You and I pretend to keep the extra heartbeats and moods that follow — wagons loaded full of words to pull against the bright sky empty because we cannot fly.
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Category: Poems
Ruah
Word in the wind is wind in the wind shaped not changed, noise to crude-drum ears, then still. Send yours again across skin that is kin to touch and moves to tremble, limbs hot under breath that holds earth-deep fire then cool to rest as I birth grope listen hope a man immersed then drowned.
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Redondo RV
for KG
The air smelled all Georgio and ocean in LA and my body worked so well I felt nothing, nothing, which is what health and vitality are, feeling nothing but heat on the bed, body on the sheets, the summer smell of my body in that not-new crusty motorhome parked outside Aunt’s house at the top of a street on a hill on a curve. It shouldn’t have worked parking on the ridge between Torrance and, over there, Redondo. The street was too small but she loved that RV and parked it in front of her house after she picked me up at Beck’s, my other grandpa, the one I hadn’t seen in so long. He didn’t know where I’d been or why, how I hitchhiked across the Utah desert and Nevada and slept with a truck driver in a cheap motel with shitty beds because I was fourteen and my step-dad threw me out of the car in Salt Lake.
He didn’t ask and I didn’t say. She knew but didn’t say anything. We had that in common.
I sometimes go back to that hill but nothing’s there anymore except I am in that bed over the cab, my own little place because there was no room in Aunt’s house. She acted embarrassed but to me it was heaven and I told her I couldn’t think of a more-fun thing to do. I ran to it that first night to fuck around because I was only fourteen and didn’t know how to pick up sex then and the whole thing was mine so I jammed myself thinking about the missionaries that used to come knocking on the door and the new nylon shorts I was wearing, the blue running shorts she bought me with the slit up the leg so high, and I couldn’t be stopped and nobody was around and they probably couldn’t see even though the little cab-light was on and they probably saw, or saw the camper moving, but I didn’t think about that too long because it felt so good. Nobody said anything the next morning, not even her son, even though he looked at me weird and they’d have to be blind not to see.
I was a nice boy everyone pitied because I was not strong and who my step-dad married. Someone once said at his church “For what he’s been through…Heavenly Father sure made him smart.” Skinny arms and twig legs and desire for those missionaries, desire so wild I yelled the first time I came and then it became a contest to see how far it could go until I knew I was gay and not just friends with guys and my first thought was “Cool.” Then all hell broke loose again and I’m almost fifteen in an RV parked on a curve at the top of a hill. I want so many guys I feel like a whore back when being a whore was dangerous because AIDS was out so I’m fucking around above the cab amazed at how I smell and happy. Aunt drives me to Universal Studios the next day and says she thought she washed the sheets but evidently not and opens the windows as she drives up the 405 freeway. This is the first time I feel like a man. Everything changes. I didn’t think it would — I wanted time to kiss Bryce and use my body with him and have someone beautiful take me away. But she smelled the sheets and I was proud and didn’t need Bryce or mom or a dad because I was sure.
It’s all good now. There’s no need to go back to my glorious skin or dream other whores out there waiting to be touched and taken and left so they can go to work the next day and then home to kids and husbands who know nothing. I go back to that bed over the cab that smelled of sweat and cum because I love how the story began and I watch everything that’s happened and say:
“Fuck you were a skinny whore.”
I feel good. I feel fifty while I sit at the table, stay up for the words because they are strong and true and because this is who I want to be, where I want to be, writing under a crap light while people wonder what the fuck I’m doing parked on this goddamn hill.
Photo by Sebastian Huxley on Unsplash
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Bureaucracy
The way they tell it: BE CAREFUL! — a spell is so much more than words said out loud. You need a protection circle three pounds of salt sage to cleanse the air; no personal gain no love incantations absolutely no commerce with evil spirits or demons or anyone misunderstood. “Only do what you’d will be done to you.” Yeah. A labyrinth of requirements while want weaves itself into this scented man that free woman heat and smile and yes, sweet feeling skin, all good and bad and eager to be taken outside the safe circle past the strange bureaucracy that once belonged to the church and still stops magic in its tracks.
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Every so often
To stop digging deep, to stop. All magic and truth napping in a corner while what I've done neither clears the way nor impedes; now content on ebbing thought, soft-stretched in a warm bed, morning and clean sheets like a park before birds, fog-muted city to cool clear sunlight -- quiet, quiet loved by quiet, mountains and memory books in silent rooms, all-beautiful, pillow under my head, rest for my back, soft hands, yes.
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Holy Card
Don’t put me in a coffin. Much better to find a small box for ancient gray ash that could be Vesuvius or that little dog I used to pet. I want no more me, no more memories etched around empty eyes or lonely hands that would’ve carried more, so much more, but were robbed by other death, nearer loss and love that still-chokes all earth. No, burn me into nothing for I endure no more.
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Open House
What does freedom feel like? An open gate on a busy walk, house set back and door ajar, anyone welcome, all memories. They come with their stories or pass by without a word on journeys I know nothing about and don’t need to sift, but will if one or two cross that threshold and walk the yard to find me sitting on the stair having a wonderful conversation with Mistake.
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If you like this, give Late-Night Lucid a try here.
Hero’s Grave
He was everyone's note splurged his song jumped from bed to bed looking looking finding! losing the tune.
AfterTalk
All we’ve talked has burned, embers smoothing silly me, impatient you — until we ease into each other to enthrall Dark.
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A collection of poems for the late hours of the night.
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G Beckman 