Poetry of the People: Dale Bailes

My sixth Poet of the People is Dale Bailes. Dale is a long-time icon in the Columbia literary community and an encouraging mentor and friend to many. His poetry is expressive, and you feel his kindness throughout his work. Read his work and become his friend.

Bio: As a poet, Bailes helped design and participated in the Poets In The Schools
Program for the South Carolina Arts Commission. He edited seven anthologies of
student poetry for that program. His poems have appeared in journals and little magazines,
including SOUTH CAROLINA REVIEW, GREAT SPECKLED BIRD, and
CREATIVE CRAFTERS JOURNAL. The poems have been gathered in the
collection CHERRY STONES and in three chapbooks.

Recent publications include poems in Columbia lit mag FALL LINES and
Texas based AMERICAN WRITERS REVIEW.

Bailes holds an MFA in Professional Writing from the University of Southern
California, He has taught college writing and creative writing classes in such
diverse backdrops as state prisons, Navy aircraft carriers, community colleges,
and both USC east and USC west.

He continues his interest as an educator as a part-time Standardized Patient
at the University of South Carolina School of Nursing in Columbia.

____

 

VIGIL

 

First sunlight in tops

Of towering green trees.

How is there no music?

 

THE TRICK

 

Thinking of you in terms

of two-over-light was easier.

That way you shared

my morning rite and left me

to the idle pleasure

of my day. Now, having

seen you trundle from

a lonely man-filled bar

your shoulders slouched

against the weight of darkness

I know you more than I care 

to; know your crumpled

single bed and barren room

know why your ten-hour-day

is comfort to you.

Now instead of leaving me

to my own tight rare existence

you take me trembling with you

into your lonely night.

 

(from ST. ANDREWS REVIEW)

 

THE GENTLEMAN CALLER

 

No need to keep him waiting

fifteen anxious minutes; no stately

staircase has to frame her entrance.

Cordelia sits quite calmly at the table

saucered cup untouched and slowly colding

 

Her mind commands a sunny day, with horses

she smells the Spring and smiles

at mustached men. A storm can rage there

now, or suns go setting; white-haired

gallants still tip crisp hats and court her,

 

What matter if those days she lives

are twenty-five or fifty years divided?

This day alone will mean most to her heart

stout friend through all and keeper

of the great loves she has known.

 

Now he has come, the quietest caller

she has yet received. “Madame?” “oh yes.

I am quite ready. You are right on time.”

Cordelia, rising, bids a host of friends adieu.

Whispers gaily, “It was always you.”

 

(from MISSISSIPPI REVIEW)

 

THE JESTER

 

The Jester on your wall grins

at you. His hand has been, will be

poised to pluck the lute.

 

You pull yourself from sleep

or death, recall some sound

that scared you to the fading point

 

where sleep and death are one

and come or don’t come

as your left eye struggles open

 

and your right eye simply won’t .

He has waited while you slept

while you crept through

 

the other room of the dream

and out. He has grinned as

a black cat crossed the street

 

to avoid crossing your path,

as ladders crashed around you

that you wanted to walk under.

 

He will watch you tumble from

the bed, return from all that pain

awake, stumble to another room

 

to wet your trembling hands.

His hands will tense, prepare

to play the chord to match

 

the sound your pleading eyes

will make, as you watch the mirror

drop you and you shatter.

 

(from SANDLAPPER)

 

 

Remembering Thorne Compton, with Thoughts of Peace and Love by Dale Bailes

photo courtesy of Chris Compton

photo courtesy of Chris Compton

Thorne Compton and I met at U of SC in the early sixties. We were on the Junior Varsity, of the Debate Team. We made a mutual friend of Bob Anderson, and did our best to make this first black male student at USC feel welcome. That was an uphill battle in those days. I lost track of Bob after I left grad school in 1965; Thorne kept track and even told me of being in touch with Bob’s widow and child in recent years. 

Thorne and I met again in the early seventies. He had done a stint in the Peace Corps with first wife Jo; I had been a hippie mail man in San Francisco, among other West Coast Adventures. 

Those adventures led to my pulling together a crew of artists, Viet Nam vets, and singers and seamstresses to open the Joyful Alternative. Thorne was a regular there at our original 2009 Green Street location, stopping in for a record or a book every week, and papers. THE VILLAGE VOICE and GREAT SPECKLED BIRD, that is. 

Thorne managed to function in the academic environs better than I had. He earned a doctorate and became an English professor. When I published my first book CHERRY STONES and went to work with the Arts Commission, he invited me to do poetry readings for his classes. He would go on to deanships and department chairs. 

I pursued other interests—running a music hall at Folly Beach, getting an MFA in Screenwriting at USC/West. I taught in prisons and on Navy ships, and a planned two-year gig as an adjunct at Moorpark College in California ending up being twenty-five or thirty years. 

At one point in the eighties, Thorne got in touch to make sure I got the scoop on Carolina’s big celebration of James Dickey.  He got me in, and I was privileged to see and hear such literati as Harold Bloom and John Simon hold forth. 

It must have been about that time I began to make an effort to find a full-time teaching job SOMEWHERE, and I made yet another request of the most stolid academic friend I knew for a letter of recommendation. 

He must have written a dozen letters, without complaint. 

Until I was visiting in Columbia from California in the early nineties and ran into him at the campus bar Hunter-Gatherer. After some catch-up conversation over a beer or three, he blurted out in faux exasperation—I think—“Please don’t ask me to write anymore ________________ letters of recommendation!” 

I didn’t. 

I spent a few more years adjuncting at Moorpark until I got tired of freeways, and retired to live with my best friend Jo Baker at Pawleys Island.  Thorne, having lost his Jo years earlier, was remarried, retired, and removed to Michigan for several years. 

The odds were long that two old friends would meet again at the top of the hill where Saluda meets Heyward , but it happened. About two years ago. 

I stopped at the sign and waited for a man and his dog, motioning them to go ahead. 

Thorne and his dog Bo weren’t taking any chances, so I rolled down the window when Thorne looked closer to check my plans. Two happy old codgers, I guess we seemed to any passersby. And although Bo tugged on the leash and whimpered about having more peemail to check, we caught up a bit. I was on my way home from  my work at U of SC School of Nursing, where I occasionally was a Standardized Patient.  

He didn’t know the term. I explained I portrayed scenarios of different illness situations, with student nurses.  The irony was thick as he managed a smile and said, “I’m the real thing.” He had months, or maybe a couple years, left. 

We ended our car window conversation with a promise to get together soon for a nice bottle of red, and lots of “telling lies.” 

My personal lethargy, isolation at Pawleys, the pandemic…it didn’t happen. Most of us have made the same mistake. 

Thorne’s son Chris Compton messaged me from Los Angeles that if I was going to see him again, it should be sooner rather than later.  Thorne’s wife Raven was kind enough to arrange a visit with him the week before Easter. 

Even without a good red, we had a very good hour. We talked about Bob Anderson, the early days of Joyful, those letters of recommendation. He smiled and mentioned a memory that surprised me. “Those parties on South Walker Street. Live music and a hundred of your closest friends. Some of the best times I ever had!” 

As usual, he asked what I was writing, I told him an artist named Janet Kozachek had provided two pieces of work that had inspired some ekphrastic poems. New as the term was to me, he remembered learning it a dozen years ago. I told him I would send the art and the poems.  

I don’t know if he was able to see the stuff before he passed. One of them, with the artwork that inspired it used with the artist’s permission, is printed below. The poem, “Obeisance,” has a puckish tone that I associate with Thorne Compton, and is dedicated to his memory. As is the next glass of red I wrap my hand around.

Artist - Janet Kozachek

Artist - Janet Kozachek

OBEISANCE

  by Dale Bailes

The posture is apotropaic.

To appease Thanatos, back when.

And now to fend off his vengeful

Sibling, Erinyes.

 

It is not a conscious thing.

It is brought forth by naked fear

As pandemic stalks the land.

The gesture is archaic, bold.

 

Bare haunches taunt our oldest

Dread.  They show contempt

For knowing time is never

Long enough, nor safety certain.

 

What I create may have

A longer span. A gesture, small,

To thwart some master plan.

A wrench in the machine.

 

So. Black-robed, grinning bearer

Of the scythe—or shrieking sister

Eris—bring forth your deadly kiss.

I here present, a target you can’t miss.

 

 

Retired English instructor Dale A. Bailes commutes from the ‘hood in Pawleys to the ‘wood in Columbia for his part-time work as a Standardized Patient at the U of SC School of Nursing. He has poems upcoming in Fall Lines and AMERICAN WRITERS REVIEW.