkable; there are already so many ways to feel small and unwanted. 

The Captain stopped barking, sort of (not inside him I bet; those eyes so RED) 

remembering something in the centuries of dogs about 

being domesticated, about training, something about                       obedience.

But he didn’t get any of that from me; he and I care more about 

friendly and alive than well-behaved for the Guests, dead on the floor. 

The Guest came inside the house ahead of his woman, passed on by me, 

but I got right up behind him and bared my own teeth at the back of his neck. 

He didn’t see that, didn’t see me; 

he stepped over the Captain,

hugged the others, heading for the appetizers. 

Then the Guest folded into the polite arms of the party, hugging and educating 

everyone; so me and the Captain went outside and leaned on his car. 

November, night and fireplace smoke coming on early. 

Dark soon, we’d wait; we’d hush him. 

 

Wasn’t razed by men 

Wasn’t really raised by anybody, but I looked around early

and even as a baby sensed the women were loose, kinder, likely 

to ease you through the day with their—oh hell, I’ve done all that too 

outsider sense of humor. They were nonconformist and fun. 

Then I looked over there, where the men were  

gathered in packs, tee times, faculties, teams—safe

but alone anyway, competing anyway, everyway, everyday.

But they weren’t gathered around me anymore early

so I have a feeling it hit me when I was probably around exactly 

two and half years old ... compete? With who, for what? 

I’m me, I won!

I probably couldn’t have spelled it at the time but 

I didn’t even need the first grade to get me to that epiphany. 

There were lots of ups and downs, naturally, but many years later, 

cleaning out my car for the last time, I found myself again 

under all those beer cans and bottles on the floor of my car.

I found me again and won again. There wasn't any competition. 

Corduroy, even in Summer 

I was deep down in bed this morning 

me and a cup of my Grandma’s favorite coffee back in the sixties  

(she lived next door to the factory, loved it when the wind shifted) 

reading Shakespeare and Pema Chödrön, Erica Jong, 

Emily Dickinson herself, that wild rebel recluse, 

Sinead O’Connor’s lyrics, the Charlie Watts obituary, 

when all of a sudden and a hot brown splash 

my dog Rosie jumped up in an arc, came down, landed on me

spilled coffee on my manly chest, and all points south. 

Rosie wagged deferentially, eyes full of apology 

I jazzed her exponentially, with my wild psychology. 

“Rosie,” I said, “like me, you are not a domesticated dog. 

So don’t worry about it. The status quo is overrated.”

 

She jumped off me and ran for the dog flap like a Triumph Spitfire! 

 

From Trader Joe’s to at least 30,000 feet!

He was a handsome young artist, good face at the cash register,

but his expression was like the black and white screen 

still playing summer sitcom reruns from the 60s in an apartment 

complex behind the dumpsters of the empty Holiday Inn

miles from anything in the middle of Kansas and nobody on holiday.

( But hang on, this isn't over. )

The way you knew he was an artist was the faded-out haystack 

yellow T-shirt that said VAN GOGH on the front 

Fuck Thomas Kinkade on the back, 

and the other way I knew he was an artist was how he packed 

my grocery bag; blueberries and meat in juicy Rothko layers. 

He looked up and I looked right at him, 

young blue eyes meeting old blue eyes 

blissing out all the women in line so I said, 

I can see you’re an artist by the way you bag it all up. 

The composition of fruits and meats and sugar treats, 

all that wine and cheese straight off to the vanishing point. 

We could all see how my saying this affected him. 

He needed to hear it, I needed to say it, we both needed to believe it. 

(I had that job once, but at a Safeway, nothing happening. Yet.) 

He brightened up and lightened up, got straight up, sky-high!

Not drugged-out high, but drug-up high, way up there

riding one of those ridiculously high, fluffy clouds

way up HIGH, free and FLUFFY Ansel Adams clouds,

Ansel Adams along as his wingman, 

Georgia O’Keeffe was there too, their wingwoman! 

I’m not on the payroll, but 

everything happens at Trader Joe’s.