Shadowed carpet, stained
dark baseboards hiding behind
stacked silent pages,
dusty lamplight warms marred paint
and softens the wizened cat.
*
Tag: Greg Beckman
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.
Greg Beckman 