Soup for Jim Harrison

WHAT ABOUT THOSE COACHES COMMITTED TO MAKING

AMERICA GREAT AGAIN? BOBBY KNIGHT, LOU HOLTZ,

DIGGER PHELPS AND MIKE LEACH,

THE ONE WHO THINKS HE’S GERONIMO?

“Few people use more timber than Donald Trump, I can tell you that.”

            --Donald Trump, Spokane, Wa,
               as reported in the Yakima Herald-Republic 8 May 2016

Shiver me timbers, my people sing,

Thank you very much, May God strike me well.

Lather me with your lush voices,

Tom Waits, Bette Midler, and

Adrian Croenhauer, sitting in the jeep.

Croenhauer putting a condom over his nose.

They're behind an APC full of troops.

"It's a Vietnamese word," he says, “Con Dum.”

Good morning, Robin Williams.

The dj has been taken from the air

but the troops want him back.

Captain Ahab, Sam Hamill, Catullus.

Take us home by way of invective.

Jim Bodeen

10 May 2016

SOUP FOR JIM HARRISON

Harrison’s Letters to Yesenin

is one of the first book of poems

I found after the time with Williams.

Another door to what I carried

from childhood. The letters

were comfortable terrain

which gave me,

besides confidence,

a kind of courage

set against doubt and entitlement.

Entitlement is one of the words

kept from someone like me.

Hidden, I didn’t know it was political.

I knew Harrison had something

I needed when he wrote to Yesenin.

My mother gave me

the word “suicide”

going out the back door

with the kitchen knife.

Shaping the journey,

Harrison and Mom.

“This thin soup tastes great.”

My mother gave me

all of North Dakota

letting me take the kitchen knife

from her hands.

At different times

I had to reject what

got handed down.

My entitlement

came to me in this manner,

what looked to be gruel

took its flavor

from the hambone in the pot.

Jim Bodeen

28 March 2016