All we’ve talked has burned, embers smoothing silly me, impatient you — until we ease into each other to enthrall Dark.
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Tag: poems
Sea Wall with Mountain in Background
“Do you love him?”
We walk the Sea Wall.
He studies the sound,
Grouse Mountain, green-black
cross-hatch of hemlock and fir.
“No.”
“Sure?”
He talks past water
lapping round rocks,
love near water
breathing distant trees.
“Because it’s okay if you do.”
A canopy.
I love this place.
“I love that mountain.”
He loves the mountain.
Vancouver.
He loves me.
All that love.
“Two trees in a forest, eh?
You and me.”
Side by side,
friend I love;
side by side,
roots entwined.
“Yes, you and me.”
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Eternal Coast
She ate cotton candy and watched Seattle seabirds hold steady in nondescript movie-sound and almost forgot the scar he stretched around her heart before she died. Now, a thousand miles down-coast, California oceancoast, glass house above sunset sky — that’s where she’s always been, soft blanket, now, soft light — a story she likes, a dusky sea — her intransigence now just a word describing another mother, someone sad far far away.
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Two Trees
I couldn’t help it, leaving. It must be the way I’m made. They spoke God, said I'd wreck my soul with that abomination — so I chose the other tree, blue-green against the same sky, splashed its dark on my face and fell sound asleep as they raged beneath an equally good tree preparing for my salvation.
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Late-Night Lucid
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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So…what do you do? A Collection of Poems
Spend a day observing people.
Most of the time, it’ll be boring. But if we’re lucky, we’ll catch a glimpse of something we’re not meant to see. Pilots leave an apartment window open while waiting for flight attendants to arrive. We see their desperation. A man in a breezeway doesn’t think anyone is upstairs when he tries to get his dealer off his back, all while his little girl plays. The fratboy next door doesn’t know someone can hear everything — and wants him anyway. A whole political party shows its true colors.
These poems are dedicated to who we are when we’re on our own time — to the strange, laughable, heartbreaking, dangerous ways we do ourselves.
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Gene-Pool
Before his spa-crowd, the Brush-Cut endowed his words with much lamentation. “After making myself rich, strong, and svelte, they want me to give up my station.” He continued. “No one helped me crawl out of that sea! I did it with grit, nerve, and drive! Why should I cry, bring tears to my eyes, when Nature, through me, surely thrives?” More. God, still more. “Should I be cast down when dolts sputter and drown while wading in water too deep? We need to remember Life wants to dismember weak chaff from rare bits of strong wheat.” Then (you’ll love this): He let his arms soar, lifting muscles adored, standing up in the midst of The Lost — but wet shorts do slip, slide down on thin hips — and what Life rewarded...had cost. I’m not one to laugh at men — breathe — at men with toy shafts — but I wasn’t the only one present! With chortles of glee, the wrong kind, you see, we saw that his boy also...bent? Thor’s grand self-made views had been a bit...skewed — Coy Fate had decided his game; his thoughts, teeth and hair, his wants and his pair, just gods doing their thang. Now don’t cause a scene, or think I’m a queen — I’m not saying it’s all been decided! But I’m tired of “studs” nipped close to the bud pushing “FREE WILL” without being chided! So the next time you muse, “I’m Awesome! I choose!” remember Thor’s tiny “reminder”: Fate casts the tool, the job, house and school, the cool and the fool, the rule; it’s always the loud, judgmental and proud, who most need the shroud, the stage and the crowd, whose heads should be bowed — instead of being elected President.
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I’ve Tried
I’ve tried to not want my City, to make life here, far from the streets and hills and men that brought me life in such breadth that I gulped lust at every turn, bodies and books and sweet blessed fog, busses, parks, crazies four floors beneath screaming “HELP! HELP!” though there’s only a streetlamp, three-hundred-dollar theater seats steps from human defecation (it’s not pretty) — tether-bridges to windy and windy headlands and mystical beaches and sex — where to walk is to be enveloped, in love. I tried to love her instead of him, once upon a time, way back when lies meant caring, and my brain and niceness said I shouldn’t hurt anyone so I drowned Aaron in hope and went on screwing and became good at it and talked about; but each night, laying on top of her sweet and forgiving body, sculpted ballers did sweaty lay-ups in my room, in my head in me and if it wasn’t for those players, she never would’ve cum, so it seemed like it was okay. But it wasn’t. I tried Return of the Native. I tried The Glass Menagerie. Everything by Faulkner. All I wanted was Sassoon, maybe a little Woolf, but I’d lock myself in my room to read words words words, and I’d yawn yawn yawn — while A Room of One’s Own whispered slyly to Suicide in the Trenches: “He’s missed the point. “He’s really missed the point.” Sushi Streisand Dances with Wolves mango con limón my dear friend who wants to be dear so he must be but… no-fap novenas TED Talks on writing guys who aren’t built who really aren’t built who seriously aren’t built great personalities no-fap try try try John Cage no-fap “Thy will be done” Los Angeles Christianity — when all along, sweet lullaby, sleeps the not-tried, the true, until I put on a jacket against cold San Francisco freedom and smile destiny.
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YouPoem
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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Notes: San Francisco, Ruins (2018) — annotated
Sacred Space — Arrival The wrinkled woman resting in the doorway hustles aside, her bones twitching hard: “I'm sorry, Sir,” as I pull my bag into the Inn on Folsom Street1. ⥨ Exposed brick walls try hard in my suddenly empty room. Industrial. Rough-Masculine. I don’t...feel anything. I thought I’d feel something. No ghosts. Nothing. ⥨ I know the old fairies flew south years ago. No place for the Auden-faced. And the demons? Those super-charged leather dangers stalking prey in red steam? Now they cam2 from rented rooms in Sacramento and San Diego, their hunting names changed from Steve to Chase, TwinkChase3, ever-so-sweet-and- special Chase. I don't know what to pray for or to, not in this abandoned church. ⥨ Walking While Thinking — SoMa4 What if the usurpers, the influencers paying $1.9 million for a pissed piece of SoMa, are just waiting for us to die? What if these squatters, these supplanters, are the Old City’s fevered urge, lusting after land and Better Homes-ness, trading-in sweaty stories for a kid in an UPPAbaby5, the ultimate accessories? Makes sense as senses now scent safety, porning lean clean high-pitched action-figures in Lower Castro6. Everyone’s lost their balls. ⥨ Pause — Phone Call Home “Mike called,” says the man on the phone. My boyfriend. Back in LA. “What’d he want?” “Know where you were.” “What’d you say?” “Up in San Francisco. Probably getting disillusioned.” That’s why we’re at 20 years. More or less. ⥨ Exhibit — Dolores Park7 Cafe. Conversation, overheard while eating expensive steel-cut oatmeal. “And so he's interested in you finding a tenant for your property.” “Yeah, and we have so much in common!” Outside, those who can only afford the sidewalk are no-shows to the convention of web-developers and Mommy-n-Me in Lululemon8. I’m a haunted old spirit: “The best never survive.” ⥨ Walking Richmond9, after searching GG Park10 for Signs of Life. They all have money, or They have all the money. Houses high atop garage doors painted in expected candy-shop pastels. Millions couldn't buy in. But it's also an attitude; they fit. This kaleidoscopic nursery is their world. I like the sidewalk now; it’s original, the hard-marked past, bones of my city, cast when these houses were just houses, you could hear shouting because people shouted back before dot.coms and Grindr11, when bandanas12 spoke not conclusively, you had to look a guy in the eyes and the park was full of risk and joy. My world: on that older hill, the one covered in open-faced beauty and daring, weathered desire. Somewhere. Or sometime? ⥨ Processing — SFO13 A cocoon of security. We pay to pretend. You can’t pretend in bus stations. But here, I wonder with beating breathing heart: What would I do if I was asked for spare change at the United ticket counter? If I wanted a cigarette? If someone stood up and said preferred pronouns are simply an expansion of binary imprisonment? If an out-loud not-texted internet-free political need happened? Their aggrieved-teenager answer: “Is it so wrong to live unencumbered? Does everything real have to be uncomfortable?” It’s easy to get turned around by children. Now I miss their sandcastles, the peaceful playset neighborhood. Nobody who doesn’t belong wanders by. It’s nice. Just like an airport. It’s all that’s left. ⥨ Reflection — Flying, looking back San Francisco: where dreams and memory lay buried. Only ruins survive; fate has fashioned them weapons hope can’t overcome: marriage bourgeois magazines health money a future an attitude clean pecs success. But still... I look back as the plane banks for SoCal, for LA and my old boyfriend who will greet me outside third-world LAX14 and drive the stained and broken 40515 home, where books and vacuuming wait; and I see my once-home fading into a sunsetted Ocean that touches every time I’ve cared about, waiting, just waiting, and I find myself praying: Maybe you will be broken again, so like me when you led my strange and halting body through cracked unwanted lovely streets to flowers and eucalyptus, pro-offered grass in sheltered shadow and men became yours, cool-touching breeze, wounded naked-love in pine-fragranced gasping way-too-crowded dirty Heaven… I miss you. Shake off this juvenile dream. Please, God, let us be in love again.
Notes:
1 past and (somewhat) current location
of San Francisco’s gay leather community
2 interactive filming of oneself engaged in
sexual/intimate acts, either alone or with
others, for a live internet audience, in
exchange for money and/or tokens
3 unblemished young adult male, typically
between the ages of 18-20, who utilizes his
perceived innocence or actual lack of
sexual experience in the pursuit of (generally)
older adult males/“daddies”
4 South of Market; historically, the economically
disadvantaged/“seedy” section of San Francisco
5 high-end baby stroller; average cost: $850
6 once known as GayMecca, the center of San
Francisco’s Gay Liberation Movement of the
mid-1970s
7 somewhat successful example of urban
revitalization/renewal; once known as DrugPatch
Park
8 high-end workout wear favored by teen girls
and their mothers
9 neighborhood/district in the northwest corner
of San Francisco, just north of Golden Gate Park
10 Golden Gate Park; known for its Victorian-styled
Conservatory of Flowers and lengthy wooded
trails; iconic location for public sexual activity
11 dating application designed to identify and
communicate with potential gay male sex
partners; lists inclinations and availability, as
well as possible locations for sexual activity
(host, travel, public, etc.)
12 heavy handkerchief positioned in the back
pocket of gay males to communicate sexual
inclination; historically, the color and side of
placement indicated sexual appetite (eg:
hunter-green in right-hand pocket = looking
for a “daddy”). No conclusive guide existed/
exists for the placement/meaning of the bandana.
13 San Francisco International Airport
14 Los Angeles International Airport
15 also known as the San Diego Freeway; largest
connector between the West Side of Los Angeles-
proper and the populous San Fernando Valley
Just in case this wasn’t enough poetry for you, click here.
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Greg Beckman 