AND THE SLAM GOES UP IN SMOKE

photo by Nerval, from the English Wikipedia Project


God, I’d like to take
A big drag on a cigarette –
It’s been so long.

Remembering the night
I stormed out of
The slam, sat at
The bar and filled my lungs
With burning menthol
I’d just bought
From a machine.

And the black dude
Who had read the homophobic poem
And got the huge reaction
That drove me out of the room
Came up and stood next to me
With no idea who I was,
To get a drink,
And I just answered his hello
Like it was nothing,
Thinking maybe I should even
Offer him a blowjob
Just to blow his mind.
And Randy, the slam organizer,
Sidled up to me
And said, “I didn’t think you smoked,”
And I spat out, “I don’t,”
And left, and never came again,
Boycotting
The damn slam
Forever.

Smoke
And the memory of smoke
Have teeth for me.
The word
“Slam”
Has more than one meaning.

Later, I’d explain
The how and why
Of my perpetual new absence.
But for now,
I’d suck the fumes
That killed my father
And march out into the night,
A private kind
Of Pride Parade.

Only the taste of smoke
Is a fond memory,
A measure of defiance,
Doing something
That is not
“Normal”
For me.


-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey


All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any way without the author's written permission.

A SCRUFFY IRONY

(Old Beggar, by Louis Drewis, 1916)

I dress for comfort.
Sometimes, I forget
To shave.
Sometimes, I’m mistaken
For a bum -- even by people
Who know better,
Who have seen and heard
My work, if not
Appreciated it.

A local art gallery hostess,
Who’s been often
Rude to me,
Now cringes, fearful,
Should I pass her
On the street.
So I’ll glare at her
To add to the effect.
Frankly, it tickles me
A little – the absurd
Assumptions of
Her tiny mind.

What we lack in wealth,
We make up in
This power given to us
From a distance
By our disenfranchisers.
Since it’s about fear,
This is some sort
Of advantage.

As for the so-called “powerful”
Who rule so-called
“polite society,”
Those of us whose calls
They’d smugly not return
Can stalk them
Through dark alleys
In their dreams –
The demonized
At last
Supreme, at least
In certain situations.


-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey

All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any way without the author's written permission.

X AND Y

It horrifies you that I tell the truth
Because you look much better in a mask.
You’ve worn that mask since early in your youth.
It horrifies you that I tell the truth
When you’d prefer the gleaming photo booth,
And how it lets you look just as you ask.
It horrifies you that I tell the truth,
Because you look much better in a mask.

My view of you creates embarrassment,
Because I can’t blur certain features out.
Your soul wears earrings. I see where you’re bent.
My view of you creates embarrassment.
You wish you were a straight line, and you meant
To smirk, but all you managed was a pout.
My view of you creates embarrassment
Because I can’t blur certain features out.

If only I were not born to describe.
If only I could learn to shut my mouth.
But then, I couldn’t serve you the sweet bribe.
If only I were not born to describe,
To testify, to witness for the tribe.
But then I couldn’t kiss you North and South.
If only I were not born to describe.
If only I could learn to shut my mouth.

You’ve moved along. I’m sure you miss my skills.
You couldn’t stay and risk being exposed.
I take a sip, and swallow my nerve pills.
You’ve moved along. I’m sure you miss my skills;
I pleasured you. But talking, talking kills.
My mouth kept moving. So your door was closed.
You’ve moved along. I’m sure you miss my skills.
You couldn’t stay and risk being exposed.

To see you now, I’d have to close my eyes.
But I’d still see you stripped of your disguise.


-- © 2009 by Jack Veasey


All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any way without the author's written permission.


This one is a sort of hybrid of petry forms. I used the triolet for the stanza form, then concluded it with a heroic couplet, like you would a sonnet. I like writing blatantly about sexual situations in forms -- there's a tension between the technical control and the subject matter.

The "mask" in this situation is a metaphor, not literal. This nameless guy from my checkered past is "straight" to his family and most of his friends.

X and Y is a play on words -- it refers to Ex and Why.

BROKE

Broke is a good name for it.
You don’t feel
Whole. Your feet have been
Knocked out from under you,
Or your core torn out,
Or something.
You have only
Emptiness
To stand on.

A friend tells you
You’re being “lame,”
And that’s
A good word for it
Too. Lamed,
You feel you
Can’t go far
From where you are.

More than demoralized, you feel
Disabled.
Empty wallet,
Empty gas-tank,
Empty stomach –
How to start,
Without the fuel?
No spark of verve
To trigger you
Back into movement,

You feel like a car
Abandoned by its driver,
If a wreck
Feels anything.
Feeling – that much,
You can do;
The one capacity
You wish you could shut
Off.


-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey


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AFTER PETRARCH, POEM 99 FROM THE CANZONIERE

(Petrarch by Bargilla)


Your hopes and mine have proven false again.
But let’s aspire to serve the highest good.
We’re happier when we have understood
It benefits one to uplift a friend.

The meadow’s seeming peace appears to bend
And lose its symmetry if serpents could
Be hidden ‘twixt the grass blade and the bud.
Despite this danger, here, our spirits blend.

If you long just to quiet your own mind,
few shadows lead one to a freer space.
Retirement’s best with crowds left far behind.

You might well ask how dare I wear the face
Of teacher, when temptations led me blind.
I was led here, but moved at my own pace.


-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey


All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any way without the author's written permission.

This is my English language version of a sonnet written in Italian by Franceso Petrarch (1304-1374). I don't know if I should call it a "translation," because it's not literal -- it takes a lot of liberties. Here's a literal public domain translation by A.S. Kline:

Since you and I have seen how our hope
has, so many times, turned to disappointment,
raise your heart to a happier state,
towards that great good that never cheats us.

This earthly life’s like a meadow, where
a snake hides among the grass and flowers:
and if anything is pleasing to the eye,
it leaves the spirit more entangled.

So you, who’ve always sought a mind
at peace, before the final day,
follow the few, and not the common crowd.

Though you could well say to me: ‘Brother
you show the way to others, from which
you’ve often strayed, and now more than ever.’


You can see how mine has become substantially different. In working toward making the translation back into a sonnet, I changed its meaning. I basically wrote my own sonnet based on Petrarch's.

For those who can read Italian, here's the original:

Poi che voi et io piú volte abbiam provato
come 'l nostro sperar torna fallace,
dietro a quel sommo ben che mai non spiace
levate il core a piú felice stato.

Questa vita terrena è quasi un prato,
che 'l serpente tra' fiori et l'erba giace;
et s'alcuna sua vista agli occhi piace,
è per lassar piú l'animo invescato.

Voi dunque, se cercate aver la mente
anzi l'extremo dí queta già mai,
seguite i pochi, et non la volgar gente.

Ben si può dire a me: Frate, tu vai
mostrando altrui la via, dove sovente
fosti smarrito, et or se' piú che mai.

I'm thinking about producing a number of these based on Petrarch's sonnets. Maybe I should call them interpretations, rather than translations?

DECADES LATER, FOR MY LATE FRIEND STEVE

(Photo by S. Sepp, from Wikipedia)


All these years after your death,
I’m told
that everyone knew
how I felt about you,
though I never breathed a word
to anyone, not even you –
everybody
in the class we took together
chronically;
even your lover Bob,
apparently, those nights
I slept on your couch,
way too drunk
to go home. He knew
what I was drowning
and was kind to me,
and made no confrontation.

Years later,
when I had a lover
of my own,
you reappeared,
and newly single;
you brought poems
and photographs
that found their way
into the paper
where I worked.
You worked
at the drugstore
at 15th & Spruce.
I’d stop by
to say “hi,”
have a soda; we’d both
keep it light.

I would hear
that you were dead
before I even had a clue
that you were sick.
It was so sudden
in those days, the “new disease”
nobody really understood yet –
swooping down
the way a hawk would
on a squirrel.

I’d no longer looked at you
as I once had;
I’d still had no idea
that you knew.
You must have –
everybody else did,
so they told me.

I wonder,
when you came
to reconnect,
if you hoped
I might still be free.
I wonder
if you didn’t know
that you were ill yet.
I wonder
if I dodged
a bullet.

And I wonder,
if I had been free,
and you had known
and told me,
if the knowledge
would have stopped us --
old friends
just crazy enough
to die for love.


-- © 2008 by Jack Veasey


All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or duplicated in any way without the author's permission.

This poem appeared previously in Issue 9 of the literary magazine Fledgling Rag,. Thanks to Editor/Publisher Le Hinton.

WHEN I REINCARNATE

(photo from Hiren & Punkaj)


Forget this New Age princess
Shirley MacClaine stuff.

I want to come back as a biker chick,
Get passed around (at first) from guy to guy
Like a cheap bottle
That tastes better
Than it should. Let me
Get gang banged
On the green felt of
The pool table,
And leave a deep impression
Of my legendary ass. Let me
Rock the clubhouse
So they’ll all want
One more taste,
Although they never
Dreamed they would. Let me
Provide the inspiration
For knife fights
Between the Bros,
For tattoos
That immortalize me --
Till that fatal accident
Or liver failure.

I want to be the subject of
A jukebox song, one
Guys will wait in line to play.
Let me be
That mistake
That breaks up
The bland marriages
At last, and
Let me be long gone
When hubby turns around.
Let me leave behind
The mark, the sting, the scent
That sticks
Forever. Let me be like
The road
That left them
Restless.


-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey