KEITH MOUL - POEMS

Keith Moul’s poems and photos are published widely. Finishing Line Press released a chap called The Future as a Picnic Lunch in 2015. Aldrich Press published Naked Among Possibilities in 2016; Finishing Line Press has just released (1/17) Investment in Idolatry. In August, 2017, Aldrich Press released Not on Any Map, a collection of earlier poems.

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​Cowboy for Cars

o disrespect, but this peculiar salesman beckoned me.
Saw-toothed, twanging, he dripped down-home blood,
or rushed it, all flushing into his head at once. “Cowboy”
the name, livened him. He lived up to it, faced Seattle
car buyers eventually to find Nirvana on a thousand
range acres of Montana. So be it, but I was no buyer.


He intoned: “You can’t settle for horse-life, saddled,
reined and spurred, poor as spit,” “you hustle cars er
some such thing,” these cars all badly used. “Jes settle
in like friens at a bar. You good folks and me’ll get it done.”


The cold night wind, Montanan wide, pushed me in then out,
a bellows of “love me, love my car” sucking air from my lungs,
both he and I white like glowing embers, like unshod steeds,
pawing and snorting to drive untethered to a big sky.
My evening wasn’t wasted. Did I tell you I didn’t buy?

​Journal: Ralph L. Moul, Electrician Mate 2nd Class, U.S.S. Lexington: 3/3 to 8/23/1944
“On the side of an Air Group 16 fighter there are painted 150 Jap flags. I am sure it will be in Life and a few other magazines.”

​LIFE

​Adulation stands by patiently on the flight deck and a sailor’s nervousness
in the presence of grander history than the Lodi basketball team could rouse.
A Life photographer does not materialize to snap his shutter, but really could:
his flash an aura prepping the fighter; a smiling hero hamming it for his buddies.


No sailor, every day counting numbers on his own, begrudges statistical success;
numbers running favorably as ordinance depletes; cheer in slick magazines at home.


Would the other end of a magical wire find Henry Luce, historic photo in his hand,
sans any nuisance writer’s thousand flaccid words, malleable text at best, for this,
a story of mastery in war offered in light and shadow from the bowel of Lex’s lab?

Matinée at the Eden Theater
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Only John Wayne’s heroics light the screen of the darkened theater.


Kids crowd the matinée to be noisy, free, thoughtless for Saturday,
ignore as faceted light bounces, squeals ricochet, John Wayne struts.


The projector ratchets to its stop: lyddite ignites to shine on Adam,
born here, now, his first moment in this theater’s center; popcorn
and screen equidistant; God rips Adam sans umbilical from dream.


Naked, blind, Adam knows nothing but need: senses to see, to hear,
speak, eat, to speed encounter with Eve and Eden any way he can.


“I acknowledge my lineage from this miracle, my genesis from its light.
I deny any pretender’s performance, as second fiddle, as never Adam.”


“I am a man: born to covet, to possess, to arrest, to hold light as hostage;
own light for me alone. I refuse to bargain with God for control of light.”


My senses return me as well to the world. I withhold belief. New Adam
May not exit the theater, with or without his protecting Duke, to the sun.
Eve, like blond Marilyn, so many blonds, slinks to Hitchcock memories.


At the door a serpent tears tickets: Flash Gordon precedes the next dream.