I was unlocking my bike in front of the gym last week when I struck up a conversation with three young men also at the bike rack. The guys were friendly and curious, and we swapped tails of bike tours, backgrounds, and general outlooks on life —outlooks that, by virtue of us all being astride bikes, were fairly aligned. I let one of the guys use my frame pump to fill his tire and he accidentally bent its shaft. He felt bad and asked for my number so he could replace the pump. The next day, he sent a text inviting me to an open mic at his house the following Wednesday (yesterday), and in keeping with my oblique approach to shifting behavioral patterns, I suggested I would attend. When Wednesday rolled around, the host texted me again with an invite. And while I had several reasons not to go, none of them were particularly valid, especially in light of my stated intention of being more open, so I went.
The event was at the guy’s house where he lives with five other young men, who effectively run the place as an intentional community. By the time performances began, about 40 people were in attendance. Because I was planning to leave early to get to bed at a reasonable hour, I ended up being the first of 22 people to perform.
I read two poems I wrote almost 20 years ago, long before children, divorces, professional calamities, and other accouterments of adulthood. In fact, I wrote them when I was the age of many of the event’s attendees. Despite their antiquity and the treasure trove of trauma I amassed in the last two decades, the poems still have strong resonance with me —of the need to maintain a sense of urgency about life, of the forces that prevent being present in our lives, of the power of poetry, which can express in a few words what I usually cannot explain in volumes of prose. It was a treat to revisit these poems and to give them an audience. I hope to write and read more poetry in the future. In the meantime, here are the poems I read last night.
Just Gone
A hissing ear
Insisting on chance
Of the remarkable
And awake…
And I,
I Sleep as
Though
Unaware.
I’ve sat with fate,
Tugging his ear
Marooned in
Lazy groves,
Clouded with youth
Too foreign
To dare.
A cherry-ripe morsel
I’ve yet to taste—
“I’ll come back” I say,
But where
Is that sticky juice pulped
Is that chance unsquandered?
But I’ll dump all these promises
For one cold act.
Since possibility is death,
And thought’s a mine
Lying around
With little grasp of time.
And for all the You’s—
The vague victimizers,
I won’t deliver promises
No future sighs for deeds undone
No untouched caches
Waiting to deploy.
Not for you, not for me.
I’ve reasoned
Long enough
To know
When not to know
To see
That all these chances
Blazing and bright
Are perhaps
Not so infinite after all.
Tense Imperative:
Start
Move
Don’t
Lie
Sing
Cry
Break
Start
Race
Go
Don’t
Breathe
Don’t
Stop
Do
Fit
Follow
Take
Run
Don’t
Stop
Strive
Step
Win
Take
Go
Don’t
Stop
Get
Grow
Move
Maintain
Don’t
Stop
Go
Rise
Shine
Don’t
Crack
Smile
Laugh
Play
Don’t
Break
Don’t
Release
Don’t
Stop
Go
Song of the day: