Local Zoning Ordinance

They’ve closed down the dark bar on the corner

where I had my first public drink—seventeen years old

and wasn’t I beautiful. And down town’s story has ended

altogether, and the roller skate rink, the old mall, the Chinese

restaurant with gold chandeliers, the egg rolls, the egg drop,

gone on and now relocated in a retired bank. Banks & churches,

we all know the story here. The old streets are still

bricked, but they make no sense these days, not next

to the new little strip mall where the park used to be, with

all of these people in the gym and rehab center riding stationary

bicycles and looking out the windows at me. I want yesterday.

I want a better tomorrow. I want what I want and I want it

now. You see I am in the beginnings of becoming another

rock and roll song. I stand in the driveway in my house slippers,

sipping coffee, looking down the road one way, looking the other,

and it occurs to me that nothing makes any sense—not me,

not the asphalt, not the tiny plane flying loops around the house,

making practice landings at the local airport and taking off again.

There was a dream we shared once, maybe, a collective, a freight

train hauling our hopes toward the promise of another ocean.

So it didn’t work out. But America is still becoming. And I am

still waking up and taking out the garbage every other day.

Past & present, a future consisting of the same two dimensions.

There is no line anywhere, but even the dog perks his ears

at the difference between then and now. Another memory closes

down, another memory returns, another street opens up four lanes

between home, and not home, and everywhere else. I sit by

the window with a guitar, strumming chords, doing nothing.

If there is such a thing as an anthem, then call this mine.

poems by clay matthews

Oncoming

A lottery ticket, and I am foolish enough today

to check the numbers. Or else wise. Poor Edmund

sings his song. Outside my window the leaves

change. I do not witness the change itself

but the evidence of that change is all around me.

I woke up today with a list of things to do.

I have begun the list, but it grows in several directions,

and it goes out, beyond me, past the tree line,

the airport, the interstate and on to a hilltop

where all lists meet to discuss their impossibility.

So many places to go, but right now I am not

going. Outside town a wreath of flowers on a mile marker

to signify and remember one of the goers now gone.

It was a symbolic act. It was an act of love.

Do not question it, because in the question

there exists both the answer you want to hear

and the answer you do not want to hear.

They spin the wheels and the balls float in space.

A constellation of numbers held up in the air,

numbers coming down, numbers clenched

in the fist of a retired Marine sitting in his garage

on a lawn chair, watching a small t.v., hoping

for some good luck before the evening news.

Because the evening news is seventy percent bad luck,

ten percent local color, and the rest is just the weather

that they make you hold out for. A forecast

in the near future, they say. An extended forecast

after this commercial break. If it is not supposed to rain

then it may indeed not rain. But sometimes the rain

has a will of its own. So if it pours, I will claim it

as a small victory. If it passes over holding steady

in the clouds then perhaps, as they say, it was meant

to be. How else to understand anything. How else to call out

against a great gray wall of clouds: Pour, pour,

pour. We are in the poorhouse. We are the lovely

poor. And the tell-tale heart beats madly under the floor.

An acorn falls from the wind of a coming storm,

and on the ground a thousand others, growing brittle,

brown, and into the history of falling numbers.

I am glad to be here today, as much as it sometimes

hurts. This is living, I suppose, and there is not

much else to do. I have not yet given up

on the miraculous nature of the small things,

a single drop of water, the thunder as it covers the sky.

Poem with Death and Personal Pronouns

We’d gotten high, we’d eaten mushrooms, we’d done acid

and cocaine and drank whiskey and listened to rock and roll

and smoked Marlboros and Camels but still we did not die

and so it’s true, I thought, you can’t believe everything

they tell you. What they told is that we would, in fact, die,

and they were many creatures of the night they were D.A.R.E.

teachers and posters and mothers and fathers and warning

labels and they were not, in fact, wrong, we would die but not

that day or for that matter. Sometimes I think that each of us

has already committed the act that will one day make us croak.

Croak, like an enormous toad sitting in the water, rolling over

on its back, huge trembling legs held out, and then shivering,

and then nothing but the ripples in the water heading to the edge

of the puddle, carried through the gravel, the concrete, the grass

and into the eternal repercussions of death. Death on percussion,

momma on bass. I am your lead, and folks, we’ll be here all week.

Perhaps being born is the act which kills us, but I like to think

we could live forever if we didn’t smoke that one joint, take

a sucker punch from that one bastard high on meth at the casino,

bouncing off the video poker machine and into my lap. None of this

makes any sense. And it shouldn’t either. Once I took acid all

by myself, and went to a dance with this girl I didn’t even like, on a bus,

to a winery—I remember the moment it all kicked in, a semi

drove past and I thought everything was flying. Then on the way

home everyone was talking but all I could hear was this other girl

in the back with a nasally voice, telling some guy who was hitting

on her: You’re evil, you’re evil, ohhh, you’re so evil and I felt

like it was me she was talking to and to tell you the truth it all

sort of freaked me out and when I looked at her face it seemed

like it was sliding off and their was either a Martian or a devil

underneath, who can be sure when on drugs and inside a dark

moving vehicle. So that was the last time I did acid by choice.

Some time later a smart-ass friend chose my destiny for me.

Crazy people are fun to hang around with but not when they’re

driving or in any sort of control—it’s like they’re constantly

thinking, behind their crazy eyes, we could die at any minute, we could

die right now and so why the hell not. If you’re with a crazy person

and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” comes on the radio, my advice

is to change the station. But we’re all crazy! And crazy-crazy sometimes

and just a little crazy on the inside sometimes but various levels

of crazy because crazy is one of the antidotes to thinking non-stop

about death. He became very morbid in his later years, the biographer

noted once in an interview. But what else to talk about? Drugs, sex,

and rock and roll. Love and love. A sweet woman, a sweet man,

a sweet, sweet fountain soda from the pharmacy that makes

your teeth hurt. And oh, the pharmacy. Oh, the tiny little pills.

So many. So many more. Prescriptions for whatever ails you, even

if nothing ails you other than being alive, even if you don’t know

the ultimate source of your frustration. But they told us it was going

to be frustrating, and painful, this they being this time posters again

and also religion and bald men smoking cigarettes outside the state-run

course on drinking and driving, This is going to blow, they said,

and it did, they were right, but there were also moments of levity,

and the freckles on the shoulders of a girl in the front row, and breathing,

breathing, breathing, breathing, but much slower than that and less

conscious of it, just something that went on whether we were aware of it

or not, whether I cared or not, but I did care, and I do, and I will, always,

if I can help it. Heartbeats. Radiation. Waves and noise and patterns

breaking from patterns. You will die, they said. It will hurt, they said.

And I will and it has but why the hell wouldn’t it—there must be something

to give context to the good moments we’ve had, staring at the breeze

slowly moving across the water, wanting everything, wanting god, wanting

and waxing on inside about the good of the earth, the good earth, wax on,
Daniel-son, wax off, and take the motions as they come to you, as beautiful

and as constant and as troubling as they all may be. They all may be liars,

they all may be prophets, but one way or another this is not for us to know.

Only that, I have known you, and I have wanted to know you. I can forget

that I am alive, sometimes, but the memory of your voice wakes me

up from the night, the sleep, the beginning of another dream about flying,

or shopping malls, or giant tractors or the faces of unknown men

and women—the ends and the ends revised and occasionally even heaven

The Abridged Version of Go, Go, Go

Chapter One

A horse in the morning. There is no right or wrong way

to start something, a friend once said, only good and bad.

A horse in the morning, a stall, dust rising as the barn

swallows swoop from their cavernous mud nests nestled

in the rafters. I take feed and water. I take hay. Hey now,

come one and all. Come eat, come starve, come Stavros

and tell us another story. Down the road people walk in

and out of the mini-mart, with coffee, doughnuts, pastries

wrapped in cellophane, micro-waved until the icing is warm,

until it even burns a bit, but that is what the mornings are for.

And horses and sunshine and rain and wind and weather

and whether this be the day that something finally happens,

this being the day that the lord hath made, this being one white

chalk mark on the wall of a prisoner or child or marathon

runner counting down the distance. We either count down

or we count toward or we do not count at all. But if we don’t count,

then by god we matter. Matter, which may change form, but cannot

be created or destroyed. Destruction, and the rubble returning

to rubbish. In the backyard I am building another statue

for Ozymandias of Egypt. Despair, ye mighty. Despair and despair.

I am also growing trees and flowers and watch as they bloom,

and hear the hoof-beats in the distance, of horses running

because a train has spooked them, or because it is warm today

and out of every option they have at that moment, running

is the only thing that seems right. Good morning, heartache.

A whistle and then a stop and then nothing but my own breathing.

Chapter Two

A horse is a horse. Also, Equus caballus. Also, mare, colt, stud,

gelding, and so on. In the international library of horses

there is an entire wing devoted to the gelding, with pages

of pictures of castration devices, pages of famous geldings,

like Funny Cide, the last gelding to win the Kentucky Derby.

There is a large section on gelding as metaphor, man as gelding,

marriage as ritual gelding, and an interesting analysis from the perspective

of Foucault on the ways in which “gelding” as a linguistic category

serves in relation to “neuter” or “castrato,” etc. I am cutting something

from the truth. But in doing this the truth becomes more manageable,

it will wear a halter, it will walk around the field with me and not turn

at every thought of a mare in heat. Heat, another word that becomes

both metaphorical and sexual and literal. A time in heat. The heat

of the moment. Love and longing and me right in the middle.

Sometimes it is impossible to pull two animals apart, and would not

be advised by your local veterinarian. We take on the mythology

of the horse or they take on the mythology of us. Or none of us

have any mythology only the reality of our lives, the history of our people,

our animals, our friends, our foes, and our dreams. In a dream Gabriel

came to me riding a white horse with wings. It was not the angel that flew

but the horse itself. Jimmy Stewart had it wrong. Every time a bell rings

an angel does not get its wings. But every time a horse bucks, something

goes straight to hell. This, assuming there is a hell and a straight way

there. This, assuming something is riding, even when a horse is alone

in a pasture, and sets to free itself from the burden on its back.

Chapter Three

A race horse’s name will often maintain through language a part

of both the sire’s and dam’s names. Thus it is not necessarily a patriarchal

system. No name shall be longer than eighteen letters. No name

shall be vulgar. No trade names. No names entirely in numbers. And so on.

In Whitman’s An American Primer it is the names that will make America,

the act of naming, American names, new names, names for the beasts

in the field, the flowers on the vine, names from the mouths of wild

American children. And so a child went forth. With a horse at its side,

where all good horses want to be. The spot you might train a dog to stay

(heel, boy, heel), the spot a horse feels at times is its rightful place in the world

to occupy. I do not know how to speak to the politics of pets. I am not

for dressing animals in sequins, necessarily, unless it seem like the kind

of animal that would like to be dressed in sequins. There is a history

of love and hate. There is a history of everything. A history in the hooves

of horses, the farriers who trim the hooves of horses, the dogs

of the farriers who eat the hooves of horses, and so on, again.

A history of joy, and pain, and mirth and wealth and poverty and pine.

I have known many horses. Pete, who died of a heart attack while I

was on his back. Race, who was thin and away from too many bad years

at the track and steroids. Bruce, who was one of the only horses my father

kept for more than a year or two, who was a quiet horse, a loyal horse,

a horse that ate jalapeño chips from my hand and never told anyone.

You come to know a horse as you come to know a person—very quickly

at first, and then slowly, slowly, slowly learning its ups and downs, its mannerisms,

likes, dislikes, what it is like in the mornings, the evenings, the in betweens.

Chapter Four

On Saturdays my friend Vic used to ride his small sorrel to the only bar

with a hitching post, and go inside, and drink. Vic had the habit of licking

his hand between his thumb and index finger, sprinkling a little salt there,

licking it again before taking a swig of his beer. Something an old Mexican

in Albuquerque taught him. Vic had a story for the rain, and a story

for the shine. The shine he kept on his belt buckle, the silver on his saddlery.

Once in the middle of a story about being on acid and drinking wine

in the back of a pick-up to California, Vic looked down and stopped,

only to spit on his buckle, buff it out with the sleeve of his shirt.

We take pride in what we take pride in. That sentence could go on forever.

Forever and ever, amen. Once, after a birthday party, Vic rode backwards

and passed out in the saddle—the horse took him all the way home.

Horses most often, no matter when they were born, share the same birthday:

January One. Remember me as you remember trivia. Remember the horse,

too. If this were a film I would ride up to you at this point, looking down,

as you look up, to where the sun shines behind me and makes me

a silhouette, a dark block of matter that turns into another as your eyes

travel down, down to where a hoof stomps impatiently, wanting to run.

Chapter Five

Oh, when he whinny, oh, when he whine. That horse, the winner

of the greatest stakes race of all time. Because we could not walk hand

in hand we walked side by side. We walked through a meadow, over a hill,

through a creek and into the pages of a picture book. If this were a picture book

it would be a pop-up picture book, I would rise from the page as if from

the grave, up to you, into you, we would rise, horse and man, beast and beast,

beauty of the thing that rises each morning, each evening, of rising

in general, green grass, Alfalfa, Bermuda, sweet molasses feed shaken

in a bucket, a sound to come running home to. A pad and a blanket

and a saddle. Three variations of comfort—comfort traveling in two

directions. With my pocket knife I split an apple in two and we share,

up from the page it comes toward you—eat, drink, be merry and mine.

This is a direct address. A word from the president. Mr. President,

your horses do not believe you. There is bullshit and horseshit and variations

off all kinds of shit. A man in a trench coat with a mouthful of tobacco

spits down the side of his face, and wheezes, and eats beans with a large spoon

and curses the day he was born. Or not the day, but the mother. Or not

the mother, but the mule. Or everything, or nothing. The sky today

has opened up, and from the top of a hill you can see a long way, other

tops of hills, other people on the tops of hills, and valleys where smoke

rises, and water runs, and windmills hum against the wind. Acreage fills

my heart. Past barbed wire, past a gas station, past an inflatable pool

I see a young man in a cowboy hat driving a jeep and giving it hell,

over asphalt and then gravel, and then gravel and then dirt, as he

relapses into the wild, wild west, getting back as fast as he can.

Chapter Six

Jesse James. Frank James. Cole Younger. R.I.P., etc. In grade school

I used to stare at the pictures of dead outlaws, propped up

on the front porch, a hole here, a hole there, a hat in their hands,

if anything, and nothing more. Even the worst of us gets buried,

somehow, or becomes the best of us, or the ambivalent of us,

the us who fought for something but fought in a certain way,

the law and the individual and the symbol. But what is a horse a symbol of?

Captivity, domesticity, wildness, freedom, work, trust, companionship,

loss, love, leather, long rides between point A and point B, long rides

without a destination. The horse, as you noticed it breathing on you, making

signs of life, promises of the living. The horse that bites you just to know

you are real. Because there is the real behind a horses eyes, and the real

along with the simulation out front, and a thousand variations of the two

between, offering either endless depth or the illusion of endless depth,

and cataracts sometimes, too, as if to remind me not to get too lost

on the path I am going, because mortality is at stake, others are at stake,

and steak and potatoes for dinner. Meat on an iron skillet, meat on a fire,

chuck wagon, coffee grinds, sorghum. I’ve been sweet on you but remember

the highway, the hum of tires, and trailers on tires, and horses in trailers

on tires being wheeled away, to a rodeo, a midnight outing, a large barn

with a small shack falling off cinder blocks, home and a half-acre to boot.

Chapter Seven

The withers on a big palomino. The white on a paint horse setting off

a glass eye. Not glass but blue. Not blue but water, an ocean

and a sunset and a beach and hooves hitting waves, striking back,

plodding against the incessant pulse, the push, the prince of tides.

Once, after the trailer had come off the hitch on the back of John A.’s

truck, we opened the door the next day, and looked at the roan

who’d broken its neck, four legs stuck straight out, rigor mortis, one

of the more recognizable signs of death. And for the dead we hauled

them to the pond at the back of the junk yard, a small ceremony

past old tractors and combines, through the sand, to where the willows

grew feebly around the edge of the water, and the animals went

slowly, then down, then not at all. There were no prayers and no goodbyes.

There were only people doing what they do when something they love

dies, a friend, a co-worker, a little bit of joy, sometimes. If this were an elegy

it would not even have the heart to hold a bridle. The hands would be

in the pockets, the tears would be inside, the horse would be in the depths,

with the others, and the people would be slamming truck doors and listening

to a country station, going on in their slow, dying way to unhitch the trailer,

put on more music in the barn, and feed everything that’s left a little extra.

Chapter Eight

So this is not a sad story. Or not meant to be. A horse in the morning.

A man in the morning. And mourning, and morning, again. Again and again.

Over and over. The fields and the grass and the clover. Clever things we are

that stay alive, that love in spite, that continue in spite, that spit tobacco

and spite into the wind, letting loose what the body no longer wants

to hold, letting water weight out into the mud. Then the horse got muddy

and we all got muddy, then happy, then tired, then quiet. Driving through towns

sometimes I stop at whatever restaurant has the horse trailer, or dually, or Stetson,

knowing that at least the coffee will be hot. And perhaps catfish, and perhaps

a plate lunch. And perhaps someone I know, or knew, or might want to know.

In the back of the local saddle shop there is a stout woman who braids leather

and looks as if that was what she was put on earth to do. We are all put on earth,

or else come from the earth, humans as horses, horses as cows, etc., into the wind.

But what to do, or how to do, or who and when to do it with. Sometimes decisions,

sometimes things decided. A thousand images of animals carrying people,

droopy people, proud people, sad people and sleeping people. Bring out your dead,

give them some air, and spur on into another day, or sunset, or sunrise, or set of spurs.

The jingle in the jangle. The tack on the shelf. The long, long ride through the tall,

tall grass, and the fallowed fields, and the trees that stand upright and proud, as one

version of holding the world in its place sometimes, hands tight on the reins,

feet solid in the stirrups, legs holding on to the barrel of a body as it breathes.

MAIN

Clay Matthews has recent work in H_NGM_N, The Laurel Review, LIT, Court Green, Forklift, Ohio, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks: Muffler (H_NGM_N B_ _KS) and Western Reruns (End & Shelf Books), which is available for free online. His first book, Superfecta, is forthcoming from Ghost Road Press in 2008.