"Free Spirit" "In Memoriam" "Eulogy" "Armageddon" "Scribblings" "Sunset" "Rara Avis" "Ressurection" "Scream"

As I said on the poetry main page, I have only been writing poetry since late 1995. It's been a rocky road, with considerable desert patches where I wrote no poetry for nearly a year or so. I hated myself during this period; I hated that I couldn't do what I knew I loved doing, and I hated the person that was too afraid to do it. However, slowly again came the revival of my prose writing, and not long after that scuttled the nymph of my meager poetry talent. I was forced into it, really — I had to write an epistolary poem for English class. I went through my notebook to see if there were any snippets I could use to bounce off of. I thought of "In Memoriam," pulled up the file, and proceeded to edit the daylights out of it. When I'd finished, I realized I'd worked on a poem for the first time in ages, and I had also completely defeated my purpose. I could never turn that in to my English teacher, much as I may admire her. (I ended up with "Eulogy," BTW, sort of in the same vein as the other, but with a far less morbid tone. Also, "Free Spirit" came as a little overflow of all that thinking that I think is really, really awesome. And I don't say that about my poetry much, at all.) But I was on a roll. I typed up every snippet I found in my notebook, even if it were a bunch of lines with no meaning yet. I was determined to work each one into a poem. They were like geodes to me, and I was going to chip away at them until I got to the core or kill myself in the process. Well, yeah, most of them are still in general snippet form floating somewheres on my hard drive. But they're there. At long, long last, they are there. I realized that during this dead period of mine, I've seemed to develop something I very obviously lacked before. Style. Not that I'm a poetic genius now (quite a far cry), but when you compare something like "Resurrection" to "Sunset," I think it's rather obvious that the dates make a difference. Some things that haven't changed, though, are my general themes. I still love to write about old people; I still feel bound by isolation; I still try to be a winged spirit through the storm. I do encourage constructive criticism, plain comments, or blunt worshipfulness of my pulsating psyche. Please feel free to email me. I am always grateful.

Free Spirit
(3-30-98)

So now it has come to the point where I am seriously considering
ripping the leaden grass from your chest and bearing up the smothering soil
by the armful. I can't remember the last time I felt this way about you,
needing you with an inner gnaw that is bound to make me lash out in
fury. It's impossible for me to believe that I'm standing above you now,
in a fidgety position of superiority, rather than gazing up at your
Gargantuan glory. The sun is bright today; I think it's searching for you.
Dammit, you need to be here, even the sun misses you, misses feeding
you. It thinks you're lost, but really you're only under my feet.
I don't know why I'm even trying to talk to your grave; I know
you're not here. The last couple conversations we had, I could see the
shallowness of your drifting eyes. I think you had already started to
die then; that damn free spirit of yours was off finding its own final
resting place. You've become bigger than the world now, bigger than
I'll ever be. I see you floating deep in the earth's fiery core, glowing
with deistic immortality and power. I see you lying in bed with
Mother Earth (you filthy bastard) and spinning the wisdom of the world
with her, painting the secret meaning into the clouds each new day.
What I don't think you knew, though, is that you already did.

In Memoriam
(3-28-98)

it's a beautiful day.
          (The appeasing sun is giving us
          the will to live today through.)
i know you missed it
          (The sunrise — I did not see it, but
          I knew it would come.)
by four hours.
that's all.

in my murky memory pond,
old dirt is stirred up into a whole new concoction,
          (Poison, of course;
          I think it needs to tell me a story
          which I am trying not to remember.)
composing a haunting kind of hollow-eyed painting in the puddle.
          (Impressionist, I'm sure.
          Hard-cruel strokes made with the softest brush.
          Funny, I never knew you painted.)

look, my eyes are crying again,
          (I didn't know I had it in me,
          not for you.)
at least now my mind is blind to the story you're painting.
          (You're making me remember the time you put on a Beatles record
          to try and take us back to the past, covering up our wounds. Hello Goodbye?)
i'm afraid of what other garish pictures you'll give to me
before your threnody has passed.

i came here to get away from the images of you, but it's impossible.
          (I came to our park, full of quivering trees,
          fresh&alive,
          which is more than I can say for you.)
i'm trying to make sure i'm still on the world.
          (I'm turning to my other senses to shut you out:
          smelling the sky so deeply my nose aches;
          the grass slicing my groping fingertips.)

your mother's wet eyes told me your story this morning;
          (I never knew you had the nerve to do it.
          It just doesn't go together, the very idea of
          you with a cold steel barrel in your mouth.)
and to think i thought i felt pain the last time you left me.
this time you've gone in cowardice, when you felt what you thought was anguish.
          (I know your ghost is hovering around me,
          or is it a wax effigy, melting slowly into my mouth,
          as if I were a mold?)

Sun is warm. Don't fly too close.

Eulogy
(3-28-98)
(Written as a lighter version of "In Memoriam" for a school assignment. Notice the change in tone.)

It's a beautiful day,
this day that you became
just another hole in the ground.
The trees surrounding you are
quivering with freshness and life,
explosions of sparkling green
in the paper-thin sunbeams.
But the light is hollow today,
pointing ominous fingers down
at your stone and the tuft of
cold blue begonias crowning
the shoveled mound of earth
over your chest. It looks like
a leaden weight, a permanent
seal to a vault containing a
forever-lost treasure.
A sparrow is perching solemnly
nearby, with its silent song of
sorrow, and I keep wondering
why you had to die in springtime.

Armageddon
(3-1-97)

Go away, old man.
Rest your pack, your body,
your pack of memories and loves,
and stop weeping. For,
the Apocalypse is not coming tomorrow,
as your diction proclaims.
It cannot. If the
end of the world were seeping
acidic into tomorrow,
humanity would uncurl.
People would pinprick their self-made steel wombs
((from the inside))
open like a heavy balloon:
pop, and the eruption of fire and hell
would spill out of each individual
as they stood up, naked and vulnerable but free.
With them go the few scraps left about as litter
(leftovers since they packed and cleaned):
their most recent memories,
their most recent loves,
and their most recent passions, all strewn
mindlessly on the floor as trash.
These they gingerly take between two fingers and stuff in,
heaving up their loads
to carry forever.
A final annihilation:
the beauty-riches-fantasies ground into
dust (to dust, ashes to ashes).
No, old man, the Apocalypse will not come tomorrow;
You and I are the only ones with knowledge to give.

Scribblings
(9-2-96)
dedicated to the residents at the Becker-Shoop nursing home for Alzheimers patients

scribblings
of memory decorate my face
scrunched in a scowl
with memory of the misunderstood
times as the lines were
straight memories once
but a pity,
whatever happened to them,
(have you seen them?)
the lovely country
roads dropping off into the infinity's
horizon in a straight line
those roads have transformed into a pile of dropped
spaghetti noodles and oh,
(I'm so very confused.)
again I try but I can't I can't
get too far
on the country road there
to where I'm going because you fly
faster along straight clean roads
cut ready for you
than how you fly on spaghetti noodles
especially when they're
not cut ready for you
because if spaghetti's not cut
up it's no good too
hard to chew just a pile
of strings like lines,
scribbles.

Sunset
(begun 4-8-97, finished 3-28-98)
dedicated to the residents at the Becker-Shoop nursing home for Alzheimers patients — especially Gladys

"That's a pink sky!"
the shriveled woman
reverberated in awe.
Glassy hazel eyes,
dimmed and lost
behind bifocals,
look past the
security-alarmed door
and drink in the
vast warmth of an
iridescent sunset.
For a moment,
Gladys's face glows
in its innocence.

My palms are sweaty
from holding the
plastic handles of the
wheelchair for so long.
This is the fourth time
I've wheeled her down
this corridor, up to the
dead end of the door
she can never exit
(for Gladys wears a
plastic anklet which
would sound the alarm.)
While she dreams out
the window, again, I
peek into the rooms
on either side of me:
a white-haired woman
is sitting on her bed,
rocking back and forth
and singing church hymns
at the top of her lungs;
a pallid man with
sagging skin
lies like a corpse
in his metal bed, his mouth
is hanging open and his
head is tilted back.
A pastel orange curtain is
drawn halfway,
hiding his feet,
and there are plastic orchids
on his bedstand.

Gladys is still talking to me,
telling me again of her
six-foot husband and two
teenage sons; at Christmas
last year they took a picture
together and she said she
looked like an elf next to them.
Wasn't I there? she asked
and I shook my head no,
smiling as she went on.
Her husband never said much
and she had been a
schoolteacher until her
sons had been born,
and oh her sons were tall,
six feet like their father,
and when was the bus coming?

When I went home that night
the west glowed faintly yet,
like a lantern far off in the
darkness.
I can't help but wonder
if Gladys knows that the
steadily sinking sun she
cried out to in joy
is her mind,
and that right now
it is at its rosiest hue.

At least
it gets more beautiful
by the minute.

Rara Avis

Gnarled hands grasp gnarled branches,
and the black bark that is dead crumbles off into dust at my fingers.
Toward heaven I can climb,
and sit just as high as this tree,
and see just as much as this tree.
A city: it has cast him aside and I feel its pain through my hands and my memories.
An agnostic city,
and a park of shriveled cedars
is what the tree sees; I am far away
but wish to be farther,
and to take the tree's pain with me.
What pain has this tree seen through other
rugged climbers who annihilate its fingers?
The past does not matter. It will crumble
like the outer shield of my tree.
My tree and I, we protect each other.
Fall now, fall away
and do not hurt us any more. Look at us:
I am old as is my tree,
and he has no more adornment, protection than I.
Adornment is your protection.
Ours is only poetry and our leaves.

Ressurection
(12-31-95)
(published by my high school literary magazine, C.U.S.S.)

Charred souls frequent here,
Here —
This place I stand:
Patch of earth
Yet not of your world
Is where I dwell.
Here —
This place of isolation
(Solitude)
Where many people can be found.
My square of dust
Where flowers bloom
More beautiful than yours
Is home for my lost spirit —
(Dead
Inside without
Life while
My body
Lives.)
I weep for myself, no one else will;
(The splashing tears are making voodoo patterns in the misty dust.)
I am smiling outside
So no one knows
Me.

Hello, my heart shines again,
Its rays reverberating on your face;
As I kiss the ground I live on,
Home is where I leave
To return to you
Peaceful.

Scream
(1-23-96)

I trap my soul inside my body,
my face a mask of dumb stupidity,
telling of the naked brain everyone else thinks I have,
while They pluck egotistical minds
higher and higher
to soar as high as popularity allows.
and why are they the ones to be followed and prayed to while
soulless people do as they do?
the agnostic fools chant
the hymn they are told to sing,
while I
(the one who knows how to sing)
must remain silent
and assuaged in an internal scream
summoned forth — that unbroken soul —
from depths of my body.

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