Fink

by Joe Napora

 

He learned to talk not

long after he learned to shoot. You

could say he was good

 

at shooting off

his mouth. His gun

was named Bang-All

his gun aimed from his root

to his tongue and his poetry

 

it copied natural speech went root-toot

and his poetry went shoot

 

was modern went root-ti-toot-toot

and his poetry his gun

was mystic and mean.

 

- - - - -

 

Im frum Kantook Im a gentleman an my name is FIGHT

I fight agin all critters human and inhuman

Christian and Injun White Red Black and Party-Colored

footandhand toothandnail clawandmudscraper

knife gun an tomahawk OR

anyotherway you choose to take me! IM YR MAN!

Cock-a-doodle-doo and do

I loves wimmin & winnin

Im a ringtailed screamer Im a song on the run

Im the real world champion & I just begun

Im the singer bellringer Im the song unto myself

 

- - - - -

 

Singing.

He was six foot two

and nobody’s fool

two hundred twenty pounds of mean

meat and nobody’s tool

and he never thought much

of giving away pieces of himself.

 

He was really only five foot two

He was really only five foot two

but wore his skin

like alligator leather

and would speak at anyone

anyone with the grip

of a snapping turtle.

 

Actually

he is soft and kind

of woman like

spending all of his spare time

filing his fingernails

making them so sharp that he never

no he never

has to order out

for a knife

 

- - - - -

 

Born, 1770 in Fort Pitt with

his mamma straddling the boundary

the boundary

the furthest edge

a hedge

into the wilderness of his distress.

And the boundary became

a song of pain

it was plain

it wrapped him

I didn’t say it warped him.

But it was the song he wore, he carried.

I didn’t say he mis-carried.

I’ll begin again. It was a song

that bound him. Even

as it hounded him.

A song of acid rain that lifted him

like fly-ash and sulphur

carried by the wind, the wound

that became him – and again

I start over – and fell upon us

it falls even on him who is less than

he was, he was in a continual howling burn.

I didn’t say

run baby run.

There’s no hiding from

the wrong of his singing.

 

- - - - -

Mike lost a fight all right

but he lost it all wrong.
But Jack lost it, too.

He became Mike’s song.

 

Jack Pierce would practice

Jack Pierce would practice fighting

fighting against a ram he’s let charge him

and Jack would butt him

butt him under the chin. Yeh, it’s him,

the sacrificial lamb. Ma’m

 

I mean the ram. One time, once upon

and only one, Jack raised his head

 

too quickly and … dead.

Slam Bam, thankyou, man

and he left himself there in a mass

of brain and fluid. He do it only this

once. Only a trace left

 

in Mike Fink’s memory

of how he was once the butt

of Jack’s particular kind

his particularly un-kind

of joking. Always joking.

The memory is a boundary.

The boundary is a fence.

A fence around the mind.

 

I say it’s around my mind. Mine.

A fence around the mind. Open to bad weather.

A fence around the pit. Hung with warnings.

 

-------

 

Fink learned quickly to read the signs.

He could hear them talk to him (not

sing, not sings – but ear, oars): Look

 

at ears of the bartender and if one

is missing, it has been bitten off

in a flight. That’s right. That’s the price

of success. Listen:

 

An elementary logic informs this man

about this place and think and listen

to this song and the rain drink like some

maudlin poet and the smell puke stink

the ear pierces tears evern

an unexpected tenderness swallowed like

words turned to phlegm blood and bile even

that kindness can be the killer.

 

--------

 

His first job was on the Pennsylvania

frontier. He was

 

a scout and a ranger. He was

a ranger rather quick

to anger. His was

an anger dead

to angels, but alive

to every angle.

 

A ranger never at home with himself, too

involved with going and coming this way

to end in himself. And that.

He could put several shots in the same

hole which is not

to say he had the best eye.

He would say that his s-s-s-kill

he would say his thrill

he would say no-frill

would say even wait until

I kick yr ass boy

O-boy he would say stand yrself still

long enough for me to get my rifle

to get me full filled

 

O my love open yr heart to e now

he would say that

skill depends on being sensitive to that

old time music moving in & moving out

that butter churn music

that flutter furin’ music

stutter stir’n musak

being O so sensitive

to the ram rod.

 

---------

“Give us none of your damn chin-music”

 

There is a poem hidden inside these lines

hiding, afraid it will be called a sissy

a fairy, a silk tongued asslicker

 

and it corrodes itself into a liquid

that obliterates the tongue

but when the mouth spits it out

the brass spittoon echoes a music

 

echoes rolling down the valleys

catching waves of the river

echoes empty of voice

full of malice

of a shared smallpox

or perhaps a leprosy.

 

“Shut your mouth or you teeth’ll get sunburnt”