nocturne

Here's something I'm working on. It's somewhat messy and needs a lot of editing, but thought I'd put it out there and see what happens. Hopefully it's not too weird.

nocturne

1

look in the middle of that field

look at that man

look at his face he has a terrible face

he was not a man he was not a man at all he was a cow he had the huge hollow soul of a cow his face to the sun his mouth stretched wide he swallowed leaves

he was a hollow husk of corn he stood there with his scarecrow arms outstretched like holy jesus on the holy cross but time passed by without him

it seemed only yesterday things weren't this way

2

she was laying behind a rose bush in a church's back yard the sky turned grey and the summer evening cooled birds fainted and laughed at each other and flew away home he came behind there she was naked with her bruised hands covering the place between her open legs

i'm leaving soon she told him

he smiled

she turned to her stomach and her hands moved away she rose to her knees then laid her forehead on the ground she arched her back inward and spread her arms out on the ground beside her

he undressed and came into her from behind

he didnt know what love was

she brought her hands up and pressed her palms hard into her eyes she smelled the dirt and thought of nothing but that boy behind her as the sun went down

3

the day he asked for her they'd been walking down that grassy road she held his arm watching lazy evening light fall like dust through the leaves

there was a small spring and an old grey house falling behind them arms of late summer sun stretched down and insects danced through like english fairies from an old children's comedy a rabbit hidden in the grass across the way breathed fast

you know your eyes look like nighttime

well and her face turned red

and nobody can see at night

i cant either

the light turned grey and the summer evening cooled

they lay on the grass until the stars came out talking of tomorrow and the days after the rabbit in the grass went home and everything breathed easily

4

but she soon learned that he knew the devil

the devil

hes that man smiling at her from the sidewalk the one that follows her

hes in the laughter of her young daughters voice throw her up in the sky and she will hear it and no its not the babys laughter its

there

right there

the part where her breath came over the very edge or her larynx right where it turns into nothing else thats his voice thats the devil his eyes smile

hes the one making that sound that makes her think her daughters crying she goes in there 2 a.m. and the childs sound asleep her knees curled up under her stomach and her face to the side on her pillow

hes in her mailbox in early mornings before the suns all the way up

hes responsible for that dead tomato plant in her garden

hes cat shit

hes an empty gas tank

hes the one who introduces the chopin pieces on the radio

hes sometimes the old leather work boot that taps out time

hes leonard cohens right eye the one that is the foil for the left one

he sold nico the smack just before leo fucked her in the chelsea hotel

hes wishing he was riding on the porch swing she has chained to her front porch when the night wind howls it against her house but hes always so goddam busy

until hes able to do that hes dancing around in her mouth peeking childishly sometimes out from behind her nose hes a carnival somewhere whose lights are seen from behind a dark hill hes in rimbauds riot of perfumes

hes the hint of star anise mint wormwood and myrrh that she makes gentle but poignant jokes about that sometimes attracts her but mostly repulses her when he crawls into bed beside her at 4 in the morning and she asks him sleepily and dearly if hes all right

5

they lived alone in an old house nobody knew about them some people remembered them but nobody knew about them they lived alone in an old house

thunder turned outside the window and fog rolled from the trees the wind blew

they were lying naked in their bed

dont do that she said

what

what you were about to do

why

because I dont like it

how do you know

i just know

he laughed

he left her there and went to the window a storm was coming outside the trees and their leaves bent over themselves the swing tied to a branch beat against the trunk white sheets hanging between two wooden crosses coughed

(((something about the devil outside here)))

lets go outside he said

no

why

because i dont want to

why

because im afraid of you

what are you afraid of

i dont know

put your clothes on

no

pulled her hair back with a rubberband

they lived alone in an old house

6

a crack of lightning startled her and she stood she went to a picture hanging on the wall

it was a very holy portrait of jesus she put it there long ago jesuss head was haloed in a yellow orange and his hands were clasped in prayer before his heart his blue eyes were serene

only she knew that behind those blue eyes was agony the beatings at golgotha the betrayal of judas and the weeping of his mother she knew he looked up to the sky and wondered if wisdom was truly there she knew the gripping nausea of falling faith she too had been tortured on the ground at gethsemane

she knew

she stared up at jesus and closed her eyes

he stood by the window watching the storm come

they lived alone in an old house

7

a field of yellow grass and horses fenced in around it far away a city

her mother and father there looking for her calling for her they stop to have tea and politely discuss her whereabouts later they run frantic and cry

shes among the horses trying to guide them to the pastures edge but they wont go they wont move they look at her passively she wants to become angry but is afraid her anger may incite the beasts and they even in their beauty are powerful creatures she whispers harshly to them but doesnt understand the words that come from her mouth becomes afraid of being found or hurt or trapped

she breaks from them and runs crosses the fence but finds herself not in a city but heavy woods her familys coming after her she hides and finds comfort beneath the long hair of a willow

but looking up

judas hangs there

8

he made her follow him down the cold steps outside neither had put their clothes on

she followed him past the edge of the yard

past the grass and into the edge of the woods

dogwood trees had just finished blooming and white petals lay soft about the thunder bellowed but it was dry the wind hummed through the higher trees she put a lock of hair behind her ear sighed silently and walked

she watched him go in front of her his silence made other voices speak ito her

do you remember the house that you grew up in is it the same now remember the fires in the fireplace and the way your father sang to you there do you remember animals sundays or the gardens there were roads about do you remember them

do you remember the boys you once loved or your bedroom when you were a child the sound of your fathers voice maybe you remember dancing or laughing after nightfall

no but ive stood in front of the ocean and felt something inside me i was sick maybe but didnt see nothing but the way the earth curved out there ive looked in photo albums and wondered who i was

through the woods insects called and the wind still blew she wiped her hair from her eyes and followed him

9

imagine that dark night imagine dry grass hurried winds imagine them unclothed imagine yourself with them if you'd like a muddy pond with leaves floating the smell of pigs a cemetery was in the distance and a forgotten wooden church falling down niggard trees dropped shadows and gravestones stood in unruly formations brown leaves fell like snow a stone statue of the savior looked down upon the dead

the night flashed silver and shouted out there

she followed him because she had nowhere else to go

he had a bottle of liquor and songs in his head

10

her bare feet went quiet through the grass he took her to the graveyard then walked away she knelt before a tombstone

in 1879 a girl was buried there she didnt know who she was

arabella concordie sumerour

she died when she was seventeen years old

she ran her fingers over the carved stone words is this how it is for you all the time she asked she looked up it would rain soon she rubbed her hands over her bare legs then lay on her back over arabellas grave

11

had she known arabella the two of them would have played together if they were young girls theyd make believe theyd each choose a man to love and to marry

arabellas man would be funny and dress like a dandy hed hold arabellas hand and walk her through town defending her against all the crude men and bragging about her to all the gentlemen he would be a much better man than hers

but no no no her man would take her to the country hed have horses and water and theyd live by themselves hed work and bring himself home and they would love each other alone they would be each others

but they'll be good friends she said theyll visit each other well go for walks while they talk in the afternoon

well pick flowers and look at the horses well lay flowers in the graveyard

they laughed at each other

arabella said maybe its a ghost youre following out here thats your man and its not the wind youre hearing you know

no bella youre the ghost

ya ya ya arabella made a funny face and they laughed

12

he looked at the stone jesus statue      this is as close as ill ever get to god

he watched the leaves shake when the wind blew

something he couldnt see moved in the trees and he went back to her

afraid, he laid down beside her

13

(((conversation here)))

14

they lay in silence and listened to the sounds around them ghosts were surely those things out in the field an owl sang an old flute song above them and he wished he could see with its eyes he wished he knew what was past the edge of the dark there was something there he could not see there was something there who knew who he was and was waiting there was something there that longed for him and though he was drawn and longed to go toward it he was afraid

whipporwills rolled sounds by the pond and the moon broke free sometimes he looked at her face and saw it shone pale blue he couldnt look into her eyes but could smell her the woman of her she came close beside him and her breath was warm the leaves beneath them cried the air was still when the first sounds of passion came from her mouth her voice would not harmonize with the music in the night and she held the back of his hair the side of her face touched his she turned her back to the sky her forehead was on the ground when she whispered softly to the earth

and against the ground their bodies grew the wind talked of death and forgetting and a faint neverheard symphony rose from the dark trees their bodies trembled and her colors deepened her eyes danced and saw things his could not he imagined silhouettes in blizzards and prayers on holy ground a great ghost rose unseen then came down over them like a scarlett blanket their voices whispered savagely and they never thought that a herd of passing beasts with golden hair and big eyes would pass by watching them when her fingernails made wounds in his body he turned to his back and she rose above him whispered something he could not understand then clothed him in the soft waves of her silken skin

their legs entertwined he held her he touched all of her as the wind blew trees shook her lips pulled and her hands dug into his back and legs he opened her and sounds came from her mouth from under windy trees sleepy animals watched

she brought him into her

15

there was song in the night melodies of rebirth hot slumbers and sweat and things away wind and leaf harvests and hunger and violins and barns haystacks sweating her mother and father rapt in conception the flowers over there yellow and brown migrations and returnings the movement of birds and they sing willows should be before palaces and springs overflowing

their bodies in motion and she laughed the quiet of continuance the absurdity of continuance and the hope of morning children mourning children and she laughed again

sunday school in summer and hot churches blown kisses to the sky haley's comet and dinner at night in the evening a funeral closing eyes and darkness fluttering eyes and darkness his pale blue eyes and a dog barking through sleep and once again laughter

14

later it was quiet

he was sleeping breathing she watched him sleep and wondered what he dreamed

the wind came over their bodies

15

when she woke he was still beside her his eyes were closed soft rains had begun to fall she watched the water slide slowly down the side of his face kissed his forehead and tasted the salty rain then looked up through the trees to the still dark sky

she was the same girl she always was her father's girl

but he was somebody else

Haywood Patterson is Dead and Gone

Here's a current story in the Pulse. I'm rather fond of this one...

It was raining and fog rolled up from the river. Under awnings and concrete eaves on 11^th Street people hid away in pairs, alone sometimes, and watched the rain fall down on the empty downtown streets. They talked quietly and smoked cigarettes. Some of them drank from brown paper bags and looked up at the sky.

The newspaper house churned out smoke and their workhouse bells rang letting everyone know that the world had not stopped. I was walking down the sidewalk with an old stray dog trotting through the rain behind me. He followed me as far as the railroad bridge then ducked down a bushy trail with somewhere else to go. I went on a little ways and walked up the front steps of the Chattanooga Community Kitchen.

There were some papers I was to pick up behind the front desk. I also had a man named Haywood Patterson on my mind and thought I'd ask some random person there if they'd ever heard of him. I got my papers and walked out into the dayroom.

It was just after dinner and in a back corner a small crowd had gathered around two men playing checkers. This crowd was huddled over the two checker players clapping their hands and acting up like they were watching a chicken fight in somebody's back yard. I walked back to their corner.

I watched the checker game for a minute then asked one of the men if he'd ever heard of Haywood Patterson.

“Who?”

“Haywood Patterson.”

“No, I ain't heard of him.”

“He was one of the Scottsboro Boys,” I tried to explain, but one of the checker players made a quick slick move and the crowd of men erupted in howls and laughter. The other checker player cursed him and I was shoved out of the way by the crowd of laughing men.

That was that.

I left the men alone. I went to sit in a chair near the front door to dry out and wait for the rain to let up. Later, I walked back down the street. I went to a bar downtown and ran into an old friend of mine, a well-travelled girl who usually knows a lot more than I do.

“You ever heard of Haywood Patterson,” I asked her.

“No. Was I supposed to?”

“I don't know. He was one of the Scottsboro Boys.”

“I've heard of them but I can't remember who they were. There's a musical called the Scottsboro Boys I heard was on Broadway.”

“Haywood Patterson was from Chattanooga. He grew up here in the twenties and thirties and went to prison in Alabama...”

“Oh Lord. Here you go again.” She pointed at me with her thumb and told the bartender, “He needs a beer.” The bartender knew what I drank, and that was that, too.

I tried a few more times to find someone in town who knew about Haywood and the Scottsboro Boys, but failed just as miserably.

I'd come across Haywood Patterson's name after finding an old tunnel while walking the railroad tracks around the bottom of Lookout Mountain. If you don't mind stepping over dead possums or being chased by dogs you can walk the tracks there and find that old cave-like gothic structure. It was built in 1918. Vines and weeds hang down from the top and a big bad-ass freight train is usually rumbling just outside. Hoboes sleep in the bushes there.

On the wall just inside the tunnel is old graffiti from the time the tunnel was carved out of the mountain. Names, dates and old caricatures were scratched into the wall by the men who worked there. Intrigued by the old drawings I went to the downtown library and researched the tunnel's history. That's where I found Haywood Patterson.

In 1931, the Chattanooga Daily Times said he was “one of the worst young negroes in Chattanooga.” That year, he and eight other “negro” boys were accused of gang raping two white girls on a train that had left Chattanooga.

Haywood was born in 1913. When he was a small child his father moved his family from Elberton, Georgia to Chattanooga in hopes of finding work in the steel mills. The work wasn't there, though, and the family lived in squalor in what was not much more than a dog shack at the corner of Main Street and Riverside Drive. Haywood quit school after the 3^rd grade to help work at home.

When he was 14 he started hoboing on trains looking for work to help out his family. Haywood, as would any young boy, revelled in the scary freedom that came with riding the tracks—not knowing where he was going and not knowing what he'd find. His was the American spirit chug-a-lugging through the dark and hot woods of the South, hoping that in the next town he would find what he was looking for. He dreamed of finding work someday and returning home to Chattanooga smiling and with enough money to take his family away from the animal lives they lived.

But by the time he was 18 Haywood was still looking for work. He and a few other like-minded Chattanooga boys hopped yet another train, still hoping something would come their way. What happened after they caught that Chattanooga to Memphis freight train changed not only their lives but the course of American history. Years later, with the help of a newspaper reporter, Haywood wrote about what happened that day:

The freight train leaving out of Chattanooga went so slow anyone could get off and back on.

That gave the white boys [also riding the train] the idea they could jump off the train and pick up rocks, carry them back on, and chunk them at us Negro boys.

The trouble began when three or four white boys crossed over the oil tanker that four of us colored fellows from Chattanooga were in. One of the white boys, he stepped on my hand and liked to have knocked me off the train. I didn’t say anything then, but the same guy, he brushed by me again and liked to have pushed me off the car.

I made a complaint about it and the white boy talked back— mean, serious, white folks Southern talk.

That is how the Scottsboro case began… with a white foot on my black hand.

Three or four white boys, they were facing us four black boys, and all cussing each other on both sides. But no fighting yet.

We had just come out of a tunnel underneath Lookout Mountain when the argument started. The train, the name of it was the Alabama Great Southern, it was going uphill now, slow. A couple of the white boys, they hopped off, picked up rocks, threw them at us. The stones landed around us and some hit us. Then the white fellows, they hopped back on the train. We were going toward Stevenson, Alabama, when the rocks came at us. We got very mad.

When the train stopped at Stevenson we got out of the car and walked along the tracks. We met up with some other young Negroes from another car. We told them what happened. They agreed to come in with us when the train started again.

Soon as the train started the four of us Chattanooga boys that was in the oil tanker got back in there—and the white boys started throwing more rocks. The other colored guys, they came over the top of the train and met us four guys. We decided we would go and settle with these white boys. We went toward their car to fight it out.

I don’t argue with people. I show them. And I started to show those white boys. The other colored guys, they pitched in on these rock throwers too. Pretty quick the white boys began to lose in the fist fighting. Some of them jumped off and some we put off. A few wanted to put up a fight but they didn’t have a chance. We had color anger on our side.

The white fellows got plenty sore at the whupping we gave them. They ran back to Stevenson to complain that they were jumped on and thrown off—and to have us pulled off the train.

The Stevenson depot man, he called up ahead to Paint Rock and told the folks in that little through-road place to turn out in a posse and snatch us off the train.

It was two or three o’clock in the afternoon, Wednesday, March 25, 1931, when we were taken off at Paint Rock.…

Haywood didn't know there were two white girls dressed in men's overalls also riding the train. None of the boys did. The two girls were cheap boxcar prostitutes. One of them was a minor. The girls made up a story about being gang raped by the black boys on the train. We'll go to jail if we don't say something, the older girl convinced the younger. The older girl was worried about being prosecuted under the Mann Act, which addressed taking minors across state lines for immoral purposes. When they were discovered they told their rape story to the Scottsboro police.

This is how the Scottsboro Boys trials began. It ended with eight of the nine boys being convicted of the rape and sentenced to death.

Their trials went through the courts for years, eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court. One by one, over time and due to national pressure and ridicule, they were released and eventually pardoned by the State of Alabama. But Haywood Patterson escaped before he could be released. He had already spent 16 years in the notoriously hellish Alabama prison system. The hopeful young kid who hopped a freight train looking for work one day had been turned into a prison-bred monster.

His hope and youth was beaten, kicked and starved out of him in those prisons. He was tied up and whipped like an animal. A prison guard once paid two other black inmates, friends of Haywood, to kill him. He was beaten and then stabbed by his “friends” twenty times, puncturing his lung. But he didn't die.

One night, the night Haywood was originally scheduled to die, he had to watch as another inmate was fried in the electric chair in a nearby room. Afterwards, he was made to carry out the dead body.

Deprived of the company of women, and probably having never been with a woman, he became an aggressive homosexual ("a wolf") with his own "gal-boy." He attacked another prisoner with a switchblade for having sex with "his kid.” "He didn't try to take my gal-boy away from me after that,” Haywood said. “Nobody did."

His innocence was lost and all his hope was gone. His faith remained in only one thing: “I had faith in my knife,” he said. “It had saved me many times.”

He escaped from prison in 1947. He and a bunch of other inmates were working a prison farm when Haywood took off running through tall rows of corn, then out into the woods. He swam off through snake-infested creeks. He was cornered by three dogs and drowned two of them. The last one got away. He made it to Atlanta then back home to Chattanooga. Eventually he made his way to the home of his sister in Detroit, Michigan.

While in Detroit in 1950, Haywood was involved in a barroom brawl that resulted in the death of another man. He was charged with murder this time, convicted of manslaughter and died in a Detroit prison on August 24, 1952. He was 39 years old.

That's who Haywood Patterson was. That's what became of his life.

I was hanging around the library alone one night digging into Haywood's story when I came across a letter he wrote from a Birmingham prison. He wrote it on October 20, 1937, without the help of a reporter, to a young boy named Bobby. He wrote:

You Have two cute frogs and one is Expecting to Have babies. My How I would like to see those frogs. What sort of things is they? I am happy to Know that you all Have more kittens. And I can imagine How Beautiful they are, especially If they are very playful. Bobby dear, I Can Not Help but to love you awfully Because you seems Most Kind and considerate to the poor Helpless dogs and Kind to all things. you are Heavenly sweet to Have found a Home for the poor lost dog. its good of you and I too Hope that the poor fellow will be nicely treated where ever he are. I feel very Sad for the poor Homeless dog. Honestly I do and am glad you all Had sympathy for Him and founded him a Home mighty nice of you. god will bless you for your Kindness to everything

They called closing time at the library and I went outside. A group of homeless people were on the front steps waiting for all the lights to go out so they could find a spot to sleep in the library's grass. It was dark outside.

I sat on the steps, too, wondering if I was nothing more than some kind of ghoul dragging up the dead and buried for no other reason than my own ghoulish curiosity. That letter I'd read was none of my business and Haywood Patterson is gone. Nobody else seemed to give a damn.

Why should I?

Still, I couldn't help it. Curiosity got the better of me and I walked down to the corner of Main Street and Riverside Drive where Haywood used to live. I wanted to see the world from his perspective. Chattanooga hasn't changed all that much since Haywood lived here. The mountain and river is still here. I wanted to see what he saw when he was a child.

The small shack that he grew up in is not there anymore. Instead, there are red brick housing projects on the corner of Main Street and Riverside now. I stood on the corner there and looked up to my left. The lights from the big houses on Lookout Mountain shone bright and proud. Old barges bellowed on the river and fog was rolling up again. Orange streetlights were smeared against the sky. I walked around the corner to where Haywood's house used to be and looked into the dark rows of the brown brick project buildings.

I saw people watching me there. Some people I couldn't see moved like shadows behind cars and trees. People stood under clothes lines that were in every back yard and said things I couldn't hear. In the shadows behind the streetlights people moved. A few cars started and headlights came on. Everyone knew I was there. People I couldn't see knew I was there and I was afraid. I was very afraid. Two black men came from the darkness and down the sidewalk toward me. “What you need, boy,” someone shouted from an open window. The two black men kept coming toward me down the sidewalk and I saw another black man coming from the other side of the street. I heard a woman laugh.

I'm a white boy and I knew I had to get out of there fast. I hurried back down the sidewalk, around the corner and out to the middle of Main Street. Once there, I ran. I stayed in the middle of Main Street so people passing by in cars might see me.

When I got closer to downtown I ducked down alleys and behind bushes and dumpsters, taking every shortcut I knew to get back to where I belonged.