Poems, thoughts, and stories.
New doctors are like puppies. They have to play with all their toys and can be wildly cute. Fresh out of obedience school, all they know is rules and cutoffs; they cannot yet lay by the fire because they are the fire and have trouble being still. Old doctors, like old dogs, aren’t so eager. They know our secret heart, the love we’ve spent against coming back and smile as we wave So Long.
*
The coffee pot sticks a little to the warming plate. Sliding-glass door’s a bit rusty. I love it cracked open, lake-smell gets in, grass and summer rain, trees on the breeze — maybe the morning doves will come again. It’s good to feel stiff old shag, see stacks of books we’ve partly read, stacks and stacks. Your grandpa’s kitchen table, Ruth’s worn chair, dusty Mantovani on the player. Paintings hang crooked, curl on paneled walls, fading in memory and slow-days, that other house, the city one, already forgotten.
*
All we’ve talked has burned, embers smoothing silly me, impatient you — until we ease into each other to enthrall Dark.
*
Feel free to drop a line. Click here to email.
“Do you love him?”
We walk the Sea Wall.
He studies the sound,
Grouse Mountain, green-black
cross-hatch of hemlock and fir.
“No.”
“Sure?”
He talks past water
lapping round rocks,
love near water
breathing distant trees.
“Because it’s okay if you do.”
A canopy.
I love this place.
“I love that mountain.”
He loves the mountain.
Vancouver.
He loves me.
All that love.
“Two trees in a forest, eh?
You and me.”
Side by side,
friend I love;
side by side,
roots entwined.
“Yes, you and me.”
*
More poetry HERE.
And if you’d like a short story, click HERE.
She ate cotton candy and watched Seattle seabirds hold steady in nondescript movie-sound and almost forgot the scar he stretched around her heart before she died. Now, a thousand miles down-coast, California oceancoast, glass house above sunset sky — that’s where she’s always been, soft blanket, now, soft light — a story she likes, a dusky sea — her intransigence now just a word describing another mother, someone sad far far away.
*
More poems? They’re HERE.
And then there are the BOOKS here.
I couldn’t help it, leaving. It must be the way I’m made. They spoke God, said I'd wreck my soul with that abomination — so I chose the other tree, blue-green against the same sky, splashed its dark on my face and fell sound asleep as they raged beneath an equally good tree preparing for my salvation.
*
If you like this, try some more here.
A collection or two? See Books here.
What you discover after — after the battered “Yes, okay” to your heart’s direction — is that all of your guns that once shot enemies and fools are now trained and aimed at you. One Last Chance to apologize to recant to come home. So you write another poem as familiar bullets speed toward their mark.
*
“Quick! They’re coming for you! Call down your god!” Oh, buddy, if you only understood. My god runs towards me, bayonet in hand, trying to scare me off, see if I turn. “Some god!” Yeah. My god. As I take a run at him.
*
Like these? There’s more — all collected into a NEW BOOK! Click here!
Spend a day observing people.
Most of the time, it’ll be boring. But if we’re lucky, we’ll catch a glimpse of something we’re not meant to see. Pilots leave an apartment window open while waiting for flight attendants to arrive. We see their desperation. A man in a breezeway doesn’t think anyone is upstairs when he tries to get his dealer off his back, all while his little girl plays. The fratboy next door doesn’t know someone can hear everything — and wants him anyway. A whole political party shows its true colors.
These poems are dedicated to who we are when we’re on our own time — to the strange, laughable, heartbreaking, dangerous ways we do ourselves.
Want a sample? Click here.
More poems? Click here.
Or maybe a short story.
You remember it from somewhere: “The only place now I can hear myself think is at the bottom of a swimming pool.” So you try sitting down in the deep-alone. Soon, no more bubbles to the top; soon, eyes caressed in water’s well, arms held — strange elongated creatures above, splashing and splaying toward cement shores, over and over, eager frogs fascinated by wavy light — and you wonder whether evolution was such a good thing.
*
Stories and more — maybe even a book? Play around with the menu above.
Before his spa-crowd, the Brush-Cut endowed his words with much lamentation. “After making myself rich, strong, and svelte, they want me to give up my station.” He continued. “No one helped me crawl out of that sea! I did it with grit, nerve, and drive! Why should I cry, bring tears to my eyes, when Nature, through me, surely thrives?” More. God, still more. “Should I be cast down when dolts sputter and drown while wading in water too deep? We need to remember Life wants to dismember weak chaff from rare bits of strong wheat.” Then (you’ll love this): He let his arms soar, lifting muscles adored, standing up in the midst of The Lost — but wet shorts do slip, slide down on thin hips — and what Life rewarded...had cost. I’m not one to laugh at men — breathe — at men with toy shafts — but I wasn’t the only one present! With chortles of glee, the wrong kind, you see, we saw that his boy also...bent? Thor’s grand self-made views had been a bit...skewed — Coy Fate had decided his game; his thoughts, teeth and hair, his wants and his pair, just gods doing their thang. Now don’t cause a scene, or think I’m a queen — I’m not saying it’s all been decided! But I’m tired of “studs” nipped close to the bud pushing “FREE WILL” without being chided! So the next time you muse, “I’m Awesome! I choose!” remember Thor’s tiny “reminder”: Fate casts the tool, the job, house and school, the cool and the fool, the rule; it’s always the loud, judgmental and proud, who most need the shroud, the stage and the crowd, whose heads should be bowed — instead of being elected President.
*
Books — for readers who like real paper — are here.
Greg Beckman 