You and I

I often consider the use of first person in writing

and--like a man who looks in the mirror & turns away to forget what he sees--

come to no conclusions about who I am during this play of words.

Mistaken, I think that I can be this shiny trophy of phrases & clauses.

But the best avatar is the version that transcends the personal,

like Dante’s assent of Purgatory:

from the first level to the second,

from first person to second,

from pride to envy, 

a translation occurs. 

The trick of translation is the hard part,

but when the first becomes the second,

then it will be satisfactory.   

Patient*

We sit on the worn burgundy loveseat
waiting. We came to see the sonography
of our unborn child.

Casting side-ways glances
at the other couples—
I can feel their tension,
their joy.

All eyes studder-stop on the
lone figure
in the waiting room.

She fidgets & crinkles the glossy
pages of People Magazine,
her eyes glancing at pages
indifferent to the signs and signifiers—
like a cheating student—she only
sees others' answers.

My glances turn to peepshow guilt.

Her name is called. 
She responds, an antiphon.

I never saw her again
but the bulge of her stomach
made me feel as if God was in the room. 


*This the semi-finalized draft of a poem posted sometime last year.

A Draft of a Poem in Progress

Wife and I sit on the worn loveseat
waiting to see the sonography of our
unborn child.

I cast side-ways glance at
the other couples—
feeling their tension,
their joy.

The eyes studder-stop on the lone
figure in the doctor's waiting room.

She fidgets and crinkles the glossy
pages of People Magazine,
her eyes scanning pages
indifferent to the signs and signifiers—
like a grocer scanning mundane milk and bread.

My glances turn to peepshow guilt.

Wife’s name is called and we exit
together.

I never saw her again
but the bulge of her stomach
made me feel as if God was in the room.

My House

A blank piece of notebook paper—
creased and shoe scuffed,
striped-old with years like a dogwood—
contains the promise, a narrative
of a young married couple who wants kids and honesty.

But I cannot find the words to describe
the fogged window panes,
the piebald-brown linoleum,
the jagged-teethed crown molding,
the mountain fire place,
the dust bunnies behind the furniture,
the dog that pisses on the floor,
the kid that will one day play in the clothes his mom picked out for him.

There are no words to live that promise, to be that narrative.

Too much writing about swingsets.

If I could, I would burn you to the ground.
I mean it.
I would burn you down and piss on the ashes.
But you stand, a metal conduit,
between the being and the has been
between the training and steering wheel.

You are the kid with a white sheet with two eyeholes cut out to see.

But sometimes you take me high
You are cocaine metaphorized history and I am an addict

Can I ever jump out at the highest arch before gravity grabs my the waist
and pendulums me down, back, forward towards now.

Nostalgia

Talk, talk, talk, more talk.
Being with old friends is breathing memories
of forgot, remember, forget.

But all of this talk of the “old days”
is just more discourse—discursive.
Framing a life
into a fictional biography lived out
in worded-seconds, paragraphed-days, chaptered-years.

This is a muddle memory, a copy of a copy of a memory.
The breath of the past.