The Bootleggers Secret

[arielsgoddess]

The Bootlegger's Secret Name

Moonshine stronger than gasoline in every way
Yet glowing much like it in mason jars
The first time I had ever seen it
Was by both the moon and firelight

Noticing my fascination
The old bootlegger waved me closer to ask me
Dontcha know why they call it moonshine
I stared into the crazy craggly face waiting
His eyes dancing more than the bonfire's flames
As he swiveled a jar into his shadow
Where it continued to shine so ethereal
Like the extract of a thousand lightning bugs
Smiled his laughter at me and said that's the spirits in it
His ancient voice popped and crackled
That's why they'd always prohibited it he said
Watering-down the spirits until they forgot themselves
Like the weak swill made and approved as lawful to others
Dontcha see governments and whitemen always weaken
The flavor and magic of the spirits they encounter
So they don't have to understand them before they make us forget them
Then he tried to tell me a story about a wise woman
Before hesitating and suddenly barking at me catch-up with the others
Youth and moonlight should not be wasted on other people's stories
Anyway I do remember that missy

I did as he said and did so many nights
The summers coming and going like the bootlegger
Too briefly with us to be absorbed and appreciated
Adulthood a prospect hurrying as harsh to us as autumn
When once more we scrape the change from forgotten places
Buying together that one last jar of pure moonshine
To help us remember warmth through endless winter
A season that makes us forget how we spent so much time
As it erases the life we had led until then

Anyway I do remember that don't you
The licks of fire in the jar heated us up enough to say
As we shivered and wandered underneath the stars that night
Someone remarking how the liquid's iridescence was
Like the brilliant crystals covering everything around us
The frost popping and crackling in a way tinglingly familiar
Making me strain to hear what the woods were saying
As their laughter puffed bluely into the midnight air
Trying to shape into words I still couldn't yet understand
When my favorite someone pulled out a papersack
Saying isn't it funny that this big bottle of Jim Beam
Doesn't show as brightly as our little mason moonbeam
I looked to where the jar was glowing from the woodpile
The same color as the eyes that glowed at me from a barklike face
That was when the spirit in the jar touched mine
And in that moment I knew everything
My eyes swinging to the mountain magnified by night
The point to where our voices curled in the moonlight
Up in the dark treeline where the old shack sat
No smoke curling from the bootleggers chimney

Once more we pulled wadded bills out of laundry
Hustled change from the cushions of every sofa found
Scooped cold coins from the backseats of better times
Still only scraping together enough for the engraver's chisel
On the roughed-out rock hauled from the old riverbed
We built a casket out of old wooden jar crates
The idea of the boy I'd shared my moonlight with
Took a day digging into the overgrown poorman's cemetery
Our crowd the haphazard gathering of a smalltown
Where nearly everyone was attending the funeral of a stranger
Who had lived there longer than any of them had
Back before human population watered down the woods
With clearcuts and other improvements of their civilization
We made him a monument on the hill facing away from that
Where the entire sheriff's posse waited with shovels in hand
First to help us bury him today then to do their other duty tonight
Burning down the still tucked in the trees behind his cabin

The last rites being over our mourning rights began
As even officers and mothers passed around moonbeams
Joking about the need to get rid of all the evidence anyway
We the suddenly responsible tried to 'wake' him in the firelight
Those that over years had spent the most time with him hesitant
Faltering as they found they knew little aside from fuzzy evenings
So that when they went to tell his story they ended up telling their own
Until the last of their voices had crackled down to quiet static
As had the embers and the unsteady parting footsteps
Posse lights guiding everyone down the hills to home
Leaving just me and the horseback preacher that we'd hired
As I needed no assistance to find my way through these woods
All the others saying that I was the only one could see it
The path that was never a path to anyone but him
So I had always been the one to go alone at fetching time
These woods always the realm of Frost's poems to me
Which also only I out of everyone down in that town
Always read and understood and remembered lovingly
Like the old man waiting at the end of the wayward path

Just as he was waiting for me one last time
When I was running and stumbling in my rushing
Until I pushed through the last of the black brush
Crashing myself into the quiet cabin door
Falling into the blue-dusty moonbeam at his feet
His eyes dulled in their color by a cold glaze
As he gazed directly at me from death so silent
His familiar smile forever frozen in the hollow in his beard
Already beginning to gather the faint iridescence of the frost
My eyes then drawn to the jar of moonshine on his bedside table
Glowing brighter than one ever had in time

The same jar that I atlast took out of my pocket
Setting it in front of the freshly carved frost-covered name
That no one had ever seen or heard before today including me
And said so to the holy man that had presided over him and spoken it
Sad that I had not known Ol'Man Duppy enough to learn his real name
But he had learned mine well enough to put this his wilderness in it
That was when the preacher put his arm around me and told a secret
That "Duppy" was an ancient nearly-forgotten nickname for "Spirit"
Somehow I had known that the night that I knew everything
And so I told the missionary Duppy's story of moonshine and magic
Thickly through tears for the more memories I now wished I'd had
As we watched the moon rise over the hill of the cabin

Then in silence we stood awhile staring at the glowing mason jar
Until it was answered by the moon in the glitter of many crystals
Lighting his name in our roughly-hewn limestone remembrance
Then the preacher's arm gently turned me to go with him
Back to the path that only me and this holy man could see
Where the boy that was now a man would help me remember
And make the most of it while writing the rest of my story
I was not going to waste the moonlight

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Believe it or not, this whole poem was borne out of the Last Line First Challenge -- BooMerengue's
"Anyway. I do remember that." I tried to think of a situation where someome would be saying that, and I thought old-age, alcohol, and things painful or inconvenient for us to remember, that we push out of the way until we can't call them up when we want to. Sometimes we have unusual moments of clarity to remember, and omniscience to know--such as surreally clear nights when the weather is perfect, the magic of souls, etc--and we need to do something to help us remember. But most importantly to ourselves, we need to spend our time living as fully as we can. That way we have something worthwhile to remember--and write! oh yeah--and Thank You to Duppy_ Conquerer for the inspiration for the bootlegger's name.

 

[BooMerengue]

Wow gal! I am honored! I love story poems best anyway, and you have one hell of an imagination! I don't even care if it meets any requirements forpoems. It pulled me in and slammed me down and thats what does it for me! More, please. Steal anything you want. And share.

 

[poetedge5455]

.............!

Subject line represents the inability to verbalize zen.

This is superb . I read it once, lost in the story and shivering. Just outside that fire, SEEING it all, and moved by the humanity the yearning for wisdom and ultimate surrender that led to revelation, the mini epiphany.

Then, when I pulled myself back to this world, I reread with mental red pen in hand. I could find nothing glaring at all. Your sounds are wonderful,. I can hear thr fire crackling. Mirroring the forest in 'barklng at me' and 'barklike face' is wonderful. I especially like the confidence you have. In not hyphenating barklike. A more timid poet might worry that exotic word (not sure if it actually was a word until now) might be misread and stun the reader out of the dream, but youforged on, confident in your audience and yourself. It was seamless.

I hesitate to call attention to one line because the piece does not depend on lines. It is like pointing out the fact that Monet used a no.10 brush on a painting. But I have to mention 'So that when they went to tell his story they ended telling their own'.

This insight comes at the perfect time, and it is one of the lines that echoes strongly as I walk out of the woods and out of that world.

I will do something that embarrases me when people do it (compare my style etc., to a master's) and tell you that the first stanza reminded me of Plath's use of imagery. But then, I felt like I was reading a new Joyce Carol Oates story. I don't know how you feel about wither author, but for me, that is high praaise..

Since I don't think any critique is complete without SOMETHING that could be wrong or improved (I Mean when I receive critiques,, I want to know what is wrong more than what is right) , I will suggest 'firefly' as a substitution for lightning bug. I say that only for the softness anf fluidity that might add to the dreaminess and haziness of the atmosphere of people sitting and drinking. However, I couldn't disagree with the notion that another 'fire' reference might tip the balance toward heavy-handedness that you avoided brilliantly. Either way it is a great simile.

And if I look at it with my harshest eye, I might say that it runs a LITTLE long. I am on my phone and has to scroll down to read, so I can't see the entire poem in todo. On the second read through, I found myself expecting the wrapup a verse or two before it came. But that is being picayune. It isn't repetitve or redundant in any place, so I don't know how to shorten it if you wanted to.

But as I said, my initial reaction and comment is ............! If I must make a sound...wow.

 

[arielsgoddess]

Thank you, Poetedge--I am frequently teased because I struggle with length

On certain insppirations. There is a poem I sat down to write a couple months ago that turned into a semibiographical novel--one of the books I am grinding away to finish before Christmas. It's called The Healing War...I'm at an impasse with it because of sorting-out which details to include, which of the dominoes in how I got to be me do I portray and do I leave-out in that as too much trivia? I will have to take a few days when I can ignore the world to sort that. On this one--I knocked-out more than a dozen lines before anybody saw it--not counting content rewrites. It would be interesting as a story, very like Jack London, I think--but I would lose the beauty of the poet's style and the colloquialism of the repetitiousness which I intentionally left. I would like the feedback of anyone that has lived in places like this (Appalachia, South, wilderness or American outback) about the authenticity of it; and from men, as most of it harkens to men both in their teens (...from the backseats of better times) and their remaining years (anyway I do remember that) even though the narrator is female. Fool also made a suggestion as to dropping all punctuation and capitalization of lines (a surprise from the analyst always telling me 'more punctuation' ), but I beleive he meant it would lend itself to that folksiness--Poetedge, that is a forte of yours? If anyone doesn't feel like posting, PMs are greatly appreciated, as well

 

[voluptuary_manque]

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii177/1volupturary_manque/b-dayflowers.jpg



*speechless response*

 

[JackLuis]

Brava, Brava and many kisses for that.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Excellent prose poetry!
I agree with poetedge about fireflies, but not much else to critique here.
An excellent euolgy to such men (I'm sure they exist, at least to a degree).
A whole lot different than the poor fellow depicted in Blame it on alcohol.....
Seems harder to write a poem about his moments (but I've been in his shoes in the past ...).

 

[Levitating_Bed]

!

It has been said and so perhaps cannot be better said except to reiterate: "Wow."

I am useless as a critic even where criticism is useful, but there is so much to laud here and nary a comma to quibble about.

I will say that I like lightning bug; it seems more correct in a geographically colloquial way.

Usually, there's a line that I know will here or there pop unbidden into my head over the next week, and I can tell you that "Like the old man waiting at the end of the wayward path" is my favorite line... but I have a sneaking suspicion that you've created the sort of magic here which will leave the whole thing rattling around in there.

And it's funny, because I feel like we all owe Old Man Duppy at least that much.

Thank You.

 

[arielsgoddess]

Thank You!

I felt that 'lightning bug' worked better--although I almost changed it, because the firefly reiterated the fire, but not the color. When I thought more about it & had southerner feedback, I was told l.b. wsa more colloquial; also this poem is about coming of age, and something like a lightning bug would hearken more to a last vestige of childhood. I had hoped to hear more on the authenticness of the southern-midwest teen experience, and the male point of view, such as 'the backseats of better times'--but nobody has commented on those references. Thank you for your feedback, and I feel very honored that so many people have said they felt like either in real life they lived poem/had a story it reminded them of or thru the poem they feel like they knew now this man in reallife. It is very few times a writer gets to hear something like that.To all of you

 

[BooMerengue]

I can't remember how to save this to fav's. Can anyone help? I love this poem. A lot.
And can someone tell me why my sig takes up so much space! ugh...