Poems

Jonathan Hampton (2003)

Rain poem

"Oh shit, looks like rain."
I have taken myself away from shelter
and I am wet.
I have brought all my things, and now
they are wet.
My clothes are heavy, shoes nothing
but laced sponges.
My glasses are wet and hazy,
there's nothing to dry them with.
"Give me one reason, one damn reason
why I shouldn't be pissed."
I have put myself in the forest
and we are wet together.
Everything is wet, I've nothing to protect,
no worries.
Rain passes though my garments, shirt to shoes,
a confluence of water and flesh.
I remove my glasses, I see the misty woods with
the hazy vision I was given.
"Give me one damn reason,
and the water will bless it."

     I started attending Hazard High School in the fall of 1996. My education consisted of lots of non-book learning. Math: peaches are two, little blue footballs are three, the bars equal six, red zingers float somewhere around twenty. Science: these dampen the nervous system and eclipse any hope of recording memories. These cause total numbness and make breathing shallow. There's also a timed release mechanism, which can be bypassed by simply sucking off the colored coating before consumption. Law and justice: Federal Courts in Kentucky now have a peculiar phenomenon called sentence stacking for drug offenders. First off, if you accept your constitutional right to a fair trail and are found guilty, then you get an extra six months tacked on to your sentence. With multiple offences one guilty verdict gets your penalties totaled. Three years for selling a handful of pills to your son-in-law and fifty years to life for distributing fifty kilos of cocaine. Guilty of selling the pills, but found completely innocent of the coke? It doesn't matter. Your sentences have already been stacked. If the judge wants to put you away for the rest of your natural life, make an example out of you, then he can. Sociology: this old coal town has been suppressed by uncaring businessmen for generations. Land has been swindled away and destroyed. The people are left poor, untrusting, and tired, without means to make a decent living as have-nots in a society who's official language is money. You can't farm. The land is destroyed. You can't get medical care. It's too expensive. Enter large-scale potent narcotic distribution: a way to self-medicate, avoid the medical insurance and doctors you can't afford, partly because worker's compensation is now extinct, enter a way to make some money when mouths are hungry and bill collectors are knocking. Enter the most jolting per capita drug epidemic this hemisphere has ever seen. Once again, the people of my town are turned against themselves. Now your lawnmower or pistol was stolen by your addict nephew to sell for pills because detox is sending spasms down his back and grinding his guts. Now your strung-out neighbor smacked your kid off his bike with a swerving pick-up truck. Now you just welcomed home the newest addition to your family, your very own token premature, incubator baby, already addicted to oxycontin. Years later, from Lexington, I look over my shoulder at Hazard and see pain, painted, as always, in shades of gray. I want to turn around and walk back there.

Many artificial flowers, recently cut grass, clippings dried and yellowed, at the top of a hill to be closer to God, surrounded by the dead, stripped land...lies Flint Hill Cemetery.

"Yes, No One Knows God
Or Sees Him As Plain
As Those Who Have Met Him
On the 'Pathway of Pain'"

          -Inscription from a headstone in the Flint Hill Cemetery

Dialogue with the Taker

Green is the color of life.
You know this, this is your creed.
"Exalt the green, raise it high.
It is salvation, for it, I would die."

Green built your home.
It feeds your children.
"The glories of green I know,
I'll sacrifice all so green mountains may grow."

I have been to your land.
I have seen the mountains there.
"They say all is well,
What could go wrong while there's so much to sell?"

Your hills confused me, misshapen,
they scream soreness, show only gray and bruise-blue.
"You haven't seen my hills of green.
I guard them always, I know if they're seen."

Not Green, but gray is the color of ash,
of broken stone, of steel and concrete.
"I admit, gray is very useful to me.
But even in gray, green is all I see."

I will show you Green, living canopies
uplifted by wood's truth, fed by clear water.
"No, I can gather the green from here
with one thousand shovel arms and more every year."

Your green is greed. You take, destroy, and horde.
You give nothing back, you take without need.
"My belly growls, it's stretched and scarred.
To fill my bowels, is awfully hard."

You can't see, don't comprehend what you do.
True Green limps on, but I can't forgive you.
"My place is clear, I work for need,
our need severe. I will proceed."

Mother

Finishing a trail walk in Robinson Forest
I stop at the base of an out-cropping,
a gathering of three large stones
covered with patches of moss and an expanse of lichens.
Rich olive green patches, some flat, some curled,
like potato chips spread across a table.
The stones once stood huge and obvious
until nature concealed it in her most basic colors.
Form-fitting, natural,
inconspicuous.
"These lichens are like military camouflage nets," I think.
I climb and sit on the large flat surface atop one of the stones.
I sit among the lichens.
They are smooth in the middle, and crispy on the ends.
I pull one up and expose stone, expose ants at work.
I rub the lichen between my fingers.
Smoothness and tiny, tickling roots, two sides of a coin.
The ants scurry on two lane roads,
passing and exchanging signals. One ant transfers
a tiny, salt-like particle to a co-worker and turns back
to get another.
I am struck, realizing a gathered symphony,
birds in the canopy, performing distinct tunes
inseparable to me.
There are too many.
I whistle one myself to make it part of my experience,
learn by recreation.
I follow the birdsongs, apprentice to innate masters,
so I may know.
I have seen many people pucker up and whistle after the birds.
Did birds teach man how to whistle?
Did Henry Ford ever watch ants in his yard before
the Model-T's were passed down assembly lines?
Did the military engineers ever come upon
a monolith blended into the plush forest wood?
Did our potatoes once come sun-baked?
Who gave the humans the ideas?
the precursors? the stimuli?
Humankind and all its glories have been inspired,
have already been completed.
All my life, I have stood in awe of the humans,
the manufacturers, the creators, the idea makers,
a race of gods.
All my life in awe of the awe that has
lasted for generations.
The expansion across seas, across mountain ranges and ever-pressing rivers.
The sapling colonizing a moist crack in
the large stone, humans utilizing everything at
hand. The conquering of What's Next?
is no surprise.
Who taught? There are no apt inventors,
only inventive pupils, apt observers.
Who taught me to feed on milk? My mother,
fresh from her womb I was shown,
"This is the way."
I learned from her suggestion.
Who taught the mothers?
Who taught humans to eat the berries,
to appreciate the conquered meat, the flowing water?
Mother taught us.
Mother teaches us to feed on her.
Mother made us.
Mother taught man to whistle,
to drive forward the industrial machine.
Mother taught man to hide, to conceal the obvious.
The lichens, of rich olive green,
do not look like military camouflage nets.
Military camouflage nets
look like
Mother.

You must want to be undone. You must want
to be moved and transformed. You must ask
for the surprise to receive it. Your blatant call
for surprise won't ruin anything.

Three blood tests, two urine tests, one tiny cup and one plastic orange 24 hour jug. Neck and upper-gastrointestinal x-rays, EKG and CAT, breathing exam and cardiac stress test. These are all medical detection techniques I've had in the past three months. Asthma, lymphoma, stroke, diabetes, and even a small brain tumor. These are all afflictions I though I had, but do not. The only doctor I haven't seen is the shrink.

I Love Couches,
Especially in warm
places on cold days, or cool
places on hot days.
Now, this cabin is such a place.

My car with blasting
air conditioner is always
such a place.
I Love Cars.
Cars have meant
only freedom to
me. My car
has no name,
but my own. Yesterday,
I saw a friend in
the passenger seat
of a car and said,
"That's just a big
wheel chair you
don't have to operate."

There is coolness
on this hot day.
The coolness is in
the stream, between the mountains,
behind the cabin.
The coolness of standing
in flowing water, like
no other coolness.
I am going to that stream.

     What do you do when you stare at a leaf, at a tombstone, down a city street? Sometimes you think and come to sometime like a conclusion. Not always, certainly not. Sometimes you appreciate, simply sense. Sometimes emotion holds you in a place, sometimes it leaves part of you there, just being, while an invisible alchemy takes sacred, secret parts of you and mixes them, pours and sifts in ways that those terms don't really capture. When your mind is active, but you aren't thinking, what is going on?

Hillside Prelude

The memorials of Elizabeth Caroline Watts and James Still
sit on a hillside
overlookinga settlement school in Hindman, Kentucky.
They are static, solid gray stone
Surrounded by modest flora provided by the florist Earth.

"Look, remember, think," the stones say.
They sit outside of time, pull people to them,
memorial magnents.
They attract the mind.
I contemplate two lives, already lived and complete
lived and completed on this ground in Hindman.
These stones now have sway over my mind.
They draw my thoughts to this place
stir them with the hillside
and all it holds.
My thoughts turn and blend
in a warm stew of consciousness
as warm as blood
barely colored by the addition of me.
Some part of me spins
Considers the flavor, and then
cools.
I leave the warmth
Distill from its brew
and settle
to the bottom where I may collect myself.
My consciousness was now my own again.
My body became present, on the hillside
with the grasses and hemlocks.
I have seen beneath the stones
now the tangible becomes clear.
I will be as one with them again
some day.

My consciousness will be stirred away
my body will return
not to me, but as those of Elizabeth and James have.
In a moment:
the circumstantial glance before the connection.
I am told:
"You will see beneath these stones again
some day."

     I look back to home and I see the hurt, the wrong, the confusion. I want to be a lawyer, you know. If that's the case I can help people stay out of the brimming jailhouses, play a solid game against the stacked-deck system. I can negate the police on their own turf when they pick on the youth, the poor, the black, anyone marginalized will do. I don't think the law can be or ever will be sound. And its enforcement disgusts me sometimes.
     One day, my senior year, high school let out and I was hanging out with some friends beside one's car - not just any car: a mid-80s Lincoln, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon hand painted on the driver's side door, Atom Heart Mother on the passenger's, art from The Wall on hood and trunk. And, on the top was the British flag, even spelled out in bold black lettering: "The Union Jack." So, cue Perry County deputy.
     "What're ya'll doing out here after school?"
     "Nothing, just hanging out."
     "Oh, yeah?" The officer moves through our loose crowd of six and peers his head into an open window of the "Interstellar Overdriver." "I believe I smell some marijuana in here. Ya'll been smoking marijuana here?"
     An earnest, collective reply of "no's", headshakes, and "no, sir's." And that was every bit the damn truth. Not one of us had smoked pot in a year and that car hadn't had pot smoked in it for as long as Ben owned it. But, the deputy "smelled" it. Right, what he saw was a group of teenagers hanging out beside a psychedelic old car. Commence radio background and license plate check, profuse questioning and a search that emptied pockets, shoes, a glove compartment, and even dismantled an asthma inhaler. The results? A stumped, frustrated cop and six clean kids, clean except for t fact that we now knew the extent of the power, the cheap excuses provided by the law, the thinness of the line we had to walk, even though we'd still be hounded within our narrow parameters. This story is from my eyes. The eyes of a young man frustrated at abusive authority, but my eyes aren't the only eyes that see it. Take it from an active Hazard City Police officer. "If it's past 2:30 a.m. and someone stops for two seconds at a stop sign, I usually pull'em over." Well, what happens if they don't stop at the stop sign? That's the issue I want to make better. Making lives in a hostile environment more fair.
     But, what about those dealers that sell drugs to pay bills, send kids to school, feed families? What about those drug dealers that get the money from the dope fiends: the fiends that crash cars, overdose, steal from their families? Who will I be helping? How is the naturalist helping when he traps a bear, tranquilizes him, tags him in all sorts of ways and sends him all doped up back into the woods? How is he hurting? Who will I be helping if I help a dealer avoid overwhelming prosecution through relentless mandatory sentencing? There will be hurt, if I do.

The Homemaker and the Visitor

The home: a large range of Appalachian hills.
Hills with their vallies that are but gateways to more hills,
hills jutting rocks, interwoven by streams, shaded by
massive clouds drifting overhead, one to the next:
He roams it all.

The home-warming gift: a garbage bag's worth
of week old doughnuts piled together next to a tree.
Despite their staleness, the dew will wet them, the
sun will melt them into a sweet bready clump:
Imagine The Flies.

The invitation: given not by the homemaker, but by
the visitor: "Take my doughnuts. But, don't step here
or there to get them, for I have blocked those places
with shrubs and sticks. Please, do step here,"
Room enough for one paw.

The ulterior motive: hidden under the groundcover,
clever and buried, but ready (as they always are) is
an airplane towing cable, with a looped end, attached
to a rusty old throwing arm, a snap-action safety pin:
Not safe at all.

The surprise: Thunder growls, the destruction of a
double crossed giant struggling against engineers
and experts, claw marks lashing a tree from ground
to eight feet up the trunk of the solid, bare tree:
A bear-confining tree.

The repercussions: A tranquilizer dart, a radio collar,
red and white tassles pinned to the ears, green dye and
hole-puncher tattoos on lip and thigh, a couple hours
of hallucienagenic disassociation are all just signs:
Welcome to institutionalization.

The confusion: The Visitors want to help. They are
the good guys, but only in comparison to the bad guys,
the trash throwers, the unappreciative gawkers, the poachers.
Does the bear need this system, this invasion, to survive?
Oh, Hostile World.

The truth doesn't always set you free. Sometimes, it only lets you know you're trapped.

     Nothing but a bunch of trailer trash and rednecks. Ignorant bastards that haven't been anywhere or seen anything. They live inside a hole, buried in kudzu vine and Nascar license plates. They drink from old tire water, diaper and detergent water. They live in "hollers," and talk funny besides that. I used to call them hollows, as that is how the word is spelled and properly pronounced. The kids drive around all night and all weekend long, doing nothing: "cruzin'." My most vivid memories of this place are pock marked with angst. "I want out. This place is no good and getting worse. It has nothing for me, no one for me."
     That's my perspective, about three years old and no longer existent in the present. They live in homes they can afford. Ignorant? Why? Because they haven't heard of the bands I dug around for on the internet, or they've never seen a film with subtitles. I know people without high school diplomas that could build a damn Nascar, with the right tools, while I see people in Lexington that have to call AAA every time they get a flat tire. The world between the shadowing hills of Appalachia is different, but so is every corner of the earth. It took me so long, not to fully understand it (which no one ever may), but to realize that it isn't inherently wrong. I type these letters and I shake my head. How long before the distant city dwellers understand. How long before the characteristic weariness of small town Appalachians is no longer hugely justifiable? To understand you have to want to. You have to ask to be surprised. But, don't worry about ruining what you may receive. Just ask, and do it deliberately, want and wait: you must.

Creek Poem

Continuing a warm afternoon's creek walk
I saw two limbs at the edge of my vision
hanging above my next step.
Two thin limbs with sparse foliage
Arching slightly, one foot apart,
suspended over the water's edge.
I have noticed the spiders, where they
build their webs: away from troublesome leaves
with access to the water's bugs.
"This would be a fine place for a spider's home."
I turned and saw the web between the limbs and
ducked to avoid it.
Had I taken this walk one week ago
I would have been webbed. I did well
to notice the spiders.