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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THE TASTE POLICE

How many times
Have you tried to share
Something you loved
With a friend –
Something that moved you,
That made you see your life more clearly –
Some work of art, a song perhaps.

They would encourage you to share,
But then dismiss it
without listening,
Would ridicule it even
As it played for the first time, not
For a moment consider
That it might have merit
If it had meaning for you.

For them, it was just an opportunity
To prove that they had better taste
Than you; that you, in fact,
Were stupid in comparison to them.
This was a triumph, another occasion to sneer,

Though they would still call you a friend,
Though they’d deny
that hurting you was their intention, claim
You’d asked for their opinion, after all.
They’d say they only gave you honesty,
Though all you got from them was their hostility.
Does rudeness ever demonstrate good taste?
And is it ever really honest? If this
Were really simply an opinion, what were they
So angry about? You didn’t invite
that abuse,

and yet you’d cling to it
for years, no matter how much
you’d want to forget it.
What you thought was a moment
In a grown-up friendship
Was high school all over again – worse,
The playground from childhood. And you
Saw it for exactly what it was.


Later, they’d pretend
They didn’t understand
Why things were no longer the same, as if
They didn’t see their little victory –
They’d proved to you
Your taste was bad, all right –
Your taste in friends, that is.

You’d fix that, but
You’d never tell them why.
In fact, you’d never again
Tell them
Anything.

Why give even a grinning enemy
Another round of ammunition?


-- © 2010 by Jack Veasey



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WHEN I MET GWENDOLYN BROOKS

(photo from MDC archives)


My job was to help her sell her books.
I sat beside her at the folding table.
I made change while she met admiring looks
And signed her name as much as she was able.

Where I sat intruded on her aura.
It wouldn’t work if I’d sat far away.
Somebody’d brought a huge bouquet of flora,
Which someone else had quickly whisked away.

No room here for anything but books. She
Signed mine, “To My Colleague” – what a thrill!
The line was long. I thought, perhaps, that we

Might chat when it was over. But until
The place was closing, she was occupied.
I’m honored she brushed by me in her stride.


-- © 2009 by Jack Veasey

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This poem appeared in Issue 9 of Fledgling Rag. Thanks to Editor/Publisher Le Hinton.

SAME NAME, DIFFERENT PLANETS

SAME NAME, DIFFERENT PLANETS

When you were small, I was your father’s bud;
We hung out all the time. I was around
More than your relatives. You knew the sound
Of my voice on the phone. I was not blood;

You never called me “uncle,” but I would
Bring gifts for you. Monster movies, I found,
Held you rapt all afternoon; you rewound
“the good parts” to watch them again. You could

be quite funny, sometimes. One day, watching
“Nosferatu,” you told company it
dated “from before people could speak.”

Now that you’re grown, your Dad reports the sting
He felt when you called me a “fag” at sit-
Down dinner, when my name came up – a leak

Of your new attitudes. You always knew
My story. I was never anything
But friend to you. But you’ve revised your view
Across great distance, not based on remembering.

Your family moved down South in your teens.
Your Dad and I remained in touch by phone.
Amazing how a young man’s life careens
Through changes when he separates from home.

I wonder what you’d call me to my face.
You claim to be above hate based on race.
I know that my behavior’s not to blame.
Ironic -- we still share the same first name.

-- © 2009 by Jack Veasey

All rights reserved. This work may not be reprinted or duplicated in any way without written permission from the author.