A living thing

Why don’t you see me?

Acknowledge me at least.
I am a living thing, and you know me.
I’m sure of it.

God, it’s been forty years since High School.
You were the nerd before that word was coined.
Top of the class those four years,
but without the Jock thing.

Most of them shunned you.
“Hey Number One!” they jeered,
laughing as you passed in the hallway.
The other girls avoided you,
wanting to stay in the boat and not rock it.

But me?
I became a pariah when they saw my slow approach.
I wanted to be like you,
to have the quiet courage to be myself,
even though it hurt.

I talked to you at the lockers,
sat near you in class,
liked you for your blushing hesitation
as you gave the right answer that no one else knew
or had the guts to speak out loud.

Was it wrong when I warmed to you?
You had cultivated aloneness for so long
that you didn’t know how to deal with affection,
and so you treated me with studied indifference.

When grad came and dispersed us into the world’s ways,
I hurt, and called you bastard in my sorry mind.
How dumb can you be, I thought.  Can’t you see?

With forgiveness and forced forgetfulness,
I went away to my future.
Cast myself into the career of a workaholic.
Met many nice people.
Kept cats and took pills.

In the decades, Karma contrived a crisscross of our paths.
Brief, crowded, and uncomfortable meetings.
I saw that you were with someone and then, at another time,
someone different.
No rings.  No commitment.

It was last night that made me write this.
Turns out you were a friend of one of the bandmembers.
I had come with a girlfriend who was married to another of them.
Fifty of us in the room.  Too loud music.

Some dullard was attempting to engage me in conversation
when I spotted you.
Alone with a drink.  Watching the game.
We are sixty now, god dammit!
I see quick regret in your eyes, but no promise.
Am I too bohemian for you now?
You liked freckles once.
I’ve got a million of ’em.

Why the hell am I still kicking myself over you?
Because my self-made fantasy won’t be denied.
I see you as looking out over a dream sea,
each of its atoms an unnamed star in the slow swirl of Universe.

But, one last time, it’s our stubborn pride, I think, that keeps us apart,
as if we were strong magnets facing the wrong way, poles pushing.
And I’m thinking of just going home now, to my cats and my pills.
It’s a “living” thing.

But, hell, I want to sail with you on that dream sea.
I am coming to stand by you tonight.  Right here, right now.
Say something, or say nothing.
Maybe, with your carpentry of kindness, we can build that boat.

 

30: Nightmarish (a shot in the dark)…may offend.

With planned barbarism they came.
Safety in numbers.
Their eyes as dead as a Great White’s.
Jittering on their hair triggers.
Never questioning the barked orders of their commanders.
My house of precious ones scream from their interrupted sleep.
Boots on the floor doom doom.
Screams cut short by gagging sounds. Ballistic noise.
And I, with rebellious heart, 
try to find courage, think of action. Too late.
With fists of iron they drag us outside
under sputtering streetlamps.
Multitudes of scarcely-known neighbors 
in lines on the night time street,
crying, shouting, begging.
Random rifle reports,
not warnings.  People fall.
The squeaky wheels got the grease.
And I am trying to calm down,
hugging my own
with emotion scarcely shown
until this night.
“You are the father?”,
one of these brutes says.
“Come here.  Stand here.”
The shark eyes look into mine,
and my only thoughts, 
my last thoughts,
are “why such black automated hate?”
“does he not see me?”
“I am a person”.
SMACK.  He hits me in the cheekbone with his gun,
and I stumble, bleeding.
The children scream and try to help me up.
That is a mistake, for they do not want you up.
But I stand stupidly.
Brute puts his hand under my chin, and tilts my head back.
And then, and then.
There’s a bang and I fall in my turn.
My teeth shattered, hole through my palate and on and on.
I swallow and swallow, but there’s too much.
Why.
Why.

Gehenna

A word whispered by winter’s ghost
in last night’s dream of loss.

Gehenna

So foreign to this man,
it held a portent.

This evening,
as he sweeps winter’s leavings from his tilted deck,
Gehenna echos back to him in a latent sigh.

He and his Margie. Gone these two years.
The deep ravine behind their home.
Its choked and bubbling stream.
The shopping carts, beer bottles, stinking refuse, dirty mattresses.

Once, there were many cherries there.
Flashing, one night.
Yellow tape.
Hushed bystanders.
Part of a person had been found.
He and Margie had stayed in their own yard.

On a night in the spring of ’17, Margie didn’t come home from work.
Margie didn’t call.
Margie was never found.
Margie wasn’t heard from again.

The ghost of winter had a voice of chill.
Tonight, as it sighed the same syllables,
a thrill of knowing made him drop to his knees in the twilight.

Margie.

Gehenna.

***

Art work by Theophile Steinlen – Chat au Claire de Lune  (from Pinterest)

Jigsaw

What is this, my friend?

You, the one who never makes plans,
have cobbled this one together
from the remnants of the morning.

You really shouldn’t be left alone,
you know,
but it was with relish that you contemplated an afternoon of dead rest,
owing to their shopping and a movie plans.

Out the doorway they shuffled,
with rearward glances and catcalls of false regret
that you were under the weather.
You smiled slyly and pushed the door up.
There.

One cup of hot freshly ground coffee.
One lazyboy that the cats have owned for a long time.
Fresh batteries in the remote,
good stories on Netflix.
None of those shoot ’em up, blow ’em up, car-chasing, teeny bopper,
obscene stand-up comic kinds of pictures.

Said cats are sorely pissed that you have had the temerity to take their chair,
but they settle in, seeming to recognize that this is your day.
Plus, you have cheezies, and that seals the deal.

Now for something calming and easy to digest.
A romantic comedy?
Nah, too contrived.
A documentary on whales?
Seen one, seen ’em all.
Horror?
It took you ten years to get over the last one you saw.

This is cynicism 101, you know, right?

The two fuzz buddies settle down,
and take turns licking your orange fingers.

A half hour later,
while you’re still scrolling through movies as if you were playing the slots,
something heavy wells up from within you.
No reason.  No reason.
The puzzle of your life, so carefully fitted,
has lost its connectedness.
Higgledy-piggledy, topsy-turvy.
There’s that old familiar throat tightness.
Those ball bearings you’ve gotta swallow,
and you do it.
Even here, you do it.
Even here, alone, you struggle for control,
but pools of your tears darken your shirt of pastel blue.

The felines somehow sense this sadness.
They creep up your shoulders and nuzzle your ears with their purrs.
And you can touch them.
You can hold them.
You can cry it out until they are wet and want to lick the salt.
Never would you let anyone see this.

By eight o’clock you are composed,
redness and puffiness gone.

You are hoping they hurry home.

The way out

Cable-carried am I,
upslope,
in harness.
Slow. It is slow.
I hear the rollercoaster clacks,
each prophesying sinister thrills.
With powered eyes I see
continents of fogged-in secrets.
Sorry horses stand, bedraggled in streaming rains.
They look to me with pleading eyes,
but I have no help to give.
Clack, clack, clack…..a sharp turn.
The dream veils are dropped,
and it is bright cooking sun.
Beetles of football size float by with a helicopter buzz.
At my left hand, now, is a rail of brass.
From it hang leather pouches,
each containing an object of obscure purpose.
Now a can of grease.
Now a pair of winged sandals.
Sunglasses with upside-down arms.
I see now that my left hand holds a red stop button,
and I press it.
The rippling tinkle sound of a taut chain relaxing.
I do not wish to leave items that I might need,
but I don’t know what to take.
I pick up a red phone, hung from a post.
Its rotary dial says “phone a friend”.
I say hello.
Someone in a cackling voice says
“We are all mad here”, and hangs up.
I decide that the items in the pouches are false bait.
There’s a tin pedal at my foot,
like the ones in bumper cars.
I step on it, and move on.
My path drops away, suddenly downslope,
and I feel a release from the ratcheting chain.
I am speeding now, in full panic.
There are three rushing rivers at the end of my Zip line.
Within arms’ reach, there is a lever with three positions available.
I try it, but it does nothing yet.
There’s a brake pedal too, and I jam it as hard as I can.
I smell the smoking steel, memories of subways long ago.
Once more, I am at a crawl, coming to the end of the line and the rushing waters.
There is one last leather pouch.
It holds a pair of stout cutters, and I take them.
Out of track, now.
Feet dangling, I hang from an overhead derrick.
I try my lever again.
It moves me over the gateways of each water.
Cockeyed conifers point to the left hand way.
On a ledge, above the right hand river,
a rainy horse.
I shift the lever, then cut the cord.
The water is warm,
and oh so sleepy.