Shaped Notes

By tex norman

He moved into my room. I felt the pressure
change, as if he were an angry thunder
storm, about to rain down hail upon
my head. He was a churning cloud of pent
up charges looking for a place to strike.

I remember that, that day, my room was hot.
My sweating made my church clothes cling to me
so tight that taking off my pants was like
the peeling of banana skins — no lie!
I still had on my church shirt as he rolled
into my room, but, down below, my legs
were bare.
“I’m going to teach you how to read
music, like the kind we sing in church,”
he said, but it was like a speech that he’d
prepared himself to say. This was rehearsed.
“You know son,” said my father, “singing is
Biblically commanded by God’s Word,
but only singing, never instruments.”

“I thought that angels played on harps up there?”
I said.

“Yes, I guess that’s so,” my father said,
“but, I’m sure you know, or you should know,
we speak when the Bible speaks and we
are silent on all subjects where the Bible
is silent. The New Testament of Jesus
Christ says seven times that we should sing,
but never mentions using instruments.
Since singing without instruments is hard,
that’s why we have developed these shaped notes.
Once you learn the shapes and learn the scale,
you can, without piano, learn new tunes.”

There was a tiny blackboard in my room.
My father drew five horizontal lines,
a treble clef, and then he drew shaped notes
and put them on the lines or spaces there.
He pointed to the first shape singing do,”
and then to ray and mi et cetera,
but I was five years old and didn’t care.
My room was hot like mama’s oven, but
without the smell of risen, dying yeast,
and I’d endured a morning spent in church.
All I wanted was to lay down on
the slightly cooler hardwood floor and draw.

He quized me on the shaped notes, but I failed.

“Pay attention, boy!” my father said.
“You’ll please the Lord if you can learn shaped notes,
but boy you’ve got to listen when I talk.”
Worry crawled around inside my shirt.
The fear inside my stomach seemed to rise.
I thought I might vomit up those fears.
Again my father’s finger pointed out
each note. He sang and talked the lesson, only
louder, like a sudden thunder’s slap.

My father pointed to a diamond shape.

“Which note is this note? Do you have a clue?”
My father answered for me, “No you don’t!
Because you do not listen when I speak.
I’m trying to help you. You don’t even care.
I could make you famous, if you just
open up your stupid ears and hear!
But do you listen? You don’t even try.
You’re just a stupid, brainless, sinful boy
who doesn’t care enough about his dad
to listen when his daddy teaches stuff.”

My fingers trembled like the leaves before
a storm, yet I felt rooted to the floor.

“You don’t listen. You don’t even care,”
my father said, “I take my time to spend
with you, yet you don’t have the courtesy
to listen to your father when he talks.”

Then like a thunder bolt he shouted out,
“DO YOU?” Let me hear you say it, NOW!
Let me hear you now say to me ‘no dad.’
Say it right now. Say it to my face.”

I looked down to my toes and said, “No dad.”

“I thought I said to say it to my face?
Can you see daddy’s face down on that floor?
Look me in the eye and say, ‘no dad.’”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “No dad.”
I said it soft, because I didn’t want
to say the words at all.

“What was that?
Did you say something to your daddy, son?
Well, how do you expect your dad to hear
you mumble like a moron? Tell me that.
Now look me in the eye and say real loud,
‘No dad, I never listen when you talk.”

I forced my face to face his face and said
the words he said I had to say. My father
moved in close. Our noses almost touched.

“I can’t HEEAAR you, boy,” my father yelled.

“No dad, I never listen when you talk,”
I yelled.

“The Bible says to love and honor
dads. But you don’t love or honor me.”

“I do!” I said.

“You don’t! Don’t lie to me.
When you lie, it only makes things worse.”

My eyes envied over towards the door.

“Don’t look over there,” my father said.
“Look at me. Look me in the eye
and tell me you don’t love and honor me.”

I didn’t want to say it, but I did.

“I hope someday you’ll know what it is like
to have a kid that will not show respect.”

“I do too love and honor you,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. “Don’t you lie.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I really, really do.”

“If you cared the way you claim to care
then you should know the shape and name of do.
After all, I taught it to you twice.
So show me that you love me. Point to do.”

I had to guess, because I didn’t know.

“That’s WRONG, you stupid knot-head. Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

Unbuckling his belt, in one swift move,
the leather slipping through the loops, is free.

“I’m going to teach you not to lie,” he said.
“Next time, you’ll pay attention when I talk.”

He looped the belt and swung it at my thighs.
I tried to step away. He grabbed my arm
and pulled me up toward heaven, ‘til my toes
were all of me that touched the earth. And then
he rained down lashes on my legs.
It wasn’t like my father wound down
but more like he was winding himself up.
I must’ve cried and surely I cried out.
I don’t remember that. What I recall,
what I remember, is my mama at
the door. Her voice is shrill with panic as
she’s screaming to my father,
“Dick,” she yells,
“you’re going to kill him. Stop it! Stop it, Dick.”

Angels (a poem by tex norman)

I wish I could count them as they descend
on that dance floor set up on a pens head.
If only one would shake the depression
out of me as if melancholia
was like shards of salt and after that I’d
discover I have a WONDERFUL LIFE.
I’d like to sink down into the folds of
an overstuffed chair and listen for the
tintinnabulation of the bells as
St Peter was passing out sets of wings.
I’d like to think that even angels have
some opportunities for advancement.
You know, Michael, slays a dragon and then
rises to the rank of Saint. I wish to
God that God had a special message for
me. Then I wonder what sort of message
would merit an angelic courier?
And what sort of delivery system
might the Almighty employ? Handwriting
on the wall, perhaps? I’ve been weighed in the
balance, and I have been found wanting. Tell
me something that I don’t already know.

The Suicide Questions

In a job interview
there is a category of questions
faced by all job seekers
a list of questions have come
to be called the Suicide Questions.

‘Tell me about yourself.”

Your fear of pauses
the terror of silence
the churning of fear
in your lower track
and that hyper drive
of nervousness
causes you to find a comma
and insert a paragraph
of self-revelations,
each of them Unfiltered
by anticipatory thought.
Your uneasy answers
have an effect similar to
burping the alphabet.

When asked about myself why,
why, why in god’s name
did I share that time I was asked
to resign. I wasn’t fired, so why
bring up being encouraged to quit?

“What are your weaknesses?”

Why did I give them a list?

Staying Married

A poem by tex norman

After nine years they were still together,
though sometimes Jack wondered why.
Maybe it was the trauma – the thing Jill
still calls THE FALL. And we know that
all falls matter. The hospital stay, and

the rehab became their shared history of hurt.
Pain became an emotional glue to bind this
couple together like a bandage binds together
the jagged edges of a torn and tender wound.
Over time came BLAME. Someone had to be

at fault. The theory is that if you know who
to BLAME then maybe future pain can be
avoided. Jill blamed Jack. After all Jack fell
first. That fact has never been in dispute. It’s
part of the written record. Jill claims Jack was

hauling that heavy pail of water, and holding on
to her hand to show what? Ownership, maybe?
Jack’s foot rolled on a rock, his balance was lost
and his fall was inevitable. Jill said he let go of
the pail but did not let go of her. Jack held on

to Jill, pulling her after him. Jack would like to
have argued that point, but his head injury had
wiped out all of his recall. His memory of The
Fall was just gone. Sometimes Jack wondered
if Jill might have pushed him. After all,

they had been arguing in the week prior to the
accident. Maybe Jill was the one who stubbornly
would not let go. Now, 9 years later, Jill’s knee
replacement still aches when the weather changes.
And Jack’s broken crown turned out to be a

subdural hematoma (a bleeding into the space
between the dura [the brain cover] and the brain
itself), As Jack recovered he found himself confused
and the details of that Fall were lost to him forever.
Clearly, it is Jack and Jill’s intention to stay married.

Early July Paintings 2010

Painting an Ostrich Egg

I am ambivalent about commissions. In these pictures I have painted a requested scene on an ostrich egg. I wanted to try painting on a big ole egg, but to get this chance I had to paint a combine. That was my only guidance, but still, a combine. I love bread but I’m just not moved by the site of a combine.

The process was interesting. I was brought an ostrich egg, but it still had a big ole ostrich embryo inside it. How does one get the yoke and white out of the egg and still have something you can paint on? I used my dermal and ground a hole in the bottom of the shell just slightly larger than a drinking straw. As the grinding went on, and I did the grinding slowly to avoid cracking the egg, I noticed that the small of grinding the shell was similar to the smell you sometimes get when a dentist is drilling a tooth.

I inserted the straw and blew air into the shell. At first nothing happened but once the pressure built up the goo sprayed out in that space between the straw and the rim of the hole and I got ostrich embryo on my glasses and face. It took a while to make most of the goo gone.

Next I went through a process of filling the egg shell with water and draining that over and over again. I let that drip until it would drip no more and next I filled the shell with bleach. Then I used water to clear out the bleach.

I let it dry a day and next I plugged the hole with a tiny wad of paper towel and some acrylic modeling paste. I got that hole as flush as possible and used primer and primed the egg. I let that dry a couple of days. I ended up painting the whole scene today.

Three New Poems by tex norman

Porch Stories, Cameron Texas,1957

The porch was a place of stories. Heat drove
us out on the house where we sat in the
darkness and waited. All the lights were off.

The claim was that lights invited June Bugs
and moths but the truth was this: darkness was
a necessary part of these stories.

I sat on the top wooden step. Grown-ups
sat in chairs that creaked and groaned under the
weight of their stories. You couldn’t order

these stories to perform. The best ones were
coaxed. “What was it like when you were little?”
It was like waiting for a bobber to

bob. Who is lured to the narrative hook?
Waiting was part of the fun. The tales that
mean the most are the tales that tell themselves.

These summer porch stories were not
made up, not created, not formulated,
not devised, oh’ no. Our stories are distilled.


The Jigsaw Puzzle

In 1958 I’d broken my leg, was confined to bed
and was working diligently at driving my mother
mad attending to insatiable need for her attention.

The pile of contorted cardboard shapes were given
in the hopes that a puzzle might preoccupy me.
It didn’t. The differences were too subtle for me.

The task was frustrating, exasperating, like job stress.
By not knowing the point, I missed the point. By not
seeing the big picture I couldn’t piece it together.

I thought the goal was to make the pieces fit,
to bring order to chaos, to complete the big picture,
to finish, to conclude, to wrap up, to be done.

I’ve avoided jigsaw puzzles for the past 50 years
but my life has not been puzzle free. I’ve always
looked for the edges of everything, noticing similarities

in color, the shape, the corner pieces, believing that
if I just turn each piece, if I consider it from all sides,
if I believe a fit exists, that order can be imposed on chaos,

then I can actually finish. The goal of puzzles has never
been to complete the picture, or to make all the pieces
fit. The purpose is the process. It is always the

journey and never the arrival. It is always the process
and never the product. The end doesn’t justify the means
if the means is the important part and the end is just the end.

Lies

Sometimes I sit and think of all the lies
I’ve told, of all the legs I’ve pulled, all that
crossed finger fibbing I’ve done, the wool I
have pulled over eyes, including my own.
Some of those lies were white which means polite
and some were intended as chain yanking
fun. Lies are better than straight forward jokes.

I think too of all the lies I’ve believed,
like “the poor are happier than the rich,”
or “god won’t give you more than you can bare.”
or “the way you look doesn’t matter,” or
“tell the truth and you won’t get in trouble,”
or how about: “ the truth will set you free?”

Today we’re blessed with statistical lies
Like “eighty-seven point three percent of
all statistics are made up on the spur
of the moment.” Lies come naturally
to us, we don’t have to be taught to lie.
The truth requires complete understanding
and everything we know is incomplete.

The year, I think, was nineteen fifty six.
My mother went outside to hang laundry
and I was told to watch my brother Tim.
If Tim should cry I was to call my mom.
Tim cried. I called my mom, but by the time
my mother got inside Tim had drifted
back asleep.. My mom was aggravated.
She needed to get the laundry hung and
I had halted this necessary chore.

Tim cried again. I called my mom again.
When she found Tim asleep again she was
angry and threatened to beat the soup out
of me if I dared tell that lie again.

When Tim cried a third time, and I called my
mother a third time and on her way in
when Tim drifted off asleep a third time
I pinched him hard enough to make him scream.
I’ve been a liar ever since that day.