Focus
Fear never helps.
Occupying myself
Can help, if the right tasks are
Understood and completed
So I can step into success.
The mission oak, arts and crafts
gift, notches of history across is surface,
came as a surprise on her birthday
when he still loved her.
He knew she wanted a writing desk and
set it up while she was at work. It was
impossible to contain her exciement and
gratitude for something she least expected.
She always sensed her writing got in the way
of their relationship, typewriter taking up space
on the kitchen table, papers and piles hilled
around the house, frustration with rejections.
The purity of the gift said he loved her still, and
she was ready to settle into that sacred space
once the girls were asleep. One drawer with
two brass pulls held her secrets as days passed.
His love faded, the way old fabric fades exposed to
the sun. Their time together faded the way memories
fade with age. She moved the writing desk to
a new home, old secrets kept locked in the drawer.
One day it was time to move again, downsize, give away
sell, donate so many things. Pieces of her life that no
longer fit into a small space. The writing desk went to
the local Re-Store. She felt a twinge of sadness as it left.
It was not until she saw a Facebook post of her desk
for sale that she realized how attached she was
to that gift, to his love, to the dreams that once were
depositied in secret in a single drawer with brass pulls.
there once was a girl online
who’s poetry quality started to decline.
with community cheers
and a couple of beers
she made it across the finish line!
We have made the mistake
of inviting the dog
into the bedroom
to cuddle with us
for hours
during the day.
Now at night,
after our walk,
she stands at the bottom of the stairs
outside the gate
(trying to grab my shoes
if she can reach them)
and whines,
her voice a sweet sad song.
““How did she learn how to bark cute?”
my partner asks.
It reminds me
of all the gates
I have had to stand behind,
not because of healthy boundaries though.
But rather
not being holy enough
or attractive enough
or popular enough,
not being trans enough
or being too trans,
not being gay enough
or being too gay,
not being bi enough
or being too bi,
trying to turn my howls of pain
into poetry
while waiting for invitations
that had never been written.
Clouds laze along
I’m from
Pieces of tin foil, folded for reuse
Fels Naphtha soap,
Used on shirt collars and sassy mouths
I’m from
camelias, white, pink and variegated
A prolific Meyer lemon bush and an ancient apricot tree,
Whose abundance became pies, jam and canned fruit
I’m from
An RCA Victor record player in a special kitchen cabinet,
Fats Waller, show tunes, Mitch Miller, and big band,
Parental spins around the kitchen
I‘m from
The cigarette butts squished out in egg yolks,
Sky-high, from-scratch waffles, bread and angel food cake,
Warm summer evenings of barbeque smoke
I’m from
“Watch your tone, young lady”
“You’ll remember this discussion longer than you’ll remember a beating”
“Lift up your head, square your shoulders, take responsibility, and move on”
I’m from
Irony, sarcasm, love
Laughing out loud at yourself
And above all,
Grit.
i
Here’s a poet
who hates to see
self in a mirror
Too much gray
Too many lines
Not as fine
as a clock
or calendar
though all three remind
of the finitude
of time
time
time
ii
Who says
poeming is careering
how does it trump (no pun)
a job
I used to write truths for print (and was good [not great])
Now I only write to learn
and every lesson burns
with kindling left unlearned
iii
Frost
or Warren
or Heaney
or Thomas
(not I)
It’s not my place
to poem of place
my roots so rotted as the suburbs
my diction
so much fiction
or just plain tired
(((Truth)))
Then what
and how
is this
careering
iv
Back to that blasted mirror
reflecting more than gray & lines
so little time
to change the endgame
(or with the endgame just the same unfinish
the finished)
rewrite the rhyme
however little the final verse
may rhyme
Damn time
one
I wore the uniform, proudly.
Don’t really like war, peace
being so much better for all,
but they attacked us, they
had no intention of stopping.
You can’t just lie down and die.
two
I did terrible things. Terrible.
No surprise, and no complaining,
if I pass straight from Life to Hell.
My only defense is wondering:
When the choices are do or die
isn’t the whole thing a mortal sin?
three
Close to forty years have gone,
and my uniform still fits comfortable.
That doesn’t surprise me at all,
given how I work as hard as ever.
You asked me why I keep it around.
Why not? I still have the nightmares.
four
You flatter me. These aren’t my girls.
They’re my son’s, my pride and joy,
the future I likely won’t live to see.
I pray it will be a good one for them.
I’ve tried to be a good man, to live
the Sermon on the Mount each day
and to every living soul I meet,
an example for those who recall me.
I’m a Christian man, I believe in God,
but I know each other is all we have
to come through the trials we’ll face
down all the years, down the long path.
(after the circa 1900 photograph “Unidentified African American Civil War veteran in Grand Army of the Republic uniform with two children,” attributed to “Goodman and Springer, Mt. Pleasant, Pa,” from the Library of Congress collection at https://www.loc.gov/item/2018652209/)
