Black Papers: Poems (cont'd)

But then, when I got a job with a defense contractor,
I had security clearance issues, at work. I had to take
links to my books down at my web site and put up
an HIA screen. Held-in-abeyance. The military-industrial-
academic complex. You can't criticize the president from
a university. They have speech codes and de facto expectations.
Look what happened to Ward Churchill when he wrote about
mini-Eichmanns of capitalism after 9-11. And he had tenure.
So I bowdlerized myself. I say I am the poster boy for
marketplace censorship. I say the marketplace made me do it.
Supply and demand. The business cycle. If I'm so smart,
why don't I write a bestseller. An exposé. Inside New York
Publishing, or New York Publishing Confidential.
And send it to the meatpackers? The stockyard owners?
There will be blood. They ate my milkshake.

They hired a new tech writer, full-time.
I was hoping to get on permanent, after my temporary job
is over, but that probably won't happen now. He looks like
Buzz Lightyear. He has a flat-top crew-cut. Listening to what
he's talking about--illustrated parts breakdowns and SMRC codes--
I wouldn't want to do it anyway. The Retread Mafia has beat me again.
Good. Please don't throw me in that briar patch, Br'er Fox.

It's Casual Friday at work.
I wore my white leather Prowalker
walking shoes and white cotton crew socks.
"Are you a painter?"
"No, I'm a writer."
"I meant a housepainter."
"I meant a technical writer."

Nathan Zuckerman has repaired to
the Berkshires to write. There is a pond
on one side of his house and a marsh on
the other. He walks in the woods. He's had
a prostatectomy and wears a diaper. He is
incontinent. He's impotent. He makes a friend.
This complicates his arrangement. His friend has
a sex life. Out of wedlock. An affair with a younger woman.
She has an ex-husband who stalks her. A psychotic Vietnam veteran.
The husband ends up killing them. Zuckerman wrote a book about it.
The Human Stain. It didn't have a happy ending. I guess you don't
expect one. Is that what I want? To live alone, a widower? To screw
a younger woman? To make the money to pay the bills from writing?
Emily Dickinson didn't have that. She didn't have a sex life. A job.
Deadlines and responsibilities. She had what she had. I have what I have.
We're keeping Rowan this weekend. One of Brenda's chickens had biddies.

My job is eating me alive.
That's a personal problem.
Nobody wants to hear about
your unpublished play. Everybody
has to work. What makes me so special.
My history? That's what they think.
They are special. Not you. In a kinship diagram,
the one everybody is related to is called ego.
It all depends whose ox is in the ditch.
Nobody told you to be a writer. The man
of hubris is punished by the gods. You outgrew
your raisin'. As Lester Flatt says.

Samuel Beckett said he left
a stain upon the silence.
My theory was, a sudden silence
would be louder than the normal
background noise. The usual din.
I would attract attention to myself
by ceasing to transmit a signal.
By holding my voluminous output
in abeyance. Until times improved.
That's what's pending. It was a threat.
A bluff. I gazed into the void and the void
gazed back. It was empty. Nothing to react against.

One time I had a job as a free-lance copy-editor.
I got paid by the page. So much for straight text,
so much for a page with art on it-a formula, or a table.
I had two cassette tapes I listened to. The Best of Merle Haggard
and The Best of the Statler Brothers. The Statler Brothers
sang "The Class of '57." That was my class. I could identify.
The Last Picture Show. Sonny and Duane. And Jacy.
I made too many mistakes and they quit giving me manuscripts
to style. I was rusticated. Put out to pasture. Reverted to
my permanent rank: houseperson in the home. Me and
the other depressed housewives. I ate a box of chocolate-covered
cherries in one sitting, watching daytime television. Soap operas.
This was before Oprah Winfrey.

I have the opposite of writer's block.
"Your bowels is locked. Open."
I have logorrhea. I wake up with
the writing roaring in my head.
I must still the voices. Stop the muttering.
If I have a job, I have to shut the writing off,
just when it wants to come, and turn to my
employee duties. So far, I have been able to do this.
Year in and year out for nearly four decades.
I feel it's disrespectful to the muse, but a man
has to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.
Maybe when I'm 71.

Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver are on Mountain Stage.
Owen played with him for four years. Balder was a bandsman
in the Marine Corps. I have a picture of them with me
at Jekyll Island. The Saunders men. Everybody must serve
his or her apprenticeship. Dr. John sings, "Black night
is falling, when will my troubles end?" This is as good as
I've ever had it. Enough is as good as a feast.