Poems, thoughts, and stories.
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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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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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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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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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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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.
He was everyone's note splurged his song jumped from bed to bed looking looking finding! losing the tune.
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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Feel free to drop a line here.
A collection of poems for the late hours of the night.
Available at:
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Avi climbed up the yellowed sandstone rock that had once been part of the headland bluff but now sat six feet in seawater during high tide and fronted by sand during low tide. He stood completely naked because he’d always wanted to be naked on a beach in Big Sur or near Big Sur and the rock was there so he stripped off his jeans and sweatshirt and shoes and climbed until he reached the very top. From the top of the towering rock he looked toward Piedras Blancas lighthouse and the hidden winter home of the elephant seals we’d seen the day before that seemed fat and lazy but could move in unexpected ways and were actually quite fast. Every year a tourist or two learned the hard way that poking the blubberous giants could get you crushed underneath an angry ton of lunging seal.
Who knows why men feel the need to get naked before the ocean and then sometimes in it or why Avi thought he wouldn’t get wet standing high above the ocean or why he thought no one back at the Piedras Blancas Motel could see him when all we needed to do was look out our windows at the lighthouse to the left and him to the right. Maybe Avi knew and that was part of the thrill of it all but I didn’t think so because of the way he scanned the beach and the coast behind him and then crouched on top of the rock like he was surveilling the motel until he found himself safe from prying eyes. He stood again after that and looked carefully over the edge of the front of rock and swayed a little before recoiling at a wave that rushed inward but only made it halfway up the rock and since it looked like a pretty big wave Avi relaxed a lot and scanned the entire Pacific Ocean from left to right before he made the sign of the cross and began to pray. I thought there were other things I’d be doing on that rock but to each his own and I knew anyway that he was probably going to pray from the top of that rock before the entire western hemisphere of seawater, that’s just who he was, but I guess the couple in the next room didn’t know because through the old wall that had been repapered so many times small bubbles had long since become large domes of trapped air I heard: “Good Lord there’s a naked man on that rock over there!”
The voice was female and older from Milwaukee or Fond du Lac but definitely Wisconsin and was loud and very moral at the same time. Another lower more resigned voice told the woman to put down the binoculars and give the man the peace God intended when she said he was PRAY-ING in such a way that it sounded as if Avi was committing a high crime which I found hilarious because their lovemaking the night before was a high crime and had woken me up for almost seven minutes and then left me with thoughts. The woman went on to say that she thought Avi was a CATHOLIC even though he didn’t look it because he’d MADE THE SIGN OF THE CROSS and that she thought the entire display was disgusting and perverted and very inappropriate and had half a mind to report it to the management. The man repeated the word management with irony and I could almost see him sweep the shabby expanse of his motel room with his arm to prove his point. She continued undaunted: “I won’t be able to look out there without seeing him. Him! He’s ruined this vista forever.”
I looked out the window again, differently this time because I’d heard what the woman next door had to say about Avi ruining the view — vista — forever because he was naked before his God with his hands down at this sides but turned out towards the sea and he was beautiful and didn’t someone in the bible once dance naked before the Lord? He stood still against the San Simeon headlands and light-blue almost white sky and slowly lifted up his palms as if offering the earth and all its wonders to the waiting heavens. That was when a wave sliding from the rock back to the sea created a crescendo of seawater that an incoming wave rode until it crashed and cracked and spumed upward to the sky white sea-spray upwards upwards to shower the rock and the man praying on it who did not move but stood there in the glorious surprise of the world still and true, still and true. Shivering and surprised and completely himself in the world.
This communion was interrupted by a knock on the door that startled me and that I didn’t want to answer because it was probably the woman from next door that had enjoyed seven or eight minutes of lovemaking and was now angry. But the knocking was tentative and plaintive and I thought maybe Avi deserved a bit of privacy out on his rock under the sky so I turned from the window and walked to the door to peer through the peephole and saw the motel manager Robin who we met the day before standing outside the room. I opened the door and saw a car rush past her on the highway alongside the motel and a bottle of white zinfandel and two wine glasses that she extended with a bashful smile as she explained: “For tonight and watching the sunset. It’s spectacular.” As I took the glasses and the white zinfandel she leaned in and looked straight up at my face and said: “You’re a very lucky man.” I swear I saw a small slight wink before she pulled away and started walking as I said thank you for the unexpected gift on a morning of unexpected gifts with only a little bit of dampening coming from the voice next door. But that didn’t really matter as I set up the white zinfandel and glasses for later and went back to the window where I was tempted to find Avi again on the rock but decided to leave him alone and in peace with the ocean and sand and his God as I turned to the lighthouse and imagined its slumbering seals.
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Greg Beckman 