The coffee pot sticks a little
to the warming plate.
Sliding-glass door’s a bit rusty.
I love it cracked open,
lake-smell gets in,
grass and summer rain,
trees on the breeze —
maybe the morning doves
will come again.
It’s good to feel stiff old shag,
see stacks of books we’ve partly read,
stacks and stacks.
Your grandpa’s kitchen table,
Ruth’s worn chair,
dusty Mantovani on the player.
Paintings hang crooked,
curl on paneled walls,
fading in memory and slow-days,
that other house, the city one,
already forgotten.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
*
“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.
*
Like these? There’s more — all collected into a NEW BOOK! Click here!
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.
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.
*
Books — for readers who like real paper — are here.
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.
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.
Greg Beckman 