Art Goodtimes

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Art Goodtimes of Norwood won a Colorado Council on the Arts poetry fellowship 29 years ago and served two years as Western Slope Poet Laureate. His most recent book is Looking South to Lone Cone: the Cloud Acre Poems (Sedona, AZ: Western Eye Press, 2013).

Poems

Skinning the Elk

“There’s a whole lot of life in these animals”
George nods, almost like a prayer
as I hold the hoofed leg
steady for the knife
Mist rising from the gutted belly
Skin still warm

Tempered steel peels back
thick hide. Fur
The dark meat of the interior

Secret organs slide steaming into full moonlight
on the bed of Greenbank’s battered pickup

I can’t stop peering
into the glazed crystal
of those antlered eyes

Two perfect rivets
welded to the girder of that
skeletal moment when
the bullet’s magic
cut life short

Later
after the carcass is hung
in a cottonwood tree
I go inside to wash my hands
But the blood won’t come off

And there’s no mistake
I am marked for life
I wear the elk’s tattoo

As its meat becomes my meat
& its blood stains my blood

Spirit leaping
from shape to shape

This poem was first published in the anthology Wingbone: Poetry From Colorado, eds. Janice Hays and Pamela Haines (Colorado Springs: Sudden Jungle Press, 1986).

At the Gate

—for Budada

It’s not that I hate
tradition
Just the opposite

I’m all tangled up
in the quirks & muons
of the historical record

As a peripatetic youth
I walked the Latin of Catullus

Odi et amo

Chanted the chorus of frogs
with Aristophanes

βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ

Like Hopkins I did my penance
before the twisted ivy altars
of the Academy

Memorized the classics
Ran gangs as a literary felon
chained to the West’s Lit tsunamis

Homer. Vergil. Dylan. Yeats
’Til I found the hovering bird gods
Now I try to

do like Sappho did
Dare to sing like a Clipper ship
in a time of triremes

To be blown by the Wind
in all its gusts
& bombogenesis

Following ahead
of the 8-ball of rhyme
but hoping to weave behind

a thread of spun gut argot
felt through the poked fabric
of our Sanskrit scifi street slang

And may we too be led into
the deep Apollonian temptation of
unstrung high peak epiphanies

After Li Po

The birds
have long lifted up
as a flock & flown

Only a lonely Cloud floats by

The Two of us
lost in our looking
the Mountain & I

This poem has been widely performed, and has appeared in the Montrose Mirror, the Four Corners Free Press and the Telluride Watch.

Learning to Smile

"I follow Freud's opinion that at birth there is no consciousness, accordingly,
there can be no awareness or conscious experience ... Thus it is rare
to find the smiling response before the third month of life."

—Rene Spitz, The First Year of Life:
A Psychoanalytic Study of Normal and Deviant
Development of Object Relations

Floating in the sac
I sucked the blood of my mother's cigarettes
Her breath fed me

When kicking in her belly I began
to make my move, they rushed her
fast car & sirens
to a monolith of brick
Laid her flat on a gurney
& wheeled her helpless
into the sterile room of deliveries

We both felt the sudden vertigo
the whirl & loss
as the anaesthetic took effect

Unconscious
drugged into dreams
she was made to push me
out of the house her body had been

Unconscious
I slid head-first
into the assault of their bright lights
forceps, antiseptics

A masked man held me captive
upside down

Too soon his rubber gloves
cut the cord that pumped me
mother's air mixed with blood

Too soon
My face turning blue
asphyxiated, brain throbbing
until those brusque hands
hung me by my heels
& slapped the life into me

Still groggy from the drugs
was it any wonder that I cried out
howling at the world?

Raw atmosphere jammed my lungs
Silver nitrate burnt into my eyes

I was born craving nicotine
& the smell of her skin

But they hauled me away
to be tagged, guarded
& quarantined

My own father, criminal with germs
allowed only a peek through glass
at his first-born son

There in the nursery
tended by strange, masked women
I was given a blanket to calm my fear

So my first bond was made
with impersonal cloth

First comfort found in hugging the material
close around me
as later in times of stress I would grab hold
of objects as though they
could help soothe the loss & aching

There in the arms of obstetrics
my heart dangling from the thread of
its own frightened beat, I slept
& slept & slept

My body retreating into shock
that instinctual safety valve
releasing me
from the merciless onslaught of
modern technology

And then they wondered
why I cried
when they hauled me back
to the birthsmell of the Mother

Why I couldn't focus
& look her in the eye

Why it was months
before I learned
to smile

This poem has been widely performed and was first published in a chapbook co-authored with Judyth Hill, Altar of the Ordinary (Farmington, NM: Yoo Hoo Press, 1993).

Seeing Bear

Walking Petersburg Creek

the Tlingit's Seetkah Heenuk'w

across the Wrangel Narrows

from the mud-flat sloughs of Mitkof Island

I pass the last cabin

last sign

last mark on the map

& come upon brown steaming mounds of berry scat

Piles of gutted humpies, half-chewed, fins still twitching

Through skunk cabbage rank with growth

& devil's club waiting in ambush

its honed thorns prickly with menace

I skirt innocent gooseberries

expecting the worst

prepared around each bend for some dark hulk

swatting fish

& the ultimate terror of Ursus horribilis

Thick groves of old growth

soak up light

& squeeze out shapes.

The stab of strange limbs

Flicker of breeze

No quick exit out this maze of Sitka spruce

Tangled arctic bog

Muskeg carnivorous with quivering insects

caught in the sundew's last embrace

Lost in this still untamed Alaskan bush

where two-leggeds have no more weight

than the meat they carry on their bones

Puffing my tin whistle like a Webelos

Clapping hands

Singing out of dread not joy

I keep seeing the hundred hides of Death

its snout hairy

fangs bristling

about to attack

Shadows leap out at me from the bush

Startled. Hungry

Rearing up on hind legs

So near I can smell their panic

wild as fish breath

Murder growling in their fierce gaze

To run or play dead?

Bruin gone berserk & bounding towards me

Slashed muscle

The snapped arm ripped from its socket

Claws long as Bowie knives

Eyes like smoking volcanoes

Its bulk crushing me into the earth

Seeing hot flash

my whole life engraved on a salmonberry

ground to pulp

in the molars of a steel-trap jaw

Truth is

walking that trail

I meet no one

Neither grizzly nor deer

Not even a mouse munching lichen

The air is crisp

Clouds huddled against nameless peaks

Perhaps

for the first time in my life

I am alone

with the dark shape of myself

This poem has been widely performed and was first published in a chapbook co-authored with Judyth Hill, Altar of the Ordinary (Farmington, NM: Yoo Hoo Press, 1993).

The Art of Getting Lost

Okay, so there’s this hippie

hitchhiking on the highway to Crested Butte

Up pulls a Winnebago

with Texas plates

and the tinted window rolls down

Excuse me, pilgrim

Could you tell me the way

to the nearest wilderness mall

parking lot?

HHHHHHey, man -- get lost!

But before you lose it

look closely

because

it's not so much you losing it

as the place that takes you away

It's slickrock deer trail thick with juniper

takes you away

It's Mancos shale wild strawberry avalanche chute

takes you away

And suddenly olla kala panta rei

your're just another

neopagan zenmother Budada

Learning pandemonium

Toking pure chaos

Cougar in the headlights

takes you away

Hairstreak in the rabbitbrush

takes you away

Or maybe it's at a table over breakfast

where some resort town waitron

Venus Kali clone takes you away

And falling in love

you lose it

Take Luna in the mushrooms & quackgrass

Rolling in it on Sheep Mountain

that first green-eyed summer

Or take that infamous hike we took

to the San Miguel Canyon petroglyph

that scribed a hoop in the earth

& led us back to our beginnings

Remember

you can't lose

what you haven't found

Crouching for shelter from Shandoka's lightning & ice

Clambering hands & knees up Lone Cone scree

One minute next-to-death

& then

born again & again & again

Rio Grande cliff shelf narrowing to goat hold

Uncompahgre's Tabeguache pine scratched by bear

Getting so lost

you find yourself

Toad kachina grotto vision on Nuvatik-ya-ovi

the San Francisco Peaks

takes you away

Big Sur hot spring crotch-of-the-redwood full moon pool

takes you away

Pacific Rim combers in a Salt Point storm slamming down fists

takes you away

Letting go

enough

not to panic

but to play it like a tune

whistled & hummed

as a hymn to the Mother

Easy bro, Haleakala's charm

takes you away

Yo, eating mangos & making love

in the sea cave at Kalalau

takes you away

This IS my religion

I believe in being lost

And everything I find on the way

esta milagro

& what finds me

I try to field

Adventure not predicament

Chasing chaos

just as much as calm

The only straight lines in the headwaters

are the rifle's scope

& the map's compass

So, scram pathfinders. Surveyors. Engineers

Gimme the loon's zigzag walk

Let me lose it

I know how to use it!

This poem has been widely performed, annually at the Headwaters Conference at Western State Colorado University, and was first published in The Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope ed. David J. Rothman (Crested Butte, CO: Conundrum Press, 1998).

Hu

Linnaeus wrote

“The first step of science

is to know one thing from another”

but taking the world apart

demands the even greater chne

of putting it all together again

Which is

the creative yth

of poet, dancer, worldmaker

In his last years

Linnaeus suffered a stroke

& it is said he who named & classified

all the known species

flora & fauna, of his day

forgot even his own name

This poem has been widely performed and was first published in the anthology Earth First! Campfire Poems (Tucson, AZ: Feral Press, 1998).

Head On, Off & Still Running

You see, we are all sentenced to die.
—Steve Clark

“Poor Cagney imitations,” a friend calls them, this talking
through teeth locked shut with pins to repair a broken jaw

“Sub-candylar fracture” the doc says, glancing at the x-rays
that glow with shadows lit up from behind, invisible blades

knifing through my skull. No chance, really. Shooting
round a corner in Glenwood Canyon, narrow two-lane

serpentine, the asphalt damp with snow. They'd been drinking
“Skunked,” the fellow said, when I awoke to lights, a blur of

flashing red & blackness. Cars stopped. My windshield
shattered. A maze of flying cracks throbbing inside my head

“Are you alright?” Who was this helpful stranger
asking questions? “All wrong,” I told myself. A dream

An accidental movie that suddenly I'd become the star of
Extras dabbing at blood like makeup on my face. Sirens &

police. Later, at the county wrecking yard, when I saw
what remained of Betzi's limegreen Rabbit, fender

accordioned to dash, I almost burst out laughing, giddy
as a child fumbling for the cookie jar, caught red-handed

but given a second chance. One never escapes death
but after each fresh attempt, when, almost taken

swiftly away, then alert as razor blades, we mark
the kiss of life, so easily unnoticed amid the neon &

the noise -- that moment at which we greet each guest
or deny them, as they come round the corner, arms

outstretched, longing for our embrace. Even with
teeth clenched, jaws shut, tongue entrapped in bone

I find I can talk. Words slip through all barriers. Party
once again to the amazement of speech, I touch earth

rebounding, free to sing through the mended hoop of these hard
teeth that still, for a bit longer, bite down on the world

This poem has been widely performed and was first published in Embracing the Earth (Berkeley, CA: Homeward Press, 1984).

Neruda

El que no comprende el amor, no sabe nada sobre el pueblo.
—Oswaldo de la Vega

Allende slain. Cut down by machineguns

They call it suicide, but the world knows

better. And Neruda doubles up. He too dies

his heart broken, the revolution in ashes

Even the stones of Machu Picchu are helpless

as the tanks of the Junta trample Santiago

Repression floods in under the poet's feet

His last works ruined. River diverted

from their banks. Compañeros tortured

in the makeshift prison of a soccer stadium

They chop off the folksinger's fingers

but he still sings. Victor Jara

blood weeping from his palms. His voice

booming fearless & defiant. So they shoot him

In Spain they sent Lorca to the firing

squad. In Russia Mayakovsky shot himself

But in Chile, Neruda, Neruda, red windmill

of the Andes. He is all heart & it crumples

at the news. Allende slain. The revolution

in ashes. A lifetime's work turned to

rubble. But not washed out. No. Never!

For the mountains, wind & rivers go on

grinding wheat between stones, struggling

as the people struggle, to match the rhythm

of his outstretched arms & even in death

he still sings. Neruda. Neruda!

This poem has been widely performed and was first published in Embracing the Earth (Berkeley: Homeward Press, 1984).

Roadkill Coyote

Sprawls across the centerline

Backleg broken. Round glazed

eyes glassy as marbles

Unwavering, unblinking

as the world rolls by

now unnoticed or maybe

all seen & thus merely

unremarkable. No fudge

or flinch of instinct. Just

the cold last look of it all

I turn the car around &

go back to the body. Drag her

off the road. Steam rises

when I stroke her flanks

The jaw locked open. Canine

teeth menacing even in death

I take out my knife, sing

a death song & thanking coyote

I cut off her tail

fur too beautiful to bury

& then pull her hind end

deeper into the rabbitbrush

beside the highway’s shoulder

All the way home, down

the canyon & up Norwood Hill

singing her

back into the mystery

This poem has been widely performed and was first published in The Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope, ed. David J. Rothman (Crested Butte, CO: Conundrum Press, 1998).