outside in gambols

Here lies a confessional piece. I wrote it last year sometime to commemorate an epoch of literal powerlessness in my life. Before I wrote this poem (as indicated in the first two lines) I had written very little in the way of direct acknowledgment of my on again off again struggle with incapacitation. Since I wrote this poem, I have written more freely (at times more pathetically--allowing myself the occasional wail of self-pity) of my tenebrous condition.

Because such poems are practically and rightfully poor stuff for at-large publication, my little blog here makes for a decent outlet.

The Playground

I have not said enough of the bed

Or the five weeks I spent there

Daily funneling through the slender

Middle of an hourglass

until the end when all of me

Had settled in the bottom.

Five weeks and I’ve only a few lines

To show for it. The comforter—ha!—

Was red, faded from use and ultraviolet

Rays. Windows are crap for stopping

Light and no great conquerors

Of playground sounds either.

Children slide, sling gravel, sing.

Songs of their own invention.

Swing.

The great triumph of some days—

Crawling to the bathroom; the white

Flag of most days—pissing in a bottle.

Family bought CDs of jokes, L’Amour,

Music interposed on lapping waves.

For calmness. For calmness slows

Funneling grit. That was the theory.

At last, I lost my mind. Five weeks

Finding shapes in the ceiling:

Horses, mostly, horses on a carousel

Without poles, without children—

They were all outside in gambols.

Children slide, sling gravel, sing.

Songs of their own invention.

Swing.

What else? It’s important

To be forthright. As I gathered

At the bottom, pinned by the Wrestler,

Watching my million grains cascade

Upon me. Me in the third person—

Out of body because in of it reeks

Of sweat, fear, the last several meals

And unwashed armpits. To be forthright.

It’s important. What else? Envy.

Sadness. Radish-bitter daydreams,

This one of many: Me in a tree,

Limbs like a ladder, up and up.

Children slide, sling gravel, sing.

Songs of their own invention.

Swing.

Sometimes, I sang. I’ve written

Hundreds of songs but none

Of them came to mind. I sang the hymns

Of my youth. God on a horse

On the ceiling, me and the comforter—

Faded, stitched together; it cannot

Budge beneath me, I cannot rise

Above it, we are each others’ jailer.

No bars. Just keys. Jangling

From the ceiling. Do I remember

Any psalms? The twenty-third, is all.

It’s enough. For an hour. Then not even close.

Children slide, sling gravel, sing.

Songs of their own invention.

Swing.

dealing with my dumbness

Once upon a time, in a physiology far, far away, there lived a fellow of my height and build (minus, say, ten, er . . . twenty pounds of flesh) with my blond hair (plus, say, fifty, er . . . seventy-five percent more volume) who was considered a man of astute perception, now and then erudite, always inquisitive, and, more often than not, brimming with strong, at-least-partially-justified opinions.

His exploits were many. Armed to the hilt with gleaming rhetoric and razoresque wit, he set about vanquishing armies of brute Ignoramuses, felling along the way fey beasts of sundry ilks--It of the Daft, It of the Dunce, It of the Downright Dippy.

All was well (discounting, of course, the alienation of friends and family) until one day, a day of doom, he was greeted by the grinning dragon--that coiled wyrm of distant legend--Oligodendroglioma. For years they fought, meeting in the wilds or along well-traveled paths. At first, they were evenly matched. He met his foe with aplomb and jocularity. But time wore on, as did his nerve, his will, and his strength.

At last, the Recondite Knight was forced to lay his weapons down. Very little has been heard of him since. Legend has spotted him napping copiously and staring, nonplussed, into the depths of space and time.

_________________________________________________


Moral: I'm dumb anymore. And one of the greatest feats of my life to date has been coming to terms with my chronically benighted state of mind. Every day and all around, issues of great importance mock my decreasing ability to comprehend them, much less expound upon or rail against them.

The seeming and/ or real, literal and/ or emotional disenfranchisement of Mexicans; Occupation of paved roads against amorphous fiends; the Ontology of Me and the Otherhood of You. It's like . . .you know . . . er . . . yeah . . . what do you call it? . . . uh, is that a rabbit over there?

But I am coming to terms. Slowly, unsurely, I'm relocating myself in the scheme of things. Where answers elude me, beauty finds me. Where gravity drops me, I rise on an invisible gust, transported to a realm of shrugged shoulders and wide, wondering eyes. Sometimes it's pleasant here. Sometimes excruciatingly lonely. The loveliness and the horror vacillate. But I belong here. Whether once I was meant to know, to understand, to argue, is irrelevant now. Now I am meant to guess, to ponder, to behold.

In short, the poet has a place and mine is in nature. The heart is a short migration from the mind. The knight trades his tower for a hermitage, grows vegetables and talks sensibly with invading bunny-rabbits.

Happily? Leave that to the utilitarians. Ever-after? Leave that to the metaphysicians.

The end? Leave that to me.

going moses on you

Ten More on Sandstone Tablets

I shall love Tallulah, Louisiana for the tongue

And palate of it and offer no further excuse.

I shall live on the outskirts and marvel

At the population of unpeopled kingdoms.

I shall not root around and toggle brain lobes

Or tweak heart valves because I cannot.

I shall not sing tenor when baritone will do

For the simple songs of nature and thoughts.

I shall only struggle with nightmares, not waking life—

For the sake of my spirit, for the sake of mind.

I shall stop and smell the sewage, too,

Otherwise the rose is just a rose that’s just a rose.

I shall not laugh too hard or cry too hard

When buzzards swoop to tug at mincemeat raccoons.

I shall not stuff my wallet full of condoms,

Business cards, bank plastic, or photographs.

I shall shall—headlong, shoulder strong, into the gut

Of Atlas and learn my lessons whiplashed.

I shall not shall not—except in these things,

Unless Tallulah turns to Vicksburg with tooth and lip.

yet my jogging days

Sometimes, New Friend, I consider my capabilities. What are my strengths; what are my handicaps? Almost immediately to mind and for as long as anyone can remember; my two or three cups of tea have been of the cerebral variety. Which is to say, as a child and youth, I spent a lot of time in the woods familiarizing myself with loneliness--unless you count the squirrels and caterpillars. But being alone was fine; it gave me time to consider. Things. Stuff. Whatnot. The stuff of science and poetry--the abstract made tactile, odoriferous, enumerable. From such a springboard, my trajectory could hardly shoot me anywhere but where I landed. Where did I land? In college studying literature and philosophy. (In gymnastic terms, one might say I "stuck the landing," too--given the virtual decade I haunted the information-stained walls of my two alma maters. Ha--that sounds like a sitcom. My Two Alma Maters. Something to do with lesbianism and awkwardness . . . hmmm . . . I'll think about it . . . )

On the other hand, what of my physical strengths? Do I have any? Have I ever had any? Short answer: No. Long answer: No, not really. Longer answer: Sure, with four brothers, I spent a good deal of time playing sports and engaged in less organized physical activity. And I have the scars to prove it. And the lingering psychological torments. Going to small private schools afforded me the opportunity of starting on basketball teams. Because my six-feet of height was good enough to earn me a role under rim grabbing boards and slinging elbows. Sadly, I averaged about four points a game--abysmal for someone who often had the ball directly under the rim. For the most part, my athletic achievements were of the participatory variety.

So that's the background but where am I today? Cerebrally--essentially where I have been immemorially. That is, engrossed in things, stuff, and whatnot. Sometimes happily, sometimes begrudgingly. And physically? Well, I can muster a reasonable round of golf and lift piddling nieces and nephews over my head for a few giddy moments.

I have an old poem, New Friend, that arose from one of these moods of mine--this self-evaluation, of sorts. I think you might like it. You strike me as the intergalactic type.



On the Intergalactic Distribution of Talents

Light echoes star to star.
Time groans deeply in worm-
Holes like a tuba.
Five years to tie my first laces.

Hydrogen huddles and breaks
Into everything. Particles fox-
Trot, waltz and tango.
Six months and I manage a two-step.

Perennial Maypole of spiraling
Suns. Earth wobbles but never
Falls Down.
Yet my jogging days are over.

full-feathered in actualness

I went to see the neurosurgeon today to discuss the weather. Not really. But in the end, ain't it all sunshine or storm? Aren't those the rubs with variations of degree and density? So yeah, we talked about the weather and like most meteorologists we could not be certain. But in the end, ain't certainty just a stalling tactic for fate? So why guess . . . cuz it'll come. It certainly will.

At any hoo, I was reminded of this poem. I wrote it several years ago and one of the motifs regards age and youth and illnesses' disregard for either. (Thus the broad brush.) The poem was written long after I first started being a regular in brain-doctor waiting rooms; but the idea had been around from the beginning. Because back then and for the longest while, there was a ninety-five percent chance that yours truly was gonna be the baby in the bunch. Sometimes it was a depressing thought, other times a hopeful one.

So today, in the waiting room, going about the usual business of pretending to read a magazine from 2005 and trying to figure if there was time to go potty before my name got called, I noticed that I was not the youngest patient there. I was not the oldest, either. Somewhere in the middle, I guess. But that was not the point. The point was that one day, I would be the oldest.

There's a lesson there and I can't quite put my finger on it. Or maybe it's not a lesson at all--just an actuality. That sounds right. Besides, ain't actuality just a lesson yet to be learned; cuz when it comes, full-feathered in actualness, don't you just know you knew it all along?

Broad Brush (Neuro-Oncology, Basement Floor)

On walkers with tennis-ball feet, the old escort the older.

A man with a mummy-wrapped head stumbles like a drunk.

People in your lap, you smell the faint, wet-wood odor

of magazines. You peel stuck pages, but you aren’t reading.

A nurse in blue scrubs calls for Joseph Stallins—mildly funny

until you see the scar on his skull, temporal to parietal,

black-blood crusted and stapled like upholstery. And the old

keep hobbling, filling the sunken seats and sofas. You all

get ten minutes older between each clipboard roll-call.

Then it’s you watching the blue scrubs shift stiffly at the nurse’s

back and rump, answering questions lobbed over her shoulder.

Weight, temperature, pressure, pulse taken and jotted, she leaves

you alone on the papered, not-quite-bed. It’s just you feeling

young again—rightly twenty-something, here for a cough

and an ahhh. Out there where the sick are just getting old,

is all, where God paints with His broadest brush, you were in line,

queued for bad news, and in your hundreds. In here, though,

where accolades are hung in gilded frames, where the wallpaper

is white with clouds against an azure sky . . . In here, you rifle

through the drawers, fiddle with the forged-steel implements

and spongy gauze, free to feel in your twenties, hell, in your single

digits, free to feel not so bad after all and sorry for Joseph Stallins.