Shadowed carpet, stained
dark baseboards hiding behind
stacked silent pages,
dusty lamplight warms marred paint
and softens the wizened cat.
*
Category: Poetry in the Moment
Mind
It’s exhausting preparing for every future.
When you’re nearing 60, escaping sounds good.
A quantum jump, not the other kind.
They tell me not to think about it, but
I keep hoping I wake up in another life
so relieved there are tears
and a huge smile, reset.
It’s happened before. I was being convicted
of a crime I didn’t commit. Then I woke up!
I need it to happen again.
Maybe it will again.
It’s exhausting preparing for every future.
One of them is might be good.
They tell me to focus here:
wearing underwear again in the locker room,
or walking naked, flexed. “You got this!”
To get there means hope,
but every permutation is a possibility,
most of them breath-taking.
When am I going to wake up,
relieved I’ve escaped, a smile on my face,
reset but somehow, still here?
It’s exhausting preparing for every future.
I’m told there is no future, not really.
“It might never get here.”
The past can’t get here either.
“Not if you don’t let it!”
Nothing to plan for,
nothing to run from.
Just this Now. Always capitalized.
A typewriter. Music. Peace.
Maybe a frozen fruit smoothie.
I should have a frozen fruit smoothie.
I’ve always liked those.
It’s exhausting preparing for every future.
*
Muse
Before land
ranged his sea-storied heart,
ensnared dancing feet with steady
anthems and fence-post church:
Kaliope conjured love with spells,
doused promise with heroic truth –
onward, always onward,
worshipped and feared –
never sure, never more alive.
*
Acaustic
How
are we spotted
rubes, mediocre moles,
rheumatics, lazy-eyes, to
yearn advance rebel
strike against earth’s gross design,
this festered indignity, when
you, unaware,
lay on a couch,
eye your stunning
sex, and smile?
(For My Policeman)
*
Maker
He’s not mad, your maker.
Not angry in the least.
This was all predicted,
every bit expected –
the rebellion, the fall,
temptation, surrender –
until finally,
finally,
you took his hand
and more.
*
Letters
They put a pencil in your hand, a big fat one
made for little fingers to copy out
letters drawn around the edges of the
ceiling.
They look pretty, so you draw them again
and again, over and over,
pages and pages of letters,
and get awards for how perfectly they
fit together. Everyone is happy.
You are happy. All those letters
copied over and over again –
everything should be that beautiful –
copied until you can spell out:
"There’s no escape."
Words that belong to someone else,
generations of else’s,
carved with your fat pencil onto every
piece of paper you can find.
That’s when you stop winning awards.
*
Want to see more strange beauty? Take a look at Landing. A new novel available here.
Next
He knows
he has nothing to fear
from Court to ballot-box.
A woman-Turk-academic?
Nothing to no one, meat to
howling Christians. Beautiful.
They know –
masked ICE agents
stalking intelligence,
scenting terror:
the red-hats want this, want it bad;
make it scream, haha.
America knows
“YOU’RE FIRED!”
as the show goes on because
no one cries over spilled milk and
breaking eggs is the business
of America is WWJD. “WWJD!!!”
Rümeysa means
shining star
accomplished
graceful and noble –
next?
*
“If we lose freedom of speech, it’s never coming back.”
Elon Musk
A California-cool option for Late-Night readers…
You can read my latest poem collection, Late-Night Lucid, through your local library! For free! Through Indie California, library patrons throughout The Golden State have access to an electronic version of the book that already has one 5-star review on Goodreads. (It’s the only review; we all have to start somewhere.) I am proud to have had my work selected by an organization whose purpose is the promotion of independently published books and their authors, and am delighted that you have access to it through your local California library. Suits my ethos.
If you would like the give the ebook Late-Night Lucid a try, click here. It pops right up.
AND if you so enjoy the poems that you just need to have a copy for yourself, click here. Sometimes you just want to hold a book.
Some words on The Indie Author Project:
The Indie Author Project (IAP) is a publishing community that includes public libraries, authors, curators, and readers working together to connect library patrons with great indie-published books. IAP has helped hundreds of libraries engage their local creative community and assisted in getting almost 20,000 indie ebooks into their local libraries. Most importantly, the project has worked with top curation partners and librarians to identify hundreds of these as the best indie ebooks available to readers—so they can be sustainably circulated to library patrons with confidence.
For more information — and instructions for independent writers wondering about how to participate — click the State.
Happy reading (and writing)!
*
“Libraries are one of the few public spaces where you’re allowed to exist without the expectation of spending any money.”
Neil Gaiman
“Conversations I didn’t hear
[note: best if read on a device that preserves indentation/spacing]
“After everything he’s been through…”
“Sports’ll knock some sense into him. Teach him something.”
“He’s smart – he’ll figure it out.”
“Just don’t say anything. You always say something
and it always lands wrong.”
“Life is going to hit that kid sideways.”
“He says he wants to go to Japan. Live there.
What’s he think he’s gonna find? Big mistake.”
“Football? Right. Cheerleader more like it.”
“You’re one to talk. Exactly how many times you
land on your back?’”
“He’ll find his way. He's gonna be happy.
Gonna surprise everybody.”
“How am I supposed to raise a gay kid?”
“Maybe the swim team? Don’t they like that?”
“You love him, you horse’s ass. That’s what you do.
Every single day of your life. You love him.”
“You always defend him.”
“You’re supposed to be a teacher. Shut the fuck up.”
“You’re supposed to be his father. Act like it.”
“I’m that boy’s Grandma
and I say he’s gonna be fine.”
*
Short on time? Try a micro or four here.
No need
I wonder where my hand is in all this,
this marsh where moss floats and webs
stay put, bugs plane pond-skin unafraid
of the sleepy-eyed frog just back from the edge
and full. Here is safe and here is calm;
nothing ever happens here that wasn’t
fore-ordained, announced by ripples or
sudden silence.
It feels like death.
Happiness would be a shock.
No need.
I’ll bide my time, lay here wild,
skim this unmade life, this greenish
eden-bayou, this unfriendly not-mine
as all eventually devour this man,
whispering via mosquito-buzz:
there’s nothing you can do to stop me.
*
Quench your thirst for more poems HERE.
And in case you’re interested, BOOKS HERE.
Greg Beckman 