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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Category: #poems
Sea Wall with Mountain in Background
“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.”
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More poetry HERE.
And if you’d like a short story, click HERE.
DayDream
I imagine you shocked at my lifeless body, dead on the floor, carpet stained with me. You don’t believe it. You think I’m playing. I’m not. It dawns on you I’m over. I hear your no no no, just like you did when the dog died in your arms — see tears slide down your abandoned face, feel your torment love confusion hate. I miss you more than my self, know the price of life is death, pay the cost of love with loss… just as customer service asks for my credit card.
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Want something a little lighter? Explore more poems HERE.
And yeah, there are books. Good books HERE.
Shimmering
I tried to run just like them, the gods of track whose ankles worked as they shimmered before crowds, High School Heroes of ambitious dimension. I plodded desperate for legs, then arms, then breath up the curious street of my youth. My feet slapped ridiculousness as wild elbows jabbed wildly at dreams I didn’t fit — lungs wheezed vapid sissy-fire before an incredulous emptiness — I bent without a friend, alone on the side of the road, and thought: “Speedos are way-sexier than this!”
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There’s more. Just click HERE.
Sailing from Salem
The desperate horde hanged the mighty witch high — as she watched from behind, laughing, musing: “If I’m as mighty as they say, and so well-versed in dangerously Dark Arts, do they really think — can they really believe — this is over?” And so the mighty witch swayed in nature’s caress, seeding her folk with everlasting consequence before moving to California.
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There are STORIES, too — HERE.
Eternal Coast
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.
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More poems? They’re HERE.
And then there are the BOOKS here.
Yes, Brother
When I ab and sunglass, trim, talk low-and-slow — pose an aging, faithful body against sunning sand and waves, breathless for perfection’s attention, I know: Brother, you’re not for me. When I’m empty, yet still scrape this darkening shell for one more acceptable pearl; when I pray dimmed sea-light and dusky stars right my crooked face, I know: Brother, you're not for me. But if on this patient winter’s beach we wander from books to pasts, honor quiet scars and funny ignorance, sandy jeans, faded flannel shirts warm against the LA cool; cheap beer; if you ask for another, eyes still on the page, and laugh a bit at my dancing disbelief: Brother, my answer is yes.
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Poems, the good ones, are small stories. See other stories here.
Two Trees
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.
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If you like this, try some more here.
A collection or two? See Books here.
Descent
Sylvia’s ceiling was glass. She could see armed men perched above with orders to shoot anyone whose parts didn’t protrude. But that’s not how she fell into an oven. That happened when she realized, as all thinkers must, that thought itself is their enemy — not sex, not sin, but a single word: Why?
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Any Day
The phone vibrates twenty-seven times between Beowulf and lunch. I snap each time. Students always know. They look at me carefully, compassionately. I dial the number. Wait. “What, Mom?” Labored intake: “Took you long enough.” She says the chicken’s spicy. She says she’s always alone. She says no one cares if she lives. She is my dying mother. I listen, stare at the wall, wait for the tears to subside. Beowulf. He had it easy. Monsters and a dragon? Any day.
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G Beckman 