a pirate’s buried dreams
yo ho yo ho, a pirate’s buried dreams
the cafe is the same is not the same cold cold dirty
ground & low stone wall dividing caffeine drunks from
the highway & constant slow stream of tourist cars—
the faces now are strange-rs, no hugs no offers of drugs
& they just walk aimlessly, they don’t know me, they
don’t know the ballad of the legend of Rust Belt Jessie
how I was the red headed slut who showed up every year,
blew in with the summer storm clouds to break hearts & drink
coffee ‘til I vibrated at Neal Cassady speed—
they don’t know I’ve been naked inside this coffeeshop
& used to get high out back, they don’t recall the daze
when we’d all stay until one a.m., sitting at rusty tables
or on the still sunwarm hoods of old blue cars, smoking
joints & playing dusty old folksongs on bloodstained
guitars, o does no one remember the church of Jesus
el Gallo, a plastic doll with death metal makeup &
a rubber glove roostercomb, does no one remember
that the haunted house next door once housed a man
who slapped bass all night long to ward off the bad mojo
of us wanna-beatniks he swore spied on him through the fence
at seventeen we saw angry visions of moms & dads looming
in the flare of passing headlights & in stoned paranoia leapt
into the ferns & thorns to hide—we prayed that they hadn’t
seen us smoking, I wish there were a patron saint of stoners
Ali said, we prayed in the dark to all the pagan saints & it
turned out there had been no parents out looking for us
at all— next day she went to retrieve the cigarettes & lighter
she’d left in the weeds & they were still there, a silver pillbug
crawled out of the pack when she opened it, hallelujah
once you get outside the small towns that dot the highway
it gets desolate fast, eerie roads curving away into nothing
but the lights—red light sparks of the bad moon zipping
low along the horizon, tiny green lights dripping like
dewdrops from pine boughs, orbs hovering above
the roadsides, corpse lights, faerie lights, UFOs, who
knows—corpses glow in the cold cold groundfog, eyes
of roadkill flare in the headlights, lures of some ancient
curse tempting me to slip beneath the icy waves or that
time they nearly got me to car crash in the pines, in the pines
I have been a suicide, have been a necromancer inking
Nordic runes on nicotine fingers, I have played an oompah
polka in a forest cemetery loud enough to wake the spiders
& the settler dead with my accordion hands, I have been illicit,
just this side of outlaw—sneaking underage cigarettes,
smuggling spiced rum into sailor bars in the folds of my cancan
petticoat, running through night graveyards my boots sucked
down into cold red boneyard mud, screaming eighty mph down
the twisting trails, vacationhouse tattoos poked in secret safety
pins & moths against the windowscream, stealing kisses
from barroom girls after too many Jägerbombs & Tom Petty
songs on the jukebox no I won’t back down, slamdancing
in the road I used to go all night long
up the road there is a row of barracks slow-sinking into the
ground, first housed German P.O.W.s during WWII, then migrant
workers in the cherry orchards, now houses only haints, bottles
of rat poison & dead radios, windowscreens oxidizing into green
mouths, graffiti: smoke meth, worship Jesus el Gallo, come to
Dallas, & a giant hitchin’ thumb askin’ goin’ my way? up the road
& across the water—through Death’s Door—beware of tempestarii
turning blue waters black & clear skies cloudy—there’s a club
where if you down a shot of bitters you become a member
it burns going down like gulping the very pulpy pine tree north
woods heart of the county, but once you’ve done it you’re tied
to this place, I did it years ago now I belong here ‘til the end
of my days, will never be a tourist again
sitting on that low stone wall, stoned & swearing I felt the gentle
swell of Green Bay waves swish-slap beneath me, the whole
peninsula become a boat, I whispered ahoy—once I saw a
mouse on the highway, a puff of grey whiskers & ears, I shrieked
an invocation & my tires missed it, I saw it in the rearview mirror,
standing on its hind legs, its tiny mouth an o
I have been a sailor & a storm-witch, a warrior with barista-healed
battle wounds, I have been a criminal & crossed back through
death’s door & no one here knows how I built cairns for fellow
travelers, how I sat here in my black hood writing secret stories, o
where are the girls I made mixtapes for—the Janis Joplin-throated
girls bedecked in beads & boho skirts, the shorn-headed girls
with silver studs in their noses & silver belts slung low on
their hips, where are the girls serving legal addictive stimulants,
the ones I shared secrets & filled ashtrays with
perhaps this place is cursed but then where isn’t, all history is
a history of loss, perhaps this place is cursed but I have bought
bones & mullein candles, silver rings of wolves & skulls, charms
against the evil eye, kissed the county witches & spat on the dirty
ground, sung dusty old ballads to the patron saints of memory
keepers & the nicotine buzz in the parking lot, the bees in the queen
anne’s lace, the hum of cars along the highway & the wind creaking
in the cedar trees still sing a cherry-shanty—yo ho, yo ho, you’re home
Last week I was up in Door County, WI, having all the feelings about that place and my history there, and I thought of this poem. I wrote it three years ago and it was initially supposed to be part of what became Wisconsin Death Trip, but I never felt like it was entirely successful as a poem, so I left it out. I still don’t think it’s entirely successful as-is, but I’m thinking of taking some bits from it and writing a new Door County poem.