Texan Moods & Louisiane
poems by Michael Martinec
Texan Moods
cicadas in the oaks
buzzed sang beat
their tymbals against the hanging heat
trees in texas resemble
over-large rude shrubs
conceived in the mind
of the Grimms
all the while
with sordid airs in disquieting sadness
against the sagging heat
cicadas croon in the bitter oaks
boys could hear them
outside the parlor window
while they’d mumble out a tune
He sat at the piano situated in the corner of the room, cut off by a single row of foldable chairs that made the cramped room near unbearable and played Willis Alan Ramsey’s “The Ballad of Spider John” as I stood next to him and mumble-sang intermittent lines, never remembering whole sentences or even verses.
the sun began its setting
like prismatic chalks smeared
together on the grey
shoulders of a road
that ran by Dime Box
through the thickening swelter
on the way to Houston
stifled angers and ill humors
in their sagging skins
bleeding sweating vomiting
unable to communicate
as cicadas in the oaks
buzzed sang beat
their tymbals against the forbidding heat
Louisiane
to Thibodaux! I knew a girl from there
she walked through open treeless bayous
whose stench was stinging
as if the nasal passage had been opened by a knife
and the wound reveled in noxious gasses gnats orgied in a buzz around the ears
everything acrid and pernicious
making her swat and stumble
through the bayou through the bayou through the bayou
narcotized by the heavy stick of the air
to the country chapel resting in the foreground
where clapboards of wood warp in and out as paints fleck in the wind
the church wheezing like an emphysemite
tiny brown creeks
leading back like veins from the heart
tributaries tickling through the bayou
running to the horizon its tweaking waters
run miserably backward blood reversed in the vessel
Michael Martinec is a poet from Texas, with family all over East Texas and
Louisiana. These poems are inspired by time spent in those places and are an attempt to capture the aura of the area.