SIX FEET UNDER

WITH MY ASS UP IN THE AIR

more poems by roger morris

EDITOR’S PREFACE

Last Tuesday morning - in his impish, ferocious, slightly tilted way -

Roger Morris was giving me hell. His eyes were points, his facial hair
crackled. There were gingery sparks in the air. Me, I was not
discomposed. We were both on familiar ground: it was the kind of hell a
writer gives his editor. What had happened, Roger wanted to know, to
all the poems that he dictated to me when he was in the psychiatric ward
of the Shattuck Hospital? Over the phone, and during my visits? What
had I done with them?

This volume may not answer Roger’s question. That question, in fact,
may never be answered to his satisfaction. Over the years I’ve come to
appreciate this particular writerly syndrome: the sense of there being,
somewhere in the editorial files, a cache, a stash, a trove, a lode, a lost
gospel of amazing (and unrepeatable) material. I won’t call it a fantasy,
because there’s an essential reality to it: what writer doesn’t feel that
there’s some great stuff down there, out of sight, that only needs a bit of
unburying? Maybe that’s why we decided to call this, his third book of
poems, Six Feet Under With My Ass Up In The Air.

These are Roger Morris poems, in the Roger Morris style. It’s a high-
speed universe, in other words, which he grabs in fragments as it passes
- but the direction is circular. The sun flies up and down, a day passes
like a projectile through the pinhole of another day, and we end up right
where we were before, sadder or wiser or something. Lyrical diversions
may beguile us - a nightingale, some kind of dewy prickle of light on a
grass bank at dawn, love itself - but back we will always come, to our
fixed state of round-and-round-ness.

Roger the poet created this world. Roger the man lives in it. And while
you’re under the spell of these poems, so will you.

James Parker
July 27, 2020
ANCIENT MARINER

The moon shines bright

as the sailboat rolls on
from the bottom depths of the ocean
to the seas above.
Being of no interest.
Knowing your goals.
Setting forth on the high seas
to the oceans above
beyond the call of nature.

THIS THING CALLED LIFE

Today is just another day on

The highway of my life
As I travel thru the day
I reflect on some of what has
Happened on the byway
I travel every other day of
Life as we see thru the
Hour glass, looking at highways
And byways we have traveled
Thru life so far
THE MESSAGE

Here I am again,
back up in my head again,
running from everything again,
running down the highways in my head,
thinking I’ve been here before
and wondering where I went from here.

Running my mind on this,

striving to reach the end
of the highway in my head.
Just another journey, another highway
in this cesspool of a life, trying
to find myself.

Other that come to be, after me,

will carry on this lonely life of dreams.
I’ll keep on striding, to come at last
to the alpha and omega,
as others have tried to, and didn’t.

These highways are all the same.

Just roll along until life’s end
on are the highways and byways
where God has seen fit to put us.
GLOBAL WARMING

As I sit here
thinking about what to write
on this blank piece of paper in front of me
I’m seeing what is happening
all around me day to day

Things in my world are changing

one minute to the next.
The homeless are going around
fighting over spots
to stem
on the street corners
here in Boston.

The world changes

and I guess the personalities
are changing too
as the world revolves around the sun.
Which is getting hotter.
And the winters are getting worse
every year.
THE ROAD AGAIN

Highways and byways -

you never know til you get there
what you really want to be in life.

Out on the highways and the byways

you can be seen by the Devil himself.
Get home, he might meet you at the door.

The highways and byways never end

while we live this life of dreams.
We travel them again and again,
the neverending highways and byways.

UNBLOCKING

The ink is liquid. The pen is made of lead.

When you can’t get it through your head,
that all you have to do is think through the problem:
Writer’s Block, I call it.
Flow through it.
Start writing as it comes to your head.
No matter what it may be.
We know Mr. James Parker will tweak it into something.
TEACH ’EM, ROGER

What’s right is right

and what’s wrong is wrong.
Let’s go on from here to there
just to see what’s right
or what’s wrong
with the world today.

James is wrong
for stealing my notebook.
But I followed him
and made it right
by stealing it back.

Wrong today is all in my mind.

I don’t expect everything
to be right in the world today.
But we can change what’s wrong
and make it right with everything
in the world past and present.
FIRST THINGS FIRST

Today let’s write

and see what we come up with.
First thing I see this morning
is the sun shining bright
as the morning progresses into the day.
Haven’t seen that in a while.

Let’s refer back

to the early morning sun
shining bright as if there was no tomorrow.
Let’s look back
at some of the first things
we see or do in the morning.
We get the whole day right
or we get it wrong.
Whatever will be, will be.

Let’s look back at yesterday.

From then until now
can we make anything match?
Did we wake up early enough
to catch the sun shining bright down upon us?
We sit and reflect
comparing yesterday to today
while the sun shines brightly down.
BECOMING MYSELF

Let’s see where this goes.

Becoming myself... What can I say,
I am always Me-Self.

Me-Self
just happens to be Me-self,
with everything I do or say.
Just Me-Self.

NOTHING

I have nothing in here.

Today's a blank,
a space to be,
a void, an emptiness of yesterday.
The next day that comes
it'll be just the same.
I have nothing in here.
IN MEMORIAM

Today is just another day

to travel down roads that are unknown.
Me, I’ve been down a lot of roads.
Highways, byways, and even on water,
a time or two.

I have seen life begin

and now I’m seeing it go.
It’s the way things happen.
You live, you die.

Life is something
we were not promised.
It has come to be.
Now we try to live and let live
but dying, of all things,
is something we must do.

I HAVE NO IDEA

Snow is white.
The seven dwarves
were men of little knowledge.
They never went to college.
Most people never get
the chance to go
the chance to grow
in human consumption.
THESE DREAMS OF MINE

I’ve been dreaming that I will be famous

but these dreams I have just make a mess of me

I know that if you keep dreaming

dreams will become reality
I been lost in the dream for too long

I wonder where dreams come from

and where they go when you let them go
I just want to remember the dreams
because they put me at ease

So I think I will keep dreaming

the life of ease and peace of mind
of every nice and easy state of mind

These dreams of mine go on forever

THE NIGHTINGALE

Sure as day comes,

the nightingale sings of tomorrow.
Songs never bought at bargain price,
from a shelf stacked with days.

The nightingale comes

singing lullabies soon forgotten,
singing another sporty song of day,
singing soft as bounty of money,
singing at night, the lights still bright,
softly settling down.

The day is dry and long.

The nightingale sings,
soft and feathered.
He sings softly through the night
from the regiment of songs
he must know.

ROPED UP

Yesterday was yesterday.

Tomorrow comes, climbing that rope,
ropes climbing into yesterday.
And yesterday is just another climbing
into tomorrows that never come.

The ropes just keep unravelling.

The ropes they twist and bind you.
Climbing those ropes is like climbing
into seasons gone by.
AT THE HOP

Rock’n’roll don’t mean

rolling a rock down a hill
rocking and rolling all the way down.

Doing the hop

means you are a rock’n’roller.
Just doing the hop all the way,
all day long.
Doing the hop
keeps us rocking and rolling.

Rocking and rolling

and doing the hop
is just us hearing a song
on the radio, listening
to rock’n’roll
and rocking and rolling
and doing the hop.

Rocking and rolling away

the time of day
listening to rock’n’roll
and doing the hop.
IT’S ALL RIGHT

It’s all right if we disagree

It’s all right to agree with me
It’s all right to be you
It’s all right to be a Jew
It’s all right to be of all nations
It’s just all right to be yourself in
this world of chaos

It’s all right to just agree

to disagree
It’s all right for me to be me
It’s all right to believe we will
live together in harmony

AIN’T GOT NOTHIN

Ain’t got nothin to flow

as the wind blows

The chimes will sing

the rhymes we tell
the crimes we commit

The bells will ring

and the toll of the bell says

I ain’t

got

nothin’.
WOLF SONG

The wolf howls at the midnight hour

The wolf howls for his own reasons
The wolf howls for blood spilled on the ground
The wolf howls for spoils gone awry
The wolf howls at the midnight hour

IN SPIRALS

Today's writing
is about yesterday's tomorrow
and yesterday comes and goes
just like today
becomes a yesterday.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Just another day

on the highways and by-ways.
I try to find things to do,
ways to feel my days
as they while away.

They’re all around us

these highways and by-ways.
We let things come at us, obstacles,
instead of going round them.

We see things all day long

and then the dreams come at night.
What if our dreams only come true
after we’re dead and gone?

I’ve said it before:

these highways and by-ways are predestined.
Laid out before us, as we are brought
into this thing called Life.
IN MY HEAD

Here we go again,
playing around in my head.
What the hell,
if I can’t run around in here,
who can?
Who better to run around
my own head than me?

Don’t worry about today

because it’s just another yesterday.
But then again -
tomorrow becomes another today.
So here I am, just running around
in my own mind again.
WHEN I’M ALONE

Well I never,
this man’s life is just starting.
My highways and by-ways
seem to begin,
just as he is sure to rise again.

Now I seem to see

I was blinded by her ways.
She wants to know
how bad it was
and the highways and by-ways
are starting to call me again.

Just take me back to them,

to the highways and by-ways.
I’ll ride on down the roads again
only to have to make a stop
and smell the shit for what it is.

IN MY HEAD

Mommy mommy
these voices in my head
are they for real?
Do they mean for me to kill?

Mommy mommy
these voices in my head
do they mean evil things for me?
LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT

The highways and byways come and go

throughout our lives.
And most of us don’t realize
we’re on the same rodeos and merry-go-rounds.

Throughout our time here on earth

we ride the rodeos, we go along the highways
without another to help ourselves heal
as we travel along the byways.

They say an old dog can hunt,

but that’s not always true.
We learn to adapt to the highways and byways
that we travel on this earth.
We learn to see what’s in front of us
at our rodeos and merry-go-rounds.

We call this LIFE.

TO GIVE, TO GET

I love to live,
to smell the leaves in summertime.
I love to give -
just don’t receive later.
I love to live,
just to see what’s coming next.
I love to give my love
to the ones that don’t know any better.

LIVING THIS THING

Living this thing that makes no sense.

Yesterday’s gone and not coming back,
so do today as if tomorrow never comes.
Living one upon another
like a bunch of cockroaches in a big city.
The Charles River flows - a long, thin stream.
Tomorrow’s here, you just don’t see it
as the banks flow into the Charles.
Big river city of Boston.
A LIFE OF DREAMS AND MEMORIES

I guess I am
just a life of pain and misery
so I will carry on
through this life
of dreams and memories.

Some dreams
and memories that we have
are fatal -
love neverending.

Some of us
in this thing called life
are not strong enough
to carry on
through the truth and reality
of our dreams and memories.
LOVE NEVER DIES

Loving someone
like some of us in life do...
Loving you was killing me
slowly but surely.

Loving you the way I did

was just another way to get what I had.
Loving you as I do
is just a sure way of killing me
without hands.

Loving you is going to be the end of me

in this life
that I did not ask to be brought into.
Loving you as I do
you will always be beside me
as I carry on this life of unreal dreams
refusing to see
that love never ends.

Love will be with each and every one

that lives in this world of dreams
just to see that love never ends.
Love will be the alpha and omega of our lives
just to see that love never ends.
COUNTRY SONG

The teardrops and memories

just aren’t getting the job done anymore.

All I think about are the times we had under the sunshine
and those long summer nights of the past.

The teardrops and memories

are going to be the end of me.

If I could get over the teardrops and memories

I could go on in life
to become a winner over life’s misery.

Cover image by Roy Goodwin

No Fixed Address Press 2020
nofixedaddresspress@gmail.com