Seamus Heaney Passed Away Today

Here's a video of one of his best poems...might share with students this coming week. Click below!

Digging by Seamus Heaney

The Pharmacist

The sign said "vibrators," right at the top of the list, in big red letters. The other items included Netty pot's, heating pads, nicotine patches and other hodgepodge, but "vibrators" caught Melanie's eye and made her smile. She needed toothpaste, not the dark green gelatinous mass they offered at the shelter that tasted like old lady candy, but a nice thick abrasive paste. She wanted to scour the enamel like a porcelain sink. She longed for erosion.
Making sure she appeared to have purpose, eyes scanning her surroundings while keeping her chin determinedly up and forward, she had almost entered the drugstore/check-cashing establishment on 42nd, but an argument wasn't suing inside between the stouts Pakistani man behind the counter and an older grizzled black man she recognized from a shelter she frequented. She had gotten along well with this man, and had never seen the symptoms of his personality disorder. She didn't ever want to, so she had continued walking, knowing somewhere on some corner nearby there must be a Walgreens, surely there must be. But as she walked, she drifted further and further away from the familiar, away from the pawn shops and cricket stores and gas stations and Liberty Tax services she knew from hanging around this rescue mission or that shelter. The air grew quiet and missed Halo the streetlights. She felt as if she had wandered into someone else's dream. It had to be someone else's, because she had stopped dreaming long ago.

Stinkfoot

The gym is quieter today, now that April is here and people have abandoned their New Year's resolutions. There are more than enough treadmills, and yet the round guy with the rattail of gray hair dangling down his neck chooses one right next to me. Even if you were three down and across from the entrance, through which a spring breeze sometimes blows, anyone could smell him still. I admit I don't shower before I come to the gym. But what would be the point? I slather on a layer of Speed Stick, just in case, but even without it, I could never approach the level of stench this man exudes. She's always smiling as he trots away, perhaps finding the power of his olfactory reach amusing. Perhaps it's funny to him that we all must breed inin his pugnacious fumery, and none of us can escape or even have the balls to react. It's a smoldering, almost peppery smell, a hint of moldy orange peel and vinegar rounds out the bouquet. And something else that reminds me of Tijuana. The way the dust clung to you. The smell of bad meat cooking. Morning-after tequila breath and sour milk. Wet dog. But it smells good to you when you are clinging to life suspended on the wire of pain. I held that duffel bag to my chest like a child's teddy bear. Breathed in the sweet scent of the stained and mildewy canvas. The movement of the bus had brought team met toward through me like bullets. But I didn't let go of that bag. The entire ride, someone seem to be carrying a basket of fish, perhaps hundreds of baskets of them, the briny smell hanging like Christmas lights around our heads, cut briefly sometimes by the greasy smell of sun-baked scalp. So many heads, all bobbing and jiggling as the road would have them. In Nogales, I stepped out and vomited against an aloe plant. The hotel at which I stayed was overrun with cats.

The Kidnapping

I'm on my way to somewhere I shouldn't be going, when the limo pulls alongside me slowly, its shiny black sides catching my eye just enough like a shark catches a deep-sea diver's as it swishes past. Limos are not scarce here, but ones thatstop for me are. The tinted window lowers, and I know it's Lisa instantly. Her hair red like Georgia mud, with a gleaming part in the direct center. Those eyes deep and dead like a doll's and the two front teeth that peek out just below her lips which she has painted the usual oxblood red. I am about to say "Ahoy" when she shouts out: "Get in quick! Quick!" The urgency in her voice is powerful and I find myself sliding in next to her when she opens the door, even though I will be late to my appointment which I ought not to have made. She has a padded envelope in her hand that has already been stamped and addressed. She wears a very short cotton dress, black, with the corseted middle and a halter top. Each her stockings are patterned with running stags. She is barefoot and wearing no jewelry, which is unusual. Her white chest stands out between the straps of her dress like a blank screen. Sweat has gathered in the crease between her breasts, and on her forehead. I start to ask her how she is, where she's going, what she's up to, when she demands, "Give me your phone." I begin to think there's some emergency, that some dire situation has driven her to flagged me down and not any desire or particular affection for me, but I still hesitate. Not the message from the person I am meeting but my wife's texts are what I'm ashamed to hand her. But I do anyway. I feel suddenly that I want her to see the code. 6 0 5 6 6 9 means come now or else. 6 0 5 5 2 8 3 means the phone calls to my wife start. I've been not avoiding her anger, but letting it crystallize and form shards. I want to tell Lisa what the code means. I want to hear her read the numbers aloud in a stern voice. But when she takes the phone, she doesn't even look at it. She stuffs it into the envelope with wads of bubble wrap and seals the opening. "I certainly hope that's addressed to the Department of Homeland Security," I say, "because it contains a detailed terrorist plot by a cell I've been tracking." I like to tell people I am CIA. I like to say the scar on my lip is from the kickback of a colt 45 and not from my having bit myself after coming off a bender and having a seizure. But I know Lisa does the same thing. She says she is a double agent for the anti-Zionist front, for the Communists in Korea, for Al Qaeda, for the Russians. She even fakes very convincingly that she can speak Chinese. Sometimes when a phone rings she pretends it is a signal that places her under remote control. Must kill executive producer Goldberg. Must kill codename BART. Must kill whoever's in the god damn room at the time. But she's terrified of guns.
"It's addressed to your house," Lisa says.
We come up to a mailbox, and she slides it in. Flip. Clunk.
"How dare you. Do you even know what you've done? Do you know what's on that phone?"
"You said you misplaced your wife's mailbox key, so who cares? Have I taken away your porn baby? Have I deposited your very soul in that mailbox? Can't you check the scores elsewhere? Can you not live without your tweets?"
"You're certifiable."

The Greatest Game

Jay was needy again, and it was only a matter of time. John slurped the cool remainders of beer from the lip of the can and avoided Jay's eyes until the latest soliloquy of woe was done. The pilot hadn't gone over, but he had spent his entire check already on the new CRV, having driven the old blazer to a rattling squeaky death. His agent had promised the show was a surefire hit, otherwise he insisted he would have saved the money.
"What about the royalties from Oak Creek? You still get those, don't you?"
Colin resented Jay's frequent beggary, since he continually worked tending bar at one place or waited tables at another to supplement his own income. He was annoyingly quick to point out that despite his steep car payments, Jay had managed to score enough of what he needed to keep him happily inebriated all the time.
"How much could you get for that quarter in your closet? Or those Klonopin?"
John remained silent, only taking his eyes away from the screen for a fleeting moment to cut them at Colin, who was no teetotaler. Then he continued to mow down enemies, thumbing the controller and sniffing disinterestedly, until the time came, when Colin had finished railing self righteously on.
"Please John. 100 bucks. I'll pay you back I swear."
John breathed out long and took a longer drink, draining the can. Then he clunked it down on the end table and said in a cold hard voice,
"Get a fucking job Jay."
"Come on dude!"
"Do you think I have money to spare? Look at how I live!"
He cranked his head in a frantic motion from side to side, indicating the broken arm chair mechanism held together with duct tape, the carpet pockmarked with cigarette burns, the lamp without a shade that had been found in the dumpster, the vise clamp which substituted for doorknob that had fallen off, the card table and chairs he'd taken from his mother's garage five years prior, the rheumy looking wall paint, veiny with cracks and piebald with scuffs, and the halogen lamp that reeked of singed insect wings whenever it was turned on.

605

The condo has hallways like in Kubrick's The Shining. Geometric patterns in the carpet the color of different kinds of diarrhea. Wallpaper orange and brown stripes with some kind of gold thread woven in. It's all very warm like embers, no clue to how cold and white and stark the actual dwellings are. At least Ellen's place is. So pearly white and hard and shiny. Spatters of blood will burst out on it's surfaces like a hernia. I never noticed the gold in the wallpaper and can't say why I'm seeing it for the first time now, as I wait in front of Ellen's door, my eyes licking the numerals, 605, that have pirouetted in my dreams thousands upon thousands of nights. Sometimes scraped into my back, which is what I see when I look into the mirror in my dreams. The elevator dings, and a lone boy emerges, wearing glasses and swinging his backpack from side to side. As he approaches, I notice it is a Pokémon backpack, and I remember with embarrassment the Star Blazers paraphernalia my mother spent her hard earned money on, and try not to follow that thought with the same pulled thread of little hurts.
The boy is about eight-maybe younger. Too young to be alone and too young to be wearing the cable net scarf that is wound around his neck like a boa constrictor. He stares with determination as he passes me, still swinging his bag. His mud-black eyes popping through the lenses at me. He slows, bringing the stuff of his boots-also Pokémon-to a halt.
"What are you doing?" He asks me.

Ode to the Guy from Carnivale

It started when you were five you and three friends streaks in the Texas dust that had collected on your little faces under a sagebrush tree screaming the lyrics to Fight for Your Right to Party
you were always the King Ad Rock
you ruled your little modular home and bought the two-story with the royalties from playing a child in trouble
the other kids at your small-town junior high called you faggot because actors are faggots
you can fall on cue  having been shoved into the parched dirt enough times your nostrils full of mud you hit a violent growth spurt and sprouted herds of zits the agency called your look reptilian your once baby face now flat and scaly as a copperhead's

you made an excellent villain you died in nearly every film often halfway through practice dying over and over until you didn't know to stop when the lens turned away
there was a franchise and a series but you were always the awkward reptile kid for had bunched into ropes from the shock of flashes in tight shoes and step tuxedos and longnecked models and sushi
Ketel One bought you a new wallet Molson bought you a watch Camel bought you a pair of loafers size 16

Awaiting the Snowstorm

White ash and cold sand I breathe in the crystals I breathe in my throat in my windpipe I breathe in its edges
I breathe in and breathe in
a push over the wet wall the white beast that weighs down the trees
a woman sits in the kitchen playing with centipedes she cleans the floor when winter eats Milwaukee your icy hands Judy
she cleans it and opens the pantry the air is cutting her she eats thin mints she eats hang nails pushes over a wet wall holds her fist over a pin hole of sun
white ash and cold sand I breathe in your crystals I breathe in my throat in my windpipe I breathe in your edges
I shovel you and shovel you
a woman sits in the kitchen she plays with centipedes she cleans when winter eats Milwaukee she eats thin mints
your pearly teeth Gary your icy hands Judy we clean the floor in the cutting air where the woman eats thin mints she plays with centipedes

To Ozzy, All Alone While I Am at Work

Apologies for the taste of my neck
my fingers deep in the velvet of your armpits
rat noises when I sneeze
wolf ones when I yawn
for Glade clean linen which doesn't smell clean at all
for the distance between one gate and the other
that pine needles prick the roofs of mouths
that vinegar erases the sweet smell of rot
for coffee ready at 7 AM
for sweatshirts without hoods
for Velcro
for the masters
both yours
and mine

Face Down Feels the Best

she lay on her back on a mattress of river facing upward
dumbly staring away from me as I strode into traffic
neglectful mouth-breathing mother
palm's always up as if to perpetually say duh what can you do she is hopeless hopeless hopeless
her soggy stare and frog belly cheeks
floating among the displaced and disenfranchised petals
half submerged in a boggy cocktail is where flowers are supposed to be
burnt virgins may have supplied the foam her dress is made from
I honked her waterlogged carcass algae green, murky blue, spots of blood and bile
always clashing with the browns and blacks of my youth
around and around the frozen circle of this Midwestern NASCAR track
on which I am forever turning left
fish scented water on my wheels
deadcold enough to paralyze lips
I said I would not lay down on my back but I did
and after coughing out the dust cloud
I threw her in the dumpster
the same stupid look was still on her doughy face

Ode to White Noise

Please
become unfrozen
relentless brain jizz
crazy jasmine that blows not through
just out in globs and bubbles on the sheets
ever unzipped nasal raspberry ever present ever amazing
blooming desert that drones and sizzles
slow dissolving lozenge lodged in my wizened palm
long resentments
diseased peasant
your easy kisses your haze of ghost milk your zephyr spasm buzz
your present unsent your maze of raisin
warmth of sideways
I am laying

Point Eight

the one who leaves the lights and the heat on
the one who steals the covers
the one who I wait for
the one who puts too much ice cream on the spoon
the one who knows computers
the one who holds up a mirror
the one who breathes fire now and then
the one who I'll lose on the road
the one who works my equator
the one who I fail most
the one who lose my hair back on
the one who glides down the steely silver of my dreams
the one who sounds like green ink
the one who clowns
the one who folds flame

Base Line

grape like lily pad seeds in a cluster
bursting with the treasure of perfect slime
crawdads breathe their last and stink on the shoreline
the aroma of lake mud pies
liquid cashmere water sand solution
glint of bluegill scales defend a divot of nest
darting confetti of minnows
heart-shaped leaves applaud
the lake has cotton mouth
to shear the cause depletes the shade
a green menace screen of tiny globules
bubbling magma of living fibers
chokes the blue
slick leatherback shells appeared later
in the eyes of a boy
along with the sting of stumps still lodged
in the bottom from when
this was still a hiding place for muskrats

Eat Me Forever

not to let the rust near the rose
pumpkin tangerine mango salmon
hunched over soggy in the break room I become vegetable
not to let the aquamarine touch the mint
slinky toothpaste colored clubwear
looks like discarded napkins
not to leave unbuttoned and inside out on the hanger
sweat loosens my sleeves
flitting from line to dressing room to line unhinges my belt
my heel bone bitches at the floor
the floor scolds back
not to see red flowers too prominent or stripes too wide
on Fridays we wear black
absolute funeral black
death to little girls playing dress-up! death to fuchsia! death to kimchi blue! death to halter! death to spaghetti strap! death to heather gray! death to pink!
the refrigerator didn't do anything wrong
I slam it shut anyway

The Icicle

Winter's drool path can impale
the unsuspecting fools who believed in you

Failure is a luxuriously slow drip-by-drip process
in the morning it appears glistening and sudden

What was a line of spry sparkling kisses
now jammed together in the shape of a canine

The ever returning sun reveals the pollutants
silent like germs

Specks of grit and tiny insects
taste like your name sounds

You try again, but the melting
just sharpens the point

Makes shriller the spitting
sound of breakage

The noise of gravity
that has no
reverse

Under

I cherish the unseen but for a peek 
over my shoulders
scars of lint have gathered
wrecking ball of stiff blouses
heavy coats
never never sleep in it my husband says
oh but I will
for the chafing stabbing wires
pincers at my sternum
making me dream of heart failure
under
shapeless prisons of cotton
under
ash dingy flattened satin
under
itch of polyester
under
drag of wool
a little snatch of lace

Me as Poet Is

I am a college professor
                                     She is alone among the icicles
I was born in the Midwest
                                        She was drawn from a corroded vein
I will travel to Madison
to watch the Super Bowl with my husband's family
                                                                                She will be found under
                                                                                a mossy rock, squirming
I go to puppy classes with my puppy Ozzy
                                            every Tuesday
                                                                 She goes down a well filled with
                                                                 lava
I make a really good chicken noodle soup
                                                                 She makes castles out of entrails and teeth
I have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis
                                                           She has a pocket of skin rashes from touching toads
I give my nieces and nephews
books every Christmas
                                   She gives head to the God of Fire