Poems, thoughts, and the occasional sexy story.
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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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.
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“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.
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He loves me here and now. Your body is there and then. I’ll never get used to time-travel.
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Lankershim Boulevard was better when Grammy took me to the Jewish Council Thrift Store to buy me an out-of-date Writer’s Market, and I looked up at her against the naked fluorescent tube lights, and wanted to write a story that would make her rich and me famous so that we wouldn’t have to shop at the Jewish Council Thrift Store again.
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There was once a time — you’ll have to trust me — when Dad would write notes for cigarettes and liquor, and off I’d go to Dales Jr. And then if I was fast, he'd give me a sip. It burned all the way down. Probably how I got so good at track.
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“I want you to stay away from that guy upstairs.” Old Shirley’s hair was frizzier than usual. She held a glass. “Something’s not right there.” “Okay, I will,” as I walked past her window down the driveway out onto Oxnard remembering how he held me to his chest and showed me I was happiness.
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Roam around the stories here. They’re pretty good.
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.
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You know that game where you walk around chairs to music? “Musical chairs?” and one is removed, leaving someone standing? “Yeah?” I’m the one left standing, looking at this dumb game, this violence-inspired mirror of the human need to hurt and wondering “Why you ever started to play?” Yeah. “You think too much.”
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Come make love with me, my friend. Show me your self, whether you’re fast or slow loud or soft — curtains opened or curtains closed — let me know, if only for a minute or more, you’re just like all the others with a few tricks up your sleeve.
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They laughed and hollered and hooted wet with fog and chop-surge-crash waves bigger than a man, danced and drank the complete sea, gods — preferred words to water-speak, whiskey to land that’s sand, dirt and dumb air beautiful against their fire — now ashes, hard poets and mechanics and bricklayers packed up, home with life, leaving slight and then no footprints for followers who hold tickets for the show and wait for something to happen.
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A story a day — saves. Find them here.
“Had she ever tried to convert any one herself?
Did she not wish everybody merely to be themselves?”
— Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
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They no longer colonize with ships. No armies arrive on my shore, war-boots in sea-water until they sink into wet sand and subdue. Too costly. And then you have to leave a force to force compliance... It’s ugly. Instead, they whisper, those enlightened who yet carry the burden of rectitude. A word, a phrase spoken through the air, taken in — and I’m lost. They no longer act; they just wait until I bow my head beat my breast seek forgiveness from gods curiously unprepared to absolve.
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If you like books, there are books here.
Poem.
Honestyinthemoment. The sketch that contains the impulse. The impulse that says YOUAREBEAUTIFUL when he’s standing next to you intheelevator, looking at his phone until he’s not looking at his phone, and all Life waits on someonetolivenotwatch him return your urge with a smileorsmirk that says thankyoufuckoff.
Not choreographed. Rehearsed. Planned. Theater.
Real. Dangerous. You.
Poem.
The spirityouwant being the spirityouare — to speak without speeching, to love without loving. No -ings. Only act, no neuteredgerunds, until you homeyourself, and the lifeyouare finds itself standing next to another life, sexy and real because you said “You’re beautiful” without try-ing, without plan-ing.
YouPoem.
No end in sight, just Cosmos and onegiantchance.
What would Life be if honestyinthemoment was you?
Poem.
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G Beckman 