Tag: David Berman

“The Charm of 5:30”

by

David Berman

---

It’s too nice a day to read a novel set in England.

We’re within inches of the perfect distance from the sun,

the sky is blueberries and cream,

and the wind is as warm as air from a tire.

Even the headstones in the graveyard

           seem to stand up and say “Hello! My name is…”

It’s enough to be sitting here on my porch,

thinking about Kermit Roosevelt,

following the course of an ant,

or walking out into the yard with a cordless phone

           to find out she is going to be there tonight.

On a day like today, what looks like bad news in the distance

turns out to be something on my contact, carports and

white courtesy phones are spontaneously reappreciated

           and random “okay”s ring through the backyards.

This morning I discovered the red tints in cola

                     when I held a glass of it up to the light

and found an expensive flashlight in the pocket of a winter coat

                     I was packing away for summer.

It all reminds me of that moment when you take off your

sunglasses after a long drive and realize it’s earlier

and lighter out than you had accounted for.

You know what I’m talking about,

and that’s the kind of fellowship that’s taking place in town, out in

the public spaces. You won’t overhear anyone using the words

“dramaturgy” or “state inspection” today. We’re too busy getting along.

It occurs to me that the laws are in the regions and the regions are

in the laws, and it feels good to say this, something that I’m almost

sure is true, outside under the sun.

Then to say it again, around friends, in the resonant voice of a

nineteenth-century senator, just for a lark.

There’s a shy looking fellow on the courthouse steps, holding up

a placard that says “But, I kinda liked Clinton.” His head turns slowly

as a beautiful girl walks by, holding a refrigerated bottle up against

her flushed cheek.

She smiles at me and I allow myself to imagine her walking into

town to buy lotion at a brick pharmacy.

When she gets home she’ll apply it with great lingering care

before moving into her parlor to play 78 records and drink gin-and-tonics

beside her homemade altar to James Madison.

In a town of this size, it’s certainly possible that I’ll be invited over

one night.

In fact I’ll bet you something.

Somewhere in the future I am remembering today. I’ll bet you

I’m remembering how I walked into the park at five thirty,

my favorite time of day, and how I found two cold pitchers

of just poured beer, sitting there on the bench.

I am remembering how my friend Chip showed up

with a catcher’s mask hanging from his belt and how I said

great to see you, sit down, have a beer, how are you,

and how he turned to me with the sunset reflecting off his

contacts and said, wonderful, how are you.

“The Coahoma County Wind Cults”

by

David Berman

---

My dream walked on four legs
toward the remote source
of a pale yellow letter

only to circle around the cabin
when it got there.

A black and white cave rainbow
arched between two old shoes.

Oxygen bounced off the face of a doll,
looking for the slow dazzling guts
of a life form.

There was a moment of sudden clarity
when the pages of burned in opera glasses,

like a herd crossing zip codes

or an exhausted idea pressing
at the limits of the marquee bulbs,

my dream pushes air.

“Cassette County”

by

David Berman

---

This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover,
a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness,
and the North American doubling cascade
that (keep going) “this diamond lake is a photo lab”
and if predicates really do propel the plot
then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble
or the appliance failures on Olive Street
across these great instances,
because “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians”
because what does a mirror look like (when it’s not working)
but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine.

I’m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are,
in the interval called slam-clicker, Realm of Pacific,
because the second language wouldn’t let me learn it
because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally
because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen
and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance,

anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

I suppose a broken window is not symbolic
unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does,
and when the phone jangles
what’s more radical, the snow or the tires,
and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue
and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses
in their purses.

Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice
because we are running out.
Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced.
Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley
and the game of finding meaning in coincidence.

Because there is a second mind in the margins of the used book
because Judas Priest (source: Firestone Library)
sang a song called Stained Class,
because this world is 66% Then and 33% Now,

and if you wake up thinking “feeling is a skill now”
or “even this glass of water seems complicated now”
and a phrase from a men’s magazine (like single-district cognac)
rings and rings in your neck,
then let the consequent misunderstandings
(let the changer love the changed)
wobble on heartbreakingly nu legs
into this street-legal nonfiction,
into this good world,
this warm place
that I love with all my heart,

anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

“Classic Water”

by

David Berman

---

I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for
the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach.

I remember the night we camped out
           and I heard her whisper
“think of me as a place” from her sleeping bag
           with the centaur print.

I remember being in her father’s basement workshop
when we picked up an unknown man sobbing
over the shortwave radio

and the night we got so high we convinced ourselves
that the road was a hologram projected by the headlight beams.

I remember how she would always get everyone to vote
on what we should do next and the time she said
“all water is classic water” and shyly turned her face away.

At volleyball games her parents sat in the bleachers
like ambassadors from Indiana in all their midwestern schmaltz.

She was destroyed when they were busted for operating
a private judicial system within U.S. borders.

 

Sometimes I’m awakened in the middle of the night
by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty.

Those summer evenings by the government lake,
talking about the paradox of multiple Santas
or how it felt to have your heart broken.

I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends

and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends
as what’s-his-face, which was wrong of me and I’d like
to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are:

No one deserves to be called what’s-his-face.