five

The two poems I was afraid to post have proved worthwhile. Or anyway, I have been encouraged to post them, and now that it's been about a week, I can see their merit through their flaws. Thanks to those who helped me with them. I welcome comments, good or bad.


The Life

Sometimes, people say that they were born
In the wrong time, or the wrong place, or both.

I believe my friends when they say they would be happier
In the old west, in medieval England, or in ancient Japan.

The boy who dresses in three-piece suits and carries
A pocketwatch on a chain deserves his century.

But I cannot think of a time or place where or
When I could be completely who I am supposed to be.

I fear that I was born not only in the wrong time and
In the wrong place, but in the wrong person.

That every part of my life from birth through the
Years until now has been fundamentally incorrect,

Mismatched with me, the very core of me spinning
In the opposite direction of the life I have led.

There is a version of myself that I have created,
Yet is not who I was meant to be born to be.

Someone, somewhere, got to live my life - or,
More likely, had to - without me, as unaware of me

As I have been.


An Immense and Flaming Threshing Machine

and spin, eyes closed, arms out, reaching for
nothing and finding it at every degree.
I will stop when I am pointing one and
only one direction, put one foot down, put
the other down, and walk and run and run.

And behind me I will drag a sheet of white
hot fire, no, better an immense and flaming threshing machine,
to pull up and separate what I have left behind
and then to burn it, immolate it, reduce it
to ash and to ash and to ash and nothing,

that when I look back to where I've just left
I will not have to see where I have been or
what I have done, no homes of friends or family,
no dogs or bluejays dancing, no place I've eaten hot, bare toast,
no unmade bed on which I've slept alone or otherwise.

That when I look back to where I've been
and who I was and who I wanted, or who I wanted
and wanted to be, I will not have to see
myself or my friends or lovers or enemies or
the beautiful ones who never learned my name

or who I was. I will not see
what I have lost or simply failed to gain, or
the hills and mounds of my existence in two watery eyes
or a handprint in cement or the flush of love
for me in someone else's breast.

I will not see anything at all,
except bare pastures and burnt fields,
at the base of walls of smoke and flame.
I will see only white ash, black smoke,
and red flame.