Our innocence lost in slamming doors and thrown crockery, we ran, jacketed, into ready offerings and prurient teachings. My brother, you did not live long enough to forgive the teachers or cry for the warring giants.
[Art by Hugo Simberg]
Category Archives: #family
Good intentions
Daguerreotype is the day,
ancient as I drive.
Beside me she is a ghost,
and I can’t speak to the veil-
the closed idiom of her soul.
Or
I am the ghost
and have simply lost the language
to this often-paved way.
***
They got into the car just the same, even though this was a frivolous trip. Even though she knew his silences sometimes lasted the whole way. Today, though, was a study in differentness. It was his averted eyes, his apparent focus on an imagined point just a few feet away or in the upside-down.
She moves to make small talk but it catches in her throat, knowing that it usually elicits impatience and forced responses, and fearing what it might bring today.
“Why did I make him go? What is wrong?”, she thinks. “I can’t stay quiet. I’m just not that person. No. Not alone, with only my own thoughts.”
They cruise, and he disinfects his hands at alternate stop signs. She pats his knee, leaves her hand there. A hundred, a thousand times this road has known them and been peppered with their tire treads.
“Nick, let’s go home, okay?”…in a voice more coquettish than pleading.
But he drives on, comes to the traffic lights which flash alarmingly as if cautioning against any further advance.
“What’s the way, Beth?”
“Nick, what’s wrong? You know the way.”
“Beth, I can’t. I’m sorry. You need to show me.”
And she cries.
Look to the warmth
Cast your line into the soft static of six days from now.
Feet up, warm cup,
and let someone in.
One who’s been down.
Yes, that’s the one,
my love.
Out of our heads!
Nights at the round table!
Spouts of hot tea
sloshed into cups of tiny china.
Cards and clinking glasses,
glinting toothy smiles!
One nods off
after too many Jameson’s.
Piggyback up the stairs,
unfold him into bed, hah!
Open a window, will you?
What, tired already?
It’s only two!
Blackface
When I woke up
this morning
I laid there for a bit
Idly went to scratch my nose
then nearly had a fit
Someone else’s hand was there,
with skin of ebon brown
I ran my fingers through my hair
It felt like eiderdown
I went to find the looking glass
to see what face was there
Expecting not the veritas
that I was meant to bear.
This darkened face
this different nose
this cauliflower ear
that now replaced
my beigey rose
and filled me up with fear
How could I go out like this
and look over my shoulder
Walk in fear and maybe miss
the chance of growing older?
Hurry hard
Each of us wanted safety.
Father, from trouble’s horde.
Mother, from father.
We chickens, from the storm.
All of us were running,
and love was hard pressed to keep up.
Adolescence held confusion, guilt,
and strange desire.
I looked for yellow bricks,
on the cusp of a fireworks life.
The stairs, the stars
I will want my eyes open if I can,
when it happens.
Don’t stay
if it’s too hard.
But if you do,
you might see,
in my dry eyes,
a struggle of the soul.
A sea-change,
as I watch the silver sun,
and all that’s earthly folds its book.
For I’ve already peeked at the show,
And I know.
Foreigners
If you would,
talk some sense into me.
Or,
just talk some sense.
I am in short supply,
you see.
I have broad and muscled shoulders
from clenching the etched-in tension.
A hard head with a coconut brain
to unveil the dumb mornings.
Those that move in this captivity
are bound to me,
but we are foreign
to one another.
Quakers
I know why you couldn’t shave anymore
I used to think that you could
but needed to be touched
I think, now, that something told you
“What’s the use?”
and you agreed
and your hands and knees agreed
and next morning
your shrunken head
could think only of hard rivers of nerves.
A dream Dad, a burning yearn.
Why’d you lead me into corn-stubbled hills? This mind of mine swirls with overthink. Come on, old man. We’re supposed to be waiting by the highway for that Buick to pick us up. It is to take me home. You’re just a distraction.
Suggestibility is a downfall of mine. I’ve followed too many false prophets. And, why do you take the name of my dead Dad? You’re not him. So I’ll turn and defy you. Walk right by you. Screw the corn, it’s without meaning. Highway it is for me.
Hah! I look back and see you following in your rubber boots, making dusty puffs in the dried mud, defeat and aggravation on your puss. Now, over the last rise, there’s the fence by the highway! The beige Buick with the young kid driving it…
He must have been waiting and didn’t see us, ’cause now he’s pulling away.
I shout. Shout No No No! and he sees us, stops. Smiling braces, freckles, ball cap. Say something, Old Man. I done beat you, you couldn’t take me to your false halls.
We start to roll on the smooth road. The young kid is from my nucleus. He’s been sworn not to say much, but he tells me the car has to go in for repairs, and he’s going to drop us in town for some “entertainment”. And, Old Man, I know you’re a lecher, and I do believe that you and Alfred, here, have been talking. Entertainment. Yah. He drops us off in the red light district, and you try your come hither again, but no, not this time. So you shrug, and I watch you descend long long stairs into a floodlit mine.
I know my lot is going to be something better today, and I don’t even care about the Buick no more. I walk slowly, through side streets of old houses. I wonder why I’m so warm, and then I realize I’m holding a cat. Then, through a hedge, I see a house with a picture window.
The living room has a soft glow of orange, and there’s someone in a rocker. And I stand, a voyeur with his cat. Kitty purrs now, and I can feel it through my chest.
A slow hand parts the lace curtains, and I see knitting. And I cry a man’s tears at the rosy cheeked face of Mom.
Aremyfeetofftheground 