Darkness as the absence, not the opposite of light (For Smiley) - A Draft

 My father, I think,

wanted to be a deliberate man.

On days when the boil in my blood near overflows

I imagine what the sensation must feel like.

These ill-humors do no one any good.

Do I blame the rain? Should I pray for the sun?

Would Heaven part for the prayers

of yet another more sinner?

Ghosts of a stern religious past

cast my lot in with theirs –

resigned, at last, to darkness.

At least there is no rain.

I think of my father.

I hope for the sun.

The floor is dirty

and dishes to be done

and obligations to fulfill

between now and moonrise

when all our dead fathers rattle their chains

and bade us revenge

this murder most foul.

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2 Poems: of journeys and nightmares (draft)

Everything feels more

Better men than me have walked this way.

If there is forgiveness to be had

first I must drop this old, bloody dagger.

Late winter bird songs 

no longer hold any secrets for me,

and the dog refuses to translate.

Erase the ash from your forehead

and be made whole.

There is no room for your squeamish social mores here.

These visions are not prophetic,

and the cat playing at your feet

is not a sign of contrition.

The dog interrupts my prayers to go outside

and chase down starlings

because dogs know instinctively

that grace does not come from over-thinking.

It makes each step a pain, like dancing on broken glass

I never thought I deserved it.

Even now, in the light of a day like this,

the first whisper of Spring,

it is difficult to accept 

the inherent grace of this hour.

There are mornings –most mornings, still –

I open my eyes and marvel I am not dead

(though my dreams would tell me different)

and I reach for you, amazed in my desperation,

that my mind simply didn’t conjure you

as a defense against this bottomless hole in my chest.

Sweet mirage, warm and soft,

let me drink deep from your waters

as you wipe away these tears.

Let me pray as you breathe life back into me

from your own sacred lips.

This journey wears on me.

The clay packed in my heels is ageless

and makes each step a pain, like dancing on broken glass.

Take your hands, remove these shards

and I shall be healed.

Soothe my nightmares and remind me

one more time

I am allowed to embrace the grace

that has placed me in your arms.

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New Fiction: Thus the congregation says

I knew something was wrong when Twila gave me the stink eye outside the student union. Divorces are difficult enough. Being young – too young, I remember my grandmother saying – made it that much more difficult. Having a three-month-old daughter made it even more so. Getting divorced while being married with a three-month-old daughter on a small college campus in Eastern Kentucky pretty much guaranteed that only Sisyphus had a more difficult load to bear.

Perverting common wisdom, a divorce has more than two sides to the story. There’s the usual… what one partner says and what the other partner says. Then there’s what really happened, which tends to be somewhere in the middle. And then there’s what everyone else says. And depending on who it is, where their loyalties lie, what their predilections are, and what their own (inevitably skewed) views on marriage are, there are any number of stories, all of which sound true enough to pass the gossip test regardless of how close to the truth it happens to be.

The usual unofficial morning kaffeklatsch of what was then called the Non-traditional Student Union was congregated in it usual corner spot in the upstairs student cafeteria. Woody, Shyla, Tammy, Jack, Ernie, Barb, Babs, and Shane were all in their usual spots drinking their usual coffee and having the usual conversations – all of which can be boiled down to how most college students have it easy. Marie and I gained entry to this group not so much because of our age, as our ages fell within what is (still) considered the traditional age, but because of our marital and parental status. Young marriages were increasingly less common in the 90’s, even in Eastern Kentucky with its sometimes self-proclaimed penchant for the traditional and the morally unambiguous. Both Barb and Babs, both of whom were products of failed marriages forced by cultural shotgun, applauded our decision not to resort to sin by partaking of marital fruits outside the sanctity of the marriage bed. Tammy, Shyla, and Twila didn’t say that in so many words, but Twila – who was a grandmother with granddaughters who hadn’t headed the words of Jesus since being baptized Old Regular Baptist style in a coal sludge dirty creek at the age of seven – demonstrated her clear approval by speaking often about how she wished her Becky and Sue had inherited some stiffer moral fiber like me and Marie.

Ernie, Shane, and Jack had no opinions on the topic. Or at any rate they didn’t express any openly. Woody asked me once when none of the others were within earshot – with no small amount of incredulity, I might add – how I could saddle myself so young when there was a campus full of beautiful young girls to occupy my time. Jack kept his own counsel about anything that didn’t involve the NCAA and Ernie, who was trying to be a writer, mostly talked politics.

Shane never said anything at all. But since I knew he was the guy Marie was currently fucking, I felt like I knew what his opinion was on the subject of marriage.

The group fell silent when I approached. When I sat down everyone but Ernie and Jack moved their chairs back a little… not like they were making more room but like they were afraid that whatever was wrong with me might rub off.

Ernie eyeballed the women carefully before uttering a neutral welcome.

What’s going on, he asked.

Not a thing. Just waiting between class.

Barb made a harrumphing sound and Babs just shook her head. Jack nodded at me, the way men sometimes do to show solidarity right before the bombs fall and its every man for himself.

I tried making conversation, though I didn’t much feel like it. I wasn’t sleeping and even the copious amount of drinking I was doing wasn’t helping.  Going to class was more an exercise of habit than purpose at that point and my professors treated me with increasing levels of shock, annoyance, or unsympathetic pity. I wasn’t doing anything. But I still made it to class. I was still working, if for no other reason so I could give money to Marie for Rhea. After we split up she moved out of the trailer we shared and in with a friend to help defray expenses. I was staying with friends who would ensure that, if nothing else, there would be beer and tater tots to eat and who could give me a ride to campus.

Barb made another harrumphing sound. You don’t need to be here drinking coffee like you have friends here, she said. You need to go and take care of your daughter.

Babs, Tammy, and Shyla all nodded and vocalized their agreement with Barb. Ernie and Woody shrank back into their chairs. Jack shook his head and kept his eyes on his coffee. Shane sat there rubbernecking and waiting for the actual carnage. It didn’t take long.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Barb went on, thoroughly encouraged by the congregation present. Your wife and daughter are living up in some shack with no electricity because you threw them away. And here you sit like you deserve to be around civilized people.

That wasn’t what happened. I knew that. Marie knew that. I’m pretty sure Shane, as amused as he was with the show, knew, too. The only thing that was true was that I left. The arguments and accusations, the yelling and recriminations by both Marie and me weren’t anyone’s business. The misery we’d inflicted on another wasn’t anyone’s business. And it wasn’t anyone else’s business whether Marie or I were screwing anyone else. I wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that the marriage was over, that my daughter would grow up never knowing her parents as being a married couple. It didn’t matter that nothing in my experience had prepared me for that level of failure – not that anything does, really. But I didn’t even know any kids with divorced parents when I was a kid. My parents were happy. My friends’ parents seemed happy. That was what I expected when I got married, for all of the right reasons. And in spite of what Twila thought, it wasn’t to stave of immoral carnal lust. I was in love… or I thought I was, anyway.

But none of that mattered. Just like it didn’t matter that I had just seen Marie and given her money and asked if she needed anything. No, she said, like I insulted her dignity. We don’t need anything from you.

If there was any real justice in this evil world, Barb intoned, someone would take you out to a deserted holler and show you how we treat men that abandon their babies.

The congregation was silent. So was the entire cafeteria. Ernie and Woody refused to look at me. Jack met my eyes briefly and I knew he knew what was what. But he also knew, like I did, that no amount of words would change anything. Sometimes you take your beatings whether you think you deserve it or not.

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Poem (Draft 2): Fourth Sunday of Advent

On the seventh day we crucify our fathers again.

Whole landscapes of past generations impaled and wasted,

left out to feed our carrion overlords.

In the city and in the town all our best known haunts are dismembered

and the attending memories subject to excruciating mastication

with a sprinkle of Potter’s Field ash

and a dash of an orphaned grandson’s tears for flavor.

This week’s prayers fell shy of their projected outcomes.

The analysts in the front row sell short and exit quickly after the benediction.

By noon we have beatified our mothers –

especially during football season.

Fourth generation redacted anti-feminists replace

mascara with face paint, while the grandmatrons make sandwiches

and mutter sweet incantations against the damnation of their granddaughters.

Commercial breaks sell the wonders of a Central American vacation

while the ghost of Cortez nibbles on what’s left of Zihuantanejo after the fall of Ixtapa.

Eight pesos and an American flag will get you

your very own native bellboy to teach English

and ritually savage in the name of civilization.

By five in the afternoon we seek resurrection in eyes of our children.

Monday means the beginning of Christmas Break

so we will have to continue the fertility sacrifices in January

under the cover of snow and darkness. New year. New tests. Fresh meat.

They show no interest in the old bedtime stories

so we decree and mourn the world’s decay.

Projections for Generation X were high but fell shy.

School counselors retired quickly

and snuck out the back exit hidden in the janitor’s closet

carrying bootlegged bottles of rum and leftover empty promises.

A new prospectus on the up and comers is circulating –

potentially high profit margin, but not without considerable loss.

Oh well. Perverting a mother’s common wisdom,

you can’t make a society without breaking a couple of skulls.

Let them watch the news in case our bedtime stories work better,

and pray we will not be forsaken next Sunday.