The poetry Niche this month is dedicated to the memory of Jim Tipton, who died in May, 2018, two weeks after the publication of his last collection of poems, The Alphabet of Longing and Other Poems. Shortly before his untimely death from cancer, Jim wrote
When death finally comes
can she be in the form of that woman
wearing the black bikini
walking toward me
on the beach at Guayabitos.
One can only hope she wore a black bikini to escort him to his next chapter.
The poems included here are from his masterpiece, Letters from a Stranger, which won the Colorado Book Award for 1999.
First, When She Was Talking, I Heard No Sound
First, when she was talking, I heard no sound
then like water falling far down the canyon,
I heard her say her name, but it was more
than human name, more than alphabet at birth.
It was like a fragrance around a camp at night,
like a sign we make when no one is looking,
like a hand inside a hand that sometimes
stretches out of sleep, or waves at strangers.
That evening when I climbed the long moon
to home, I held that name, like I hold
a sound inside the body, like I hold
the mountains lightly on this back
One Night I Picked Up in a Bar
One night I picked up in a bar
a woman named Poetry,
and she was drunk, or I was drunk,
or the world itself was drunk;
but at any rate I took her home
and listened to her.
Now, you may be thinking, she had
golden breasts and golden thighs,
and in a sense you are correct.
Perhaps she was some
long forgotten lonely goddess
who through what strange shift in time
had surfaced in a pool hall,
surprised to be alive, to be admired.
I, to the end, lover of all forgotten things,
had seen her there, had loved her,
and in the clumsy way
I sometimes have with women
seduced her heart.
Ah…the muscled men who wanted her,
who watched amazed, were nothing then,
while I, the local fool, finessed my way
into her panties, finding
in that lap of language some ancient thing
so damp and lovely that the gods
of Greece and Rome tore out their hair
People Always Think I Suffer
People always think I suffer some spiritual discipline
when I tell them I wake each day at dawn.
Little do they know I have a cat, named Gosi,
who dances off the bed and tells me,
in a language surpassing clocks,
it is time to go outside and hunt the day.
People always think I suffer some spiritual discipline
when I tell them I work on poetry every day;
but how can I tell them the secret:
there is no discipline…to me it is
like eating donuts or butter cookies,
like being in bed with exotic women.
People always think I suffer some spiritual discipline
when I go walking every day, hand in hand
with a book of Chinese love poems,
or a collection of Buddhist proverbs,
and with a golden dog named Ananda,
and with the child who still lives inside of me.
And so, although suffering is very fashionable,
I make no pretence now toward suffering,
nor toward discipline, preferring
the wild silence of these sacred canyons,
the solitude of the deep word,
this universe of infinite bread
The Brain Washes Ashore
A Curdled Nautilus
The brain washes ashore, a curdled nautilus,
and the day begins. These thick words,
the only wife I have, wake up inside this body
and take me to public places, where a dislocated
geography grinds people in its deadly map,
a map that has no stars, only Monday morning,
set in motion by the shop or office clock,
the factory by the broken sea.
What poem, in these cities where money weeps,
is worth even a dollar? What poem, in this time
of sleeping hearts hunched toward their tiny visions,
is willing to impale itself upon the delirious day;
what poem is willing to run naked through the streets,
to die of cold, of impossible loneliness?
What poem is willing to send its long tongue
toward the sad heart on the lone coast?
Paris, boy that he was, was willing to trade
power, wealth, nobility, honor, for one sweet thing:
the woman that he loved. But where now is passion?
Passion for anything that might lift the heart
out of shadow, out of hushed bones, out
of the desolate waters that wash over our century,
out of the unreliable regularity of the day-to-day,
out of the tombs we die in that we call home.
And so this morning I think of the petrified hands
and of tenderness, and of clothes,
walking around looking for themselves
and of the strange exhaustion that rises out of this century,
and of the endless food that never fills us,
and of the moon we have never seen,
and of the lonely poems that still kneel down
late at night in the cathedral of the heart.
The Day I Found God Washed Ashore
The day I found God washed ashore
He was barely breathing until I began to apply
mouth to mouth resuscitation.
For a few minutes I was really worried.
I thought I might have to help organize
The Funeral of God.
But then, as I was breathing into Him,
He began breathing back into me.
And finally, one eye, crusty with the sea,
opened, and winked.
Before I could sayaword
He transformed into a beautiful woman.
and then into another beautiful woman.
and then into another beautiful woman.
and He has been doing that ever since,
every day of my life.
That day God washed ashore
unconscious and hardly breathing
was the day I really got serious
about religion
The Poem Rises Up
The poem rises up, out of the sand,
out of the desert grasses,
out of the hair of everything that sways,
that sings, even out of those lost
in the infirmaries of brains,
even out of the lost hand
at the end of the arm
when one is deeply thinking,
even out of the lonely metaphysicians
who believe that what is sent out comes back to you,
who are confounded for those moments when they stare
at the hard eyes of Christ in the crucifixes
in the cathedrals in Lima and Cuzco.
What used to be God has become poem,
what used to be light has become the sand
that begins to surge under the feet
when one is walking at night, alone;
what used to be God has become bees,
has become the blood pools in the eyes
at sunset, has become the silence we always feel
when we look deeply into the tiny hearts
of the cells in the tiny hands
of the tiny girl named Maria,
selling scarves in the plaza,
hugging the wool like tiny dolls in winter.
What used to be God has become the wild stillness
which rises up like a wave without its ocean,
has become the wild language of those
who long to speak, like the tongues of lizards
rooted on the sunny rocks, has become the wild intensity
with which we watch bullets moving toward us,
until the bullets themselves are hardly moving—
and were we able to lift our heavy hands
we might hold them in their flight, might turn their sinister lead
Into bread or into nuggets of living gold, might send them back,
until the very dust on the feet of the damned
might turn into the dew of oceans and diamonds.
What used to be love has become the sound we make
before we make sound, the seeing we do before
we become seeing, the matter that makes the fragrance
of lilacs or rose, the divinity that rises
out of this endless sage after a rain, the shapes a pen
makes on paper, the heart inside the letter
that becomes word, that becomes the ancient rocks,
singing, undulating, themselves becoming breasts
washed in the milk of this full moon, this night
when the Wizard of Is is the only light,
and the only prayer this body, barely breathing,
this mouth under this sky of love
I Wanted You in the Kitchen of My Heart
I wanted you in the kitchen of my heart;
and there, after many cold lunches,
I found you; and there, like herbs
undressing in soup, I came to love you;
and there, like a delicate tea
of mangoes and marigolds your mouth
opened, and your words, flecked with gold
and the eroticism of your Latin blood,
flowed, like the blood I longed for, into me.
And how could I lose you among these cups
and spoons, among these golden candles,
these jars of honey lined along the window?
And what forget-me-nots in winter
tie me to you still? I could die in this bread
I have made without you. For you I would burn
this dry brain for incense; I would
serve you the wine inside the night; I would
drink the sea to give you salt
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After he retired and moved to Sedona, Arizona, he taught literature at Yavapai College in Clarkdale, Arizona.
He and professional artist Bev Kephart bought a small motor home in 2003, sold most of their possessions, and traveled the U. S. for seven years. After visiting Mexico several times, they settled in the village of Ajijic, joining the ex-pat artist and writing communities.
Mel’s writing has been published online and in print in The United Kingdom, The United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. He is the author of three novels, a book of short stories, and several books of poetry. He and his wife now make their home in the village of San Nicholas de Ibarra.
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