Category: Poetry in the Moment

Learning to Spell

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
Spirit says: “Your words create 
your world. Shoot for the stars.”

I say: “I’m 17 again...
only this time, this time!
I’ll go straight to the SavOn
(remember those?)
and buy hair-clippers to 
shave my back and chest and arms
(I can handle the chest and arms
but I’ll have to find someone to
do the back – maybe Grammy, 
she always seemed to know
what direction I was headed). 
I’ll work out and run with my shirt
off, and then when I see Jason
at the Dales Jr. liquor store
and he gives me those eyes I’ll
ask him if he wants to go to
Carney’s to get food and he won’t
take his beautiful eyes off my
hunky arms and chest.”

Spirit says: “Don’t say will. Say Am. 
BTW, he was already into you. Why shave?”

So I say this: “Okay, wait. 
Maybe just the back. 
Maybe that’s the way Jason and I 
become friends because he is already 
giving me those deep blue eyes
in class, so I don’t think he 
minds clipping my back as we talk
in French and he tells me I’m 
smart and I tell him ‘Let’s go get
food at Carney’s’ because I’m an
idiot, but then I see I’m being an idiot 
so I give him a kiss and we roll around 
for an hour or two until his Dad gets home
and we race to get dressed before he
comes upstairs laughing because
he already knows.”

Spirit says: “Don’t say MAYBE.
If you’re sure, it’s happening.”

Happening? 
What did happen?
Forty years happened. 
Life happened. Death happened.
Dave. Hmmm.

So I say this: “I’m 17.  I’m at 
Dales Jr. I’m skinny and hairy and 
think I might be gay but I don’t know
because I’m scared of all the prostitutes 
over in Santa Monica and it’s 1986 and 
there’s AIDS and no one to talk to.
I’m buying Jim Beam for my Dad and
run into Jason. His hair is perfect
eighties, swooped back and free. 
We talk. We’re shy. I want to kiss.
He leaves after waving goodbye.
He doesn’t want to go.
I float home and have a drink with
my Dad. He says there’s something
different about me. I say nothing.
But I know how I feel.”

Spirit pauses: “That’s what happened.
Those were terrible years.
Jason broke your heart. Badly.
Why go through all that again?”

I can hear hope in his voice.
He only wants me to say what’s true.

So I speak truth.

I say: “Why mess with perfection?
What I want to know is:
will I remember any of this? 
It’s been wild so far! 
Wait!
Don’t tell me! 
I don’t want to know!”

Spirit says: “Good answer.”
He laughs as I fall asleep.

Such a bastard. 
But a good bastard.

*

Just a suggestion: check out more in Poems. Tap here.

The Way To Become Unjealous

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
Think of your favorite porn star,
the one with the big pecs and fabulous
smile (you know the one),
wiping his ass after taking a shit.
Way more than four squares,
more like forty because
it was a messy morning,
what with the viagra and 
laxatives.

Think of him getting off the toilet
and jumping into the shower,
frustrated, behind schedule,
because it’s just easier to let the
water wash all that shit down.

Suddenly, do you see his flat feet?

*

Mind

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
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.

*

Letters

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
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

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
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…

~ Greg Beckman ~ 1 Comment

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