William Burroughs and the Dawgs of East Lawrence

 

January false spring hits N.E. Kansas, the Kaw still frozen

squirrel and rabbit tracks on the snowed embankment

two bald eagles down from Lecompton, Hawkins

the only mail carrier with a visible aureole

draws to her telescope the eagles’ eyes

again the sudden thaw, green shoots of lilac is it

bursts of green crabgrass under leafless oak ash maple blackjack

trees familiar like those of some nurturing country, known,

dark trunks like the shadows of selves gone by

fall and fall of whisky dead cells

the animal him only renewed

wanting to make something of it, portentous

rebirth in the eggs Benedict and coffee

brown skinned bulbs fisting down at Beth’s 

white root stuff among marbles, white rocks

in the clear water, driving up sharp green blades

then the dog queller arrives $62 C.O.D. from Exotic Weapons

Mail Order House—stick it in and break it off

cackles old Bull Lee, the artist returned to Main Street

disguised as a banker or more casually

Thom McAn shoes and Good Will trousers

Tom O’Donnell finds that life imitates William Stafford

dead doe by the side of his road, literature

scotched like the rumour that God found Pounds

him not born again, only a hard-on for an Irish tootsie

cackles bad Eddard, cynicism reviving in a jug of Paul Mason

how he hoped to be born again as Roger put it

again and again and again

not eternal frost like The Shoppers in Spencer’s Art Emporium

the closer you get the more they look like Mama and Daddy

measuring the level of Western Civ in Rusty’s Hillcrest

but the Frog Mummy holds a green reed to sing through

releases the breath, will he rise from the mud

this January bog-boy grown beautiful in death

the tooth-mama’s son’s white limbs repose in the rubble

even the photo of it there in the woods potent, making

the English professor shake off his torpor

the eagles out in Lecompton arch back their wings

a mud bank begins to ooze along the Kaw’s north shore and

Jay McShann and shades of Count Basie

bring Kansas City jazz west again to the Opera House

now in east Lawrence this melting bright morning

an old man with a cane and a Colt Cobra, a claspknife and teargas

sets out on his morning walk to galvanize dozing dogs

by Wayne Pounds, c. 1977