Poetry

I was exploding.

The thoughts came over me, and out of me; I lacked the discipline to keep up with myself. I drank heavily, forcing a cap on a high-pressure bottle. This seemed to make life easier. But only until the effects wore off; only until I awoke in that smoke-covered room, comforted only by the morning sun. I came out of the haze, pushing through a mist of circumstance and consequence, and sat behind my desk to die. These words, one by one, are killing me; but this is the only way that I know to love. To share. To spare you, and myself, the silence which would otherwise drive us all mad.

I was exploding.

Poetry.

A bomb planted in my childhood.

I am broken. Rhythm. And rhythmic rhyme.

            I am shattered stanzas, lost to time.

I am a dream

            that I fought to have,

                        (Only)

I’m too tired to fight

                        Now that I’m here.

I found out early on that the only way to make something true is to write it down; so I buried myself in soiled notebooks. I never learned how to talk to people, but my entire experience is documented.

So, when the man says to me that his son wants to be an artist

When he says that this little bastard wants to quit the football team this upcoming season, so that he can pursue a life of music

I listen.

He scoffs.

“Can you believe it?”

He’s saying.

“That shithead wants to give up his whole future, and for what?”

He’s saying.

“For fuck’s sake- he’s failing Spanish now, and passing English!”

He’s saying.

“He’ll never go anywhere if he doesn’t learn to apply himself.”

He says this to me, the sweating corpse of flaccid flesh, and he shrugs his shoulders. He says this to me as I make change for a $2 wrench and a handful of rusted sockets. He says this, and I remain composed. I’ve been working on my temper.

Inside, I congratulate myself.

“You know what he did last week? He came out of his bedroom with all of these scars on his arms. Not really scars,” he says, “more like cuts.” He snaps his fingers, tracing a thought through the void that occupies his brain, “But not fresh cuts, but not scars. Kinda scabby, you know?”

Genius, I think to myself.

I don’t blame him.

            “Scabs?”

“Yeah,” he says, “anyway- they’re all down his arm now.” He wipes his hand from his shoulder to his wrist, like a magician revealing his next illusion, and says, “All over.”

He says, “Every few inches or so.”

I don’t know why he does this- but, then again, I’ve never understood people who exploit their children for sympathy.

“I mean, how in the hell is he supposed to get a job with that shit all over him? Is he fuckin’ crazy or something?”

I couldn’t dream up a more cliché conversation for the two of us to be having. Sweat reaches out from his bloated, chaffed armpits- turning the light blue of his coveralls into black. His fingers, they’re stained with grease; they’re coated in oil from some discount bag of potato chips. He reeks of garlic, and there is a pale outline on his left hand. In the parking lot, empty beer cans rattle on the pavement around his car. The door is open. The engine is running. On the bumper, a faded bumper sticker reads Proud Father of an Honor Roll Student.

“I don’t think he’s crazy,” I say, “it just sounds like he needs help.”

The fat guy, he waves his hand in my face.

“I give him all the help he needs. I got him on that damn team to begin with. For fuck’s sake, who does he think puts that roof over his head?”

I breathe in.

            I breathe out.

I think about following him out into the parking lot and caving his head in with a tire iron. I want to watch the dark streaks of red carry gravel and cigarette butts and Styrofoam cups into the gutter. I want him to shudder against that scorching pavement, twitching as bystanders call for police; as cars squeal to a stop on the highway.

All those eyes, watching and understanding.

“Have you tried talking to him?” I slide the register closed and tear the thin slip of paper on top. I hand him his change. There isn’t anyone else in the store, and he’s sitting on a stool beside the register. I pray that it snaps, driving one splintered leg through his throat.

It doesn’t.

My heart sinks.

“There ain’t nothing to talk about,” he spits, folding his arms over his chest. “He needs to be a man, is what he needs to do. He needs to stop acting like such a pussy all the time.”

There is a revolver under the counter, and a television behind his head. I think about spraying his brains all over the news headline. The headline, it’s talking about a “war” on teen suicide. It seems apropos.

“He’s been smoking a lot of weed, too,” he lowers his voice as he says the word, despite there being only him and I in the store. So much so that I have to lean in, closer to his missed shave and desperation, just to hear, “I mean, his mom’s a police officer. She’s a police officer, and that crazy bitch is letting him smoke that shit inside of her house?”

“We knew about the drinking.”

He says.

“But I’ve never known nobody who got anywhere smoking pot.”

I want to strangle him until his eyes swell and threaten to force themselves from beneath his overgrown eyebrows. Until his swollen, greedy tongue lolls back in his throat. Until my nails, chipped from years of anxious thought, draw blood from his neck.

The man stands up, exerting himself into breathlessness as he gets off the stool. He leans against the counter as he tucks it back in. He stuffs the handful of rusted tools into his pocket.

He shrugs his shoulders.

“What’re you going to do, you know?”

And he leaves.

And I’ve been thinking about our conversation, searching it for purpose, relevance, and meaning from the security of another tattered notebook. I’ve been thinking about his son; about the violence that coursed through me in his defense, and about why I cared so much. Without much contemplation, I saw my connection to the stranger; but I’m no more capable of helping him than I was of helping myself. So I sit at my desk, dying, and thinking of poetry.

I think of all the basic literary elements that saved my own life.

I think of flashback and get nowhere.

I think of the semicolon, and of the subtle pause it gives; a subtle pause, I realize, that is sometimes meant for reflection.

 

 

I think about balled-up paper and burned up pages.

            Subtle Rages

                        That helped to get my thoughts in order.

I brush my fingers over my faded scars; a hundred tiny mounds that turn pink in the cold. I think of a bag, full of clinking bottles, stuffed in the corner of my closet. Even then, a dirty secret- a vicious truth. I think about the English teacher that saved my life, and the countless others who accused me of not applying myself.

And I thank them

The memories, and the people,

For poetry.

I learned

                        (A long time ago)

            That the only way to make something true

                        Is to write it down.

            That a smile hurts when you’re forced to fake it.

            And a bone only mends

                        when you’re forced to break it.