Poems

I’ve had a couple of blogs through the years, and trying to figure out a way to save all the writing — easier said than done — but I found a few poems and posts I thought I’d copy here, just to have in this space.

#1

I never know what it means to work on a poem, and usually it’s just a jumble of words that come to me, and I feel better when I write them down. I suppose what you do is shave them, but in the meantime, this works as a repository.

Kicked off zig zag something like
that curlicue spiral while everyone walks
straight.
You leave the pattern like on grass.
You can’t walk.
Set off in the wrong direction
again
You want to.
The thing is.
Blame.
Not much to do about it now
These are your feet and you walk
the way you walk.
Sideways, half-moon, circles, curled.

#2

Spontaneous Sunday poem

I listened to a story about a city in Brazil -
water dry in months for destruction of the rainforest.
A butterfly floated past looking for the memory of a field,
A bee hovered at my car window, which will never be a flower.

#3

Another friend died today. He was just past 50, and died after an illness. We weren’t super close, but I did stay with him for a week in New York when he was doing a show there a few years ago. He was a light, fun fellow. He brought a lot of joy to people and smiled and laughed a lot. I always loved seeing him and we always gave each other a big hug. The last time he said we should get together for coffee.

For years I kept track of the people I knew who died — friends, colleagues, teachers, relatives. For a time I knew many people under 40 who died in freakish ways, from serial killer to suicide to cancer to meningitis to flesh eating virus. One day you’d get a call that someone had succumbed to a surprise illness and had left behind a partner, a child. Or there was an accident. So many surprising, unexpected ways. Grief is strange, unpredictable, which is all I’ve learned of it. I wrote a poem about it once -

The loss
Is a ring, an undertone
A tuning fork struck
Again again unexpectedly again
To begin -

The other day some circuitous thoughts led me to Joan Didion. Come to think of it, it’s her quote, “a writer is always selling someone out,” which is usually how she comes to mind, thinking of some idea and how it might offend someone. Anyhow, I thought of her loss of her husband and child in quick succession, and how insurmountable it must be to bear that loss. Then the thought came to me that there’s some virtue in being the one left to turn out the lights. There must be. We’ll all go. It’s the unavoidable end we push from our minds so we can live our lives. It’s probably just as hard to leave the the party when it’s going, but there is some comfort to be taken in being the one to stay and clean up, to bear the grief, to continue the memory. That’s how I look at it anyway, or have to. Someone came to the party and left. I hope he had a good time, and I’ll certainly miss him.

#4

I was playing words with friends, and lost for a word to play. Sometimes I’m completely flummoxed, and the only word that seems possible is “it” or possibly “es” or the like. Then I start to think I’m not smart enough to play words with friends, and that everyone I play with will think I’m stupid. It’s usually not a great day when that’s happening. This morning on the way to work, for instance, NPR was playing a story about a child with eye cancer, and how his devoted father was working on an application that could spot this cancer in pictures of children, thereby detecting the possibility of disease earlier and saving their lives and their eyes. This father was devoted. My father, not so much, sadly — he had a disease of his own to deal with. How is it possible to miss something you never had? Do I even remember correctly, having been a child? Self-pity is never fun, but in the morning, it can ruin your whole day. Most times I do not go to this place, but for some reason this morning I did. By the time I got out of my car I was too old to do anything new, a failure, fat, insane, and most certainly emotionally unable to ever be in a relationship with anyone other than my sad, failed self. And my car needs to be vacuumed.

These thoughts are like a subterranean sewer system in my brain. Most of the time, they’re just chugging through, and out to the ocean to dissolve, and I don’t even notice. At any point, though, I can lift the manhole cover and dive right in. It happens pretty quickly.

Playing words with friends, I looked away and when I looked back I saw a word that I hadn’t seen, and played it for a lot of points. That happens fairly often. Order is restored. I’m back in the game. A solution presents itself. I forget to look away sometimes, but when I can, I look back and it all looks different.