Brief and Tedious

(or fragments from an unfinished life)

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1977 (Epigenetics)

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They settled in Miami

Found a cockroach motel

With kidney-shaped pool

 

Tuna dinner straight from cans

Swiped from the diner shelf

After the boss left

 

Said fish made that girl smarter

Science (and the now-grown baby)

Yeah, we beg to differ

 

Dumb, friendless, unafraid

Bred her in isolation

Sun! The consolation

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1978

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DaVinny

Divinity

Vinny DaVinny

Another schemer with bambinos

Chasing riches in a chain restaurant

 

1979

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Shuffle off to Buffalo

Whisper through glaciated streets

Dad pulls boat of car

To hospital curb

Babe rides home in arms

First-born makes room (sent to back?)

For blond, radiant boy

Smile so winning

Melts loneliest winter

 

1980

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I won't ask if you worked at Fridays

Or if you let me taste wings

I won't ask you if I liked them

Or if I crinkled my face

At the heat

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1981

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It's snowing.

A winter event.

Plows will take care of things.

Life will go on.

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1982

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Grandma had an organ in the blue room

No one ever went there

Upstairs we had crocheted bedspreads

Miss Weather colorforms

And a giant doll's head

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1983

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Billy and Tori lived in the other side of the duplex

We played

Billy was a sadist and Tori was a crybaby

But they were neighbors

So we played

We lost a hamster

It died in the walls between our houses

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1984

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Sandy and I played office

Laureen introduced me to Grease

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1985

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Always loved the music

My beat

never followed

the instructor

Went in for my recital

with my costume

Torn asunder

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1986 Hypervigilante (for G.S.)

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This eager smile means I do not trust you, but, still, I want to know exactly what you want. Because I do not know exactly what I want. I do not know what I want. Exactly. Still.

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1989

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We were playing Joust

the video game

 

You walked over to the tv

pushed the knob back in and the screen went dark

 

We stared blankly at the dot in middle of the screen

watched the speck grow smaller

a star gone out

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Our eyes grew dead

as the rage pooled in our veins

And we waited for the the growl

the grab

the toss

the shove

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2017

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Having a Ginger Ale with You

is even more fun than going to the Lookout, the Tea House, dinnertime, or heading down to the Stilliguamish.

or finding myself lying facedown in a corner after a morning of bad writing.

partly because your eyes are bluer than the waters of St. John

partly because your shirt has a bear on it,

partly because of my infatuation with you, partly because of your infatuation with almonds

partly because of the pillowy drifts of fir needles that float in the breeze to the ground below

partly because of the way my laugh bellows when you made a sly joke, when I refuse to stifle my enjoyment of humor

It’s hard to believe that when I’m with you that there can be anything as dangerous as a nettle waiting to strike your skin,

they can’t get us again as we trudge indelicately through brambles and thickets. We will never smack the other in the eye with a thorn, and if it did happen, we wouldn’t tell every relative about it

In the cool shade of the forest, we find patches of sun, and sticky sap leaves a brown residue on my shorts, and you tear your piece of gum in half and give some to me.

 

I look at you and would rather hear your voice than all the songs of the world, except possibly for Going to Georgia

And I can listen to that anytime on my computer. Won’t you come and be in motion again with me?

It’s the most extraordinary thing in the world.

The fact that you write so beautifully more or less takes care of Imagism

Just as at home I never think about In a Station of the Metro

Or at a workshop a single poem of John Donne or Chaucer that used to wow me

And what good does all the emotion of the Confessionalists used to reveal when they never got the right person to sit beside in a treehouse as the day drifted on

Or for that matter Billy Dee Williams when he didn’t pick the lady as carefully as the brand

It seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience

Which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it.

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2018

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The lives that could have been and the ones set before me that never should be.

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2019

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The deluge

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