Shadowed carpet, stained
dark baseboards hiding behind
stacked silent pages,
dusty lamplight warms marred paint
and softens the wizened cat.
*
Category: Uncategorized
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.
Ashley B on ICE as Slave Patrols
My takeaway: “Gestapo” says over-there; “Slave Patrol” says oh, no, right here, right now, just like it’s always been.
Streets of Minneapolis (Springsteen)
I thought Facebook. I thought Instagram. And then I thought an anthem like this should find a home with me. So I’m making one.
Sing. Remember. Name. Fight any way you can.
More have died than we know.
Precious
Sarah Everhart sat on the floor of the produce section peeling an orange. She recognized the little girl who ran up to her, tears soaking her puffed face.
“My momma won’t get up,” the little girl blubbered. She could barely breathe.
Sarah shrugged as she dropped torn pieces of orange skin. Wailing and prayers rose from frozen foods to toilet paper. Ron Jackson gripped his wife Loretta’s hand like she was going to drop too. They ran out of the store together.
Doesn’t know the bed she’s been roughing up, Sarah thought. “Maybe I’ll say something.”
Half the store, dead, this time around. Here one second, gone the next.
Sarah shook her head.
“Momma!” The girl’s red cheeks stretched out. “Momma!” It was quite a spectacle.
Rolling the skinless orange around in her hand, Sarah leaned forward and said: “Your momma done deserved every single thing she got. Everything. Same with your daddy. Now run along.”
Mimi Needleman rushed up to the now not-crying surprisingly calm little girl and pulled her away. “You are evil, Sarah Everhart. Evil! Saying that to a little girl!” She turned her attention to the child, who was eyeing the orange-eating woman curiously.
“Don’t you worry, Precious. You just keep to the Lord and He will save you from your momma’s suffering.” Mimi Needleman started to cry. “Just keep to the Lord. Now come along. Come along now.”
Sarah smiled as she ate the last bit of orange and listened to the wailing song. “Damn fools. Only think ’bout who’s gone, never do think ’bout why they left behind.”
Then she laughed out loud, right there on the floor of the produce section.
That sweet devil with the tear-flooded face?
“Tiny bitch is gonna wait long, long days ‘fore she gets called home.”
*
And if you really like stories, check out Splinter in Books.
Two Dramatic Poems
We're in it now. Walkers and wipes from here till the end. People will say "How wonderful they take care of each other." People will say "They have each other." Smiles will barely mask pity as I become your good deed. I don't think I'll care about good wishes. I'll be grateful for you, I hope, in-between bouts of awareness. You'll love me until I die, and then love me more until you smile for the time I was once whole – when there was no walker, no wipes – when we thought death was the worst, some far-off place, some mirage.
We thought we'd escape –
took long walks across the bridge
and ate food, fun food, hamburgers.
I took stairs two and three at a time,
and you attracted guys in the showers,
just washing yourself you attracted life.
Jealous old men shot proverbs:
"Enjoy it while your can."
"Things that don't go wrong before
fifty...do after. Beware!"
Pity crossed our lips but we stood sure
age was someone else's war,
someone else's ward,
the cost of ignorance.
Choice.
Never bad luck.
Never true.
Now everything we do is timed.
Weighed. Purposed.
My body isn't mine anymore
though I placate it with spinach
and cardio and porn.
He's tending toward home,
breaking me into the grave
slowly, surely,
ready to lay down
as I conjure stairs
taken two or three at a time
and showers, those showers,
filled with beauty,
mine for a few minutes more.
*
There are books. Such books. Click here.
And if you like poems, click here.
Greg Beckman 