Roger’s City and Alpena
The sunrise side
Of cold, cold mourning
Head down, no warning.
Mists of Huron
A grip so soft
yet so unrelenting.
What lies of
Beautiful dreams
Do you have for me now?
What passion
Can you wrench from
Me so as to mock
The salt that I am
And you,
You, Huron, are not.
Never have you turned
Around, never has
Regret found you;
Above sin, above passion
Like being in love
With a marble
Statue.
And I love you.
Sincerely, I do.
Steel Water
I now know much, my love,
Your hands still strong but less safe in my mind.
Your steel gray gaze always focused on the distance
I now know much my love, and yet
My reality remains undefined but soon explored.
Often you left to roam so great an unknown as me.
Your strong, rough hands upon my hair,
Your gray-eyed gaze focused on my face
Often you left me to make
Known the unknown and me a lesser certainty.
Weeping and lonely through
Childbirth and longing you left me and us.
Your hand upon the great wooden wheel
Your feet firmly planted on waves of fresh water steel,
I know you, my love, along with storm and churning sea.
I know your love for what is vast and not tamable;
Ice in September, shipwreck in November.
Buffeted by howling wind, your back straighter
Only I am frailer; My ghost upon the shore
Longing for more now than you and your steel water gaze.
Now sit upon your chair, solid on rocky shores,
Sand in your shoes, the wind softly upon your neck and chin.
Make the mistake of me safe within my grave
Smile a thin satisfied line.
My love, look upon who I am and do not recognize
Your ghost, your Steel Water
In heavy heated August I freeze the blood of men.
As flesh and blood I was a wisp of mist
At death a ghost without a properly mourned grave,
As a crashing wave, now your proper lover.
Come one last time, challenge the ‘she,’
In the vast freshwater sea.
Come one last time to steel ice, steel wind
to clarify that I am the reality of what men love best,
that which drowns and screams down their death.
The Sands of Hell
What small provision can I make you?
Can I tell you I once believed God a being?
Some vast and eternal lover of men and despiser of women?
I kept the second idea deep within me and watched men from a distance.
I feel no tenderness even when I stumble upon the sign of peace
Within the Mass.
I see only a duty to acknowledge that sweetness exists
But not for this life.
The demons have been cast out of me numerous times, traveling the sands of hell.
When they’ve had enough, they return and give me the same.
The issue with me is want which turns into pain and I’m tired.
Yes, of causing pain no matter how often I try to talk only of the peace of rain
The cold of early spring, the heated colors of autumn, and
The ice formations along Superior’s shore.
Why can’t you love words, argue poetry, start with an event, move to place and
Grasp understanding? The concept is not mine but that of medieval poetry
And courtly love which hides the attraction to edify the world and respect privacy.
One more time, one last time, come with me to see the ghosts of Huron,
Weep over the wrecks, feel the labor of silent men and women in a world
That doesn’t pretend to know, yet strives to understand.
I don’t know what else to do but gaze at stars, talk to God Who bewilders me
Yet woos me knowing I am still fighting isolation,
That hell will soon pass.
An Escape
I often wonder if suppression is not my bailiwick.
I hate the vague; I hate words when used to hide crystalline understanding and thought provoking description. Find the damn words! Search for the rest of your life, write thick wordy dribble until the correct combination releases frustration; refuse wordlessness. Describe the time, the age and hang on to the sound and syllable. From experience I can attest that the search breathes life into the word or words sought after into a living, organism often called sanity.
Warning; don’t drift off into meditation. Grab a thesaurus. Damnable things really but if used improperly a thesaurus serves a purpose that the sickos who thought of such a cheat never dreamed. Pay for the subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary and sort it from the 19th century on down and believe you are doing the world a great service because a dictionary will slow a person down, engage the mind and distract it from its own self aggrandizement.
The salt softening Mediterranean wind buffeted her hair into a sexy just-out-of-bed look. I can summon the self-satisfied smile she gave me. To her credit she enjoyed being sexy, even beautiful and took pains to maintain her appearance. During sex when I knew that the groans and pushes shuddering through her slender muscular body pulsated from her physical appetite my mind cleared momentarily and by ego induced thoughts, podded from pride, I had some of the most damnable ideas.
Brief thoughts bounced into my consciousness; it was my body, my ingenuity even my bank roll that caused her to do such acrobatic things on my behalf. Afterward when she walked about naked chatting to her mother in Provo Utah, I plummeted in shame. She was a high-class hooker, and we both knew it, the only one who didn’t know it was her doe-eyed mother who believed every monosyllabic word she said.
In twentieth-century writings (I won’t say literature, I’ve come down a few steps from self worship and cultural pride) I connected with all the pokes and jabs at the Roman Catholic Church. I agreed with critics of the Catholic teachings and traditions regarding sexual morality. Now, well into my sixties, I think of my strict Catholic schooling which left me with a vocabulary, a diligent work ethic and the ability to forge a lucrative way in life. My parents thought it very important that I succeed and have plenty of money; they worked hard, did without and sacrificed. Where did that lead me? I’ll tell you; In my junior year in college at a state-run university known for producing great twentieth-century minds my parent’s diligence left me wondering why they bothered with the archaic Mass. The real presence, the Holy Rosary, the adoration chapel were too simple an answer to complicated questions. Besides, I was in a hurry.
Then my parents died.
Then I aged and found passion harder to find in women of my age and then in a moment of weakness I was saying ‘I do’ to an Amazon in the county courthouse. Her vows wrapped around me like ice cold chains. I glanced over at her mother, just six years older than me. She didn’t seem the type to raise a daughter capable of committing herself in marriage for financial stability, the opportunity to travel and the sureness of relaxing nights by the fire while I worked late. The things my bride said to me on the night we consummated our wedding, her plans for the future to keep me young and virile exposed me, pulled my joints loose metaphorically and from that night forward I collected old dictionaries.
My wife’s lack of vocabulary was paralyzing me. No bread. No wine. No heady aromas. No clench within my chest when humbled by her practicality or attempts at empathy ever occurred. Her concise, often repeated and well-pronounced verb drenched sentences left me knowing what she would say before she finished a thought.
Not everyone can grab the right word. Not everyone can understand the effort. Not everyone can stand the cold dunk of proverbial water that searching for meaning often takes.
There is an island within the vast freshwater seas of the Great Lakes that I love. Early in my career I saved diligently and bought a piece of property there. I built a simple home, not large and I go there as often as I can to read to my wife. I can see my younger self there smirking over the clever jibs and jabs that old school tradition deserved from a culturally superior world. Oh, the eye rolling I did and the clucking agreement I spoke to no one there when young. Oh, the pathetic pride I felt some clever writer summed up the stupidity of faith and waiting; now the place echos with the classics.
On our third anniversary I told her I wanted to surprise her and brought her to the island; it charmed her. When I stripped down naked in front of her, my actions aroused her. When I chained her to the bed, she was my slave. When I left her there screaming inarticulate and shocked I felt as a professor hoping for more from a spoiled and pampered student.
Try to understand I didn’t reject her, it was an escape.
The Girl Who Rides the Bus Sees and Hears Everything
She is well known on the bus–actually on the entire route. Her whispers are audible but in no way distinguishable. Most think it a shame because she isn’t bad to look at, though one old man called her “some big fat girl,” early one morning. She bumped into the seat he was perched upon and it annoyed him. She didn’t do it on purpose. He was a wiry old man, who had fought cancer twice and won, obviously but he had no patience with anyone from the overweight to obese– “they were killing themselves, and costing society a fortune,” he said to the entire bus in his high pitched, sick-old-man voice.
She whispered his words and no one could tell.
Her hips were wide and her arms thick, her skin smooth and her eyes clear–Biblically clear, like the Song of Solomon poetry no one reads anymore. The passengers looked at the old man with disdain while she whispered in her seat.
She whispered into the window the entire route that day; after being dubbed the “some big fat girl.” The driver gave the old man dirty looks until he got off at the mall to walk his hour and a half for his health’s sake.
“Old coot,” said the bus driver, but she wouldn’t look up and give him the half smile he was used to. She continued to whisper.
No one knew why she whispered or why she felt compelled to ride the bus all day long. She always had the right amount of money and a packed lunch and she rode the bus until evening, getting off here, boarding there and whispering despite the time or weather.
Maureen always said good morning to her and sat down in the forest green bench seat just ahead of her. Maureen worked uptown and loved to talk on her phone. She called her mother on the ride to work and her sister on the ride home. She would discuss dinner plans and what she would do with lottery money if she won. Maureen never thought of whispering into her phone.
Alex was too afraid to drive in the city, so he took the bus everywhere. He told the driver one day that he’d someday rent a car and take a drive out into the country, maybe along the Wisconsin coast line, just to see what it was like and then he would sigh when the sky scrapers blocked the sun from the windows.
Stephanie always boarded the bus at 3:30. She had to make sure she had time to change into her work clothes before she got to work–once she told the girl that whispers she had forgotten her underwear and had to go commando while waiting tables–she couldn’t walk straight for a week. The whispers that week hiccupped up and down when Stephanie took her seat for her ride into work.
Davy scowled no matter what, so she whispered low so he wouldn’t lose his features on the floor. Her whispers annoyed Davy. He was sure she was spying on him and teleporting his superhuman abilities to the enemy that would soon take over this wicked world. Then they would all be sorry that they hadn’t taken care of Davy. Davy could have saved them–buy why bother with such a clueless bunch.
The old man who called her ‘some big fat girl’ never rode the bus again. Never.
She whispered the day back into herself and took on the pain both felt and unfelt and when she disembarked the bus, the driver would watch her for as long as he possible but he could never tell where she ended up or the stories she might tell.