Selected Work

          by Wayne Crawford









                      SUGAR TRAIL

                    • Released September 2007
                    • Cost: $14.00 (includes shipping)
                    • by check, payable to Wayne Crawford
                    • 3710 Shalem Colony Trail,
                    • Las Cruces, NM 88007
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          About Sugar Trail--

          ***** "Absolutely Beautiful," "Recommend Very Strongly," "It's Gorgeous"--Monica Gomez, host of "State of the Arts," KTEP (NPR-affiliate, El Paso, Texas).

          ***** "Sugar Trail is three books in one. . . leaves deep furrows in our imagination . . .leads to renewal."--Joe Speer, Editor, Beatlick News: A Poetry and Arts Newsletter.

          Excerpts from Sugar Trail

          from Part One

          Neck surgery left me with 10 inches of titanium in my neck and paralysis on my right side. Muscles in my wrist, elbow, bicep, shoulder, neck, and back were affected. Some were lost permanently. Some continue to grow back. I lost my memory from day to day as well for several weeks. After four months of physical therapy, I had a heart attack, bi-pass surgery, and many of the nerves damamaged from the neck operation were once again damaged. I started over, almost from the beginning. It's been a few years. I am doing well. Part one of Sugar Trail is about this recovery. One example follows.

          The Triumphs of Motion


          The woman from the church arrives
          with a prayer blanket
          to lay across his arms. His
          eyelids shutter a glimpse of white,
          his jaw matriculates.
          She looks at me
          to translate. I look at him, nerves
          snapped from shoulder to wrist, muscles
          twitching down his back.
          She says a group from the church
          prayed for him
          over this blanket. They believe
          it heals. He doesn't
          hear her words,
          or the words of their prayers.

          His nerves are burning fuses. Over
          his arms, this prayer blanket
          presses like hot steel balls, the kind
          Emerson and Thoreau used
          to heat their room at Harvard
          more than a century ago. His limbs
          sparking, jerk to escape their circuit
          of heavy flames.

          You might think medicine has come
          a long way, more than compresses
          and morphine,
          but when pain is the main line
          to and from his brain,
          his cognition clotted
          within himself,
          and he recalls the body he was
          when he took for granted the triumphs
          of motion, now

          may seem like the age of transcendentalism,
          death, the only medication
          doctors know,
          and I, without faith
          for many, many years, fold
          this blanket,
          and pray.

          from Part II (Prose Poetry)

          While doing physical therapy three days each week, I was too exhausted most of the time to get in my car and drive home immediately afterwards. I was still wearing a neck brace to drive, and essentially driving with one hand. Originally, right-handed, I quickly became ambidextrous. The prose (poems) in part two of Sugar Trail were begun at one or two coffeehouses where I stopped after therapy. Most prose pieces are whimsical, but a few are on the dramatic side. Here's a typical one.

          Carl Jung Interprets Dreams

          Carl Jung came over last night to interpret my dreams. Gondoliers of Henry James sleep in my bedroom. A stained glass crucifix hangs on the wall above my bed. Initially, he was interested in the crucifix, wanted to know why I had selected stained-glass, if I had purchased it in Venice, was it the highest quality, why had I chosen a cross without the figure of a man-god stained within its leaded profile? I answered, you enjoy stained-glass, don't you? Don't you agree that Venice is a very beautiful city? Is not Venetian glass among the highest quality produced anywhere? Eventually he became more interested in the gondoliers than the crucifix, then more interested in the gondoliers than me, asked them if they had worked out in a gym before they became gondoliers, if they were required to learn Italian arias in order to operate a gondola, did they consider themselves neo-romantics or anti-foundationalists? He wanted them to take off their pajamas so he could inspect them further, but they refused. They were not figments of his imagination. They were fragments of mine, my desire to have someone steer me across the unknown water, sing to me in a voice I could follow through the Grand Canal.

          If you enjoy humorous prose pieces like the one above, I maintain "The Burning Man's Blog" which includes only humorous prose or flash fiction.

          from Part III (Roman Candles)

          Part three is an adult romp through a Rome in which time has been conflated. Thus, you might stop at a modern traffic light and see a row of crucified bodies from the reign of Nero, or note the clean streets under Augustus being maintained by a litter union or a photo of Calpurnia in the newspaper following Caesar's death. The basic premise is that the narrator, a politically sophisticated male, drives Dr. Quintillian, an art critic, across Rome to a suburb where a jury meets to select submissions for an art show. En route and once arrived, he meets or remembers a number of artists, patrons, emperors, warriors, and religious leaders that have shaped or mishapened his outlook. You'll probably note more than a few parallels to modern times.

          The Way Things Are

          The countryside
          south of Rome, barren of trees,
          the toll
          of building 6,000 crosses,
          followers of Spartacus
          crucified
          by order of Crassus.
          Parthian archers kill Crassus.

          Julius Caesar is assassinated.
          Augustus's chosen heir, step-son
          Tiberius, flees Rome;
          His successor, nephew, Caligula,
          is murdered; His appointed
          heir, Claudius, poisoned;
          His adopted son, Nero,

          allowed to commit suicide.
          Valentinian orders Aetius
          murdered.
          Followers of Aetius
          assassinate Valentinian.
          Otho, Vitellius, Galba, and
          Caracalla
          serve less than a year as emperors.

          Titus witnesses
          the eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
          destruction
          of Pompeii. His brother Domitian,
          emperor within a year,
          seeks to restore Rome
          to its former glory, make his

          the most
          powerful government in the world,
          return men
          to traditional values:
          He persecutes Jews,
          Christians, Muslims, queers,
          witches, and women.
          We learn not to pray for new leaders.

          The Corner of Clark and Kent

          Most of us boys were born
          under the hood of a car, forearms
          like Popeye's, pliers for fingers, grease
          behind our ears.
          By the time we were thirteen
          we knew everything
          about standard transmissions and stripping
          gears on country roads.

          We were raised at the corner of Clark
          and Kent where gods descend into men,
          men into steel machines, bodies
          built like Buicks,
          faces hard as chrome.
          We learned to speak with our mouths' full,
          talk while taking a leak, belch
          and burp through diner meals,
          scratch where ever we itch.

          My daddy said I had what it took.
          I just didn't have the desire
          to spend my life with my dick
          on a fender,
          my head beneath a hood. I pulled out,
          like I told Lana I would, pulled out
          before I was married and mortgaged, fighting
          anger, fear, and whoever came near.


          One day I was thinking about Jesus, remembering
          "wipe the dust from your cuff." I hit
          Interstate 80 at 75,
          picked up
          Jimmy, drove east 'til we ran out of talk.
          He said he missed Lucy more than he'd thought.
          I didn't miss Lana enough
          to go back
          to a Sinclair future or a body shop job
          in a town with gravel driveways, one
          traffic light, lots of old family vans,
          balance
          and align myself with steel-belted men
          who stick oil-stained fingers in their ears, walk
          like John Wayne--the cowboy,-- sit like they're
          straddling a gear.

          And all I kept thinking was,
          I'm going to end up in a neighborhood bar
          where you know a man by his truck and his tab,
          spitting image
          of his daddy, same bruises, same fears, same scars.
          I pulled out, like I told Jimmy I would,
          pulled onto the highway and never went
          back to the Corner of Clark and Kent.

          Original Version published in Eureka Literary Magazine

          Echo Teaches Her Daughter to Sing
          was published originally in Fickle Muses.
          The video below features art
          by Las Cruces graphic designer
          extraordinaire, Louis Ocepek.

          Echo Teaches Her Daughter to Sing

          NOTE: Even with ESL, let the video load once with all its reconnections, then play it the second time and it ought to keep pace if your read the words below with the imagery.

          Echo Teaches Her Daughter to Sing

          Her skin, white as her eyes. Eyes,
          dark as her hair. Hair, bursting with flames!
          Lips, unmistakably red.
          Her voice, Echo's--
          I am beautiful. Am beautiful. Beautiful.

          He turns away, leaves
          no trail. No ripple on the pond. No broken
          twigs in the woods. Not even a brush of air.

          She is fire with child. She sings in the empty
          wood. We are beautiful. Are beautiful.

          A generation ago, the women of her village
          would pick up their buckets and fill them
          at the communal well, carry them
          on their heads or shoulders or
          by the grip of their fingers
          back to their kitchens

            for drinking, cooking,
            cleaning.

          Today, water breaks in the bowels of earth.
          She gives birth to flame, her hair
          about her face like ashes. She teaches her daughter
          to sing, I am beautiful. Am beautiful. Beautiful.

          Too soon, her time to let go, send
          her daughter to the city to work in a kitchen.
          She warns her--Stay away
          from the water, the waterfront, the docks, the piers,
          boats and ships.
          She warns her-- Stay away
          from the sailors and captains, dock workers, dock
          walkers, fishers of men and fishmongers. Go

          inland to grow young, live in peace. Go
          sing to the trees and to men in the fields
          who work the raw earth with nimble fingers.
          Teach my grand-daughters and sons to sing,
          I am beautiful. Am beautiful. Beautiful.

          When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag
          and carrying a cross           --Sinclair Lewis.

          Wayne Crawford lives in Las Cruces, NM, where he manages Lunarosity. His poetry has appeared in, among others, Las Cruces Poets and Writers, Eureka Literary Magazine, Language Arts, Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature, Sage Trail and Concrete Wolf. Online, among others, at Moongate, New Verse News.com, Shampoo, Mannequin Envy, and Fickle Muses , and Zygote in My Coffee.

          His most recent chapbook, "The Corner of Clark and Kent," was published by Mesilla Valley Press (2004), his book-length collection of poetry, "Sugar Trail," Sin Fronteras Press (2007). He Is completing a spoken word recording with musician Randy Granger. Their collaboration, "Dancing at the Totem," can be heard by going to Itunes and typing in Wayne Crawford, or by going to myspace/waynecrawfordpoetry. You can hear an interview with Granger and Crawford about their collaboration with the Hang Drum and poetry on KTEP 88.5FM NPR station with host Monica Gomez. It lasts about 8 minutes. Hope you enjoy it. Listen to the interview at: www.randygranger.net/ktepinterview.html

          If frames-incompatible, Click Lunarosity