When I was a young person with an anomalous heart that had yet to fully test the nature of that heart in this life-thing, I wrote a lot of poems. A LOT. It was something that sustained me through some very rough times, for about a ten year period, beginning when I was around 15. Was I a good poet? No. I don’t think any of them were publishable quality even though I never tried to go that route—that’s not what they were for. However, reading through them lately, I found that some of them—just some—were surprisingly good. The important thing about them is that they documented and captioned some very formative years of my life. The series began before I was institutionalized (or what I fondly refer to as being thrown in the nutbox), and continued through my early efforts at love and relationships. They chronicled my first failing attempt at college, and went on through the hard drinking years. They tapered off after sobriety and I began to switch gears to writing more prose. Whereas the poems were about documenting raw emotion and feelings, the prose had a more mercenary quality to them. My writing would better—I’d like to think much better– but I don’t think it ever had the pure primal emotions that those early poems had. From time to time, I will post some of the poems in this space to illustrate certain places and things as they kind of function like real-time historic snapshots of the past.
To have wanted to be a writer
And then just to write
For someone,
And then just to argue
With someone.
It feels so hopeless
I would have liked to find a movie
For us to see,
But there was no
On the screen.
Couldn’t find aside to take.
I might like a field of green and brown
To take you to.
But there would be nothing we could say.
The morning will come in separate lives.
My hangover. Your solitude.
There’s not much room for believing.
Or hearing. Or seeing.
But does it still matter?
Yes, I might like take you to that field
Past the mistrust and the lies
Just to hear you talk.
(I like fields. Solemn. Pretty.
And if you feel like it, powerful).
But I think of my friend
And the movie we never saw
And the words we never spoke.
Before I wonder:
Does it still matter?
To have wanted to be a prophet
And then only spoke words
At someone.
To ask what its really like
Being able to hear|
This one.
And feeling hopeless.
—December, 1977
Remember the first time
The first time you asked about your old friend
Hey what about. . .
And found out she was dead.
No one liked her while she lived ,
but they all cried when she was gone ,
a crumpled mess from the gleam of a fender.
I don’t think they still cry.
Remember the first time
The first time you called up an old friend
How you doing. . .
And found her to be married
Oh well. She only cared on bad days,
And always left you standing,
an illusion in a discontentment forest,
But maybe she’s happy
Remember dirt forts in the summer,
All the fun we would have.”
The time went so fast.
Good won’t last forever
The men came and built a house,
we watched the earthmovers work,
and had dirt fights when they left.
But t it would never be the same .
Remember all the memories ,
The ones you had on cold nights,
you closed your eyes,
And tried so hard to forget.”
But the snow kept right on falling,
and the feelings kept on drifting,
wanted to give it all this time
but it was just another chilly night
–January, 1976 [note from the future: oddly enough my wife would eventually die as the result of a carcrash — almost 30 years after this was written]