Category: age

Learning to Spell

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
Spirit says: “Your words create 
your world. Shoot for the stars.”

I say: “I’m 17 again...
only this time, this time!
I’ll go straight to the SavOn
(remember those?)
and buy hair-clippers to 
shave my back and chest and arms
(I can handle the chest and arms
but I’ll have to find someone to
do the back – maybe Grammy, 
she always seemed to know
what direction I was headed). 
I’ll work out and run with my shirt
off, and then when I see Jason
at the Dales Jr. liquor store
and he gives me those eyes I’ll
ask him if he wants to go to
Carney’s to get food and he won’t
take his beautiful eyes off my
hunky arms and chest.”

Spirit says: “Don’t say will. Say Am. 
BTW, he was already into you. Why shave?”

So I say this: “Okay, wait. 
Maybe just the back. 
Maybe that’s the way Jason and I 
become friends because he is already 
giving me those deep blue eyes
in class, so I don’t think he 
minds clipping my back as we talk
in French and he tells me I’m 
smart and I tell him ‘Let’s go get
food at Carney’s’ because I’m an
idiot, but then I see I’m being an idiot 
so I give him a kiss and we roll around 
for an hour or two until his Dad gets home
and we race to get dressed before he
comes upstairs laughing because
he already knows.”

Spirit says: “Don’t say MAYBE.
If you’re sure, it’s happening.”

Happening? 
What did happen?
Forty years happened. 
Life happened. Death happened.
Dave. Hmmm.

So I say this: “I’m 17.  I’m at 
Dales Jr. I’m skinny and hairy and 
think I might be gay but I don’t know
because I’m scared of all the prostitutes 
over in Santa Monica and it’s 1986 and 
there’s AIDS and no one to talk to.
I’m buying Jim Beam for my Dad and
run into Jason. His hair is perfect
eighties, swooped back and free. 
We talk. We’re shy. I want to kiss.
He leaves after waving goodbye.
He doesn’t want to go.
I float home and have a drink with
my Dad. He says there’s something
different about me. I say nothing.
But I know how I feel.”

Spirit pauses: “That’s what happened.
Those were terrible years.
Jason broke your heart. Badly.
Why go through all that again?”

I can hear hope in his voice.
He only wants me to say what’s true.

So I speak truth.

I say: “Why mess with perfection?
What I want to know is:
will I remember any of this? 
It’s been wild so far! 
Wait!
Don’t tell me! 
I don’t want to know!”

Spirit says: “Good answer.”
He laughs as I fall asleep.

Such a bastard. 
But a good bastard.

*

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Two Dramatic Poems

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
We're in it now.
Walkers and wipes from here till the end.

People will say "How wonderful they
take care of each other."
People will say "They have each other."
Smiles will barely mask pity
as I become your good deed.

I don't think I'll care about good wishes.
I'll be grateful for you, I hope,
in-between bouts of awareness.
You'll love me until I die,
and then love me more until you smile
for the time I was once whole –

when there was no walker,
no wipes –
when we thought death was the worst, 
some far-off place, some mirage.
We thought we'd escape –
took long walks across the bridge
and ate food, fun food, hamburgers.
I took stairs two and three at a time,
and you attracted guys in the showers,
just washing yourself you attracted life.

Jealous old men shot proverbs:
"Enjoy it while your can."
"Things that don't go wrong before
fifty...do after.  Beware!"
Pity crossed our lips but we stood sure
age was someone else's war,
someone else's ward,
the cost of ignorance.
Choice.
Never bad luck.
Never true.

Now everything we do is timed.
Weighed. Purposed.
My body isn't mine anymore
though I placate it with spinach
and cardio and porn.
He's tending toward home,
breaking me into the grave
slowly, surely, 
ready to lay down
as I conjure stairs
taken two or three at a time
and showers, those showers,
filled with beauty,
mine for a few minutes more.

*

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