Benediction*
Normal people make me puke.
I hate their guts, goddammit!
But to my great good fortune,
there are none on this planet.
*(I first did this poem as a one-off joke, during the years I emceed Poetry in a Pub at Windows on the Cumberland in Nashville, TN. The "Benediction" ended up being literal--the audience would join me in chanting it at the end of each Windows reading. 22 years later, we're still celebrating the 'Benediction' at Nashville open mics like Map Pierce's 'Poetry in the Brew'. Not bad legs for an ill-rhyming, hastily written bit of doggerel...
Jack
“It was right here that I got the call,” he said as he pulled the truck over toward the fence. “I stopped, jumped out and screamed.” He was recalling the moments immediately following the phone call informing him that his twenty-two year old namesake had blown his brains out. He went into detail about rushing home, going into his son’s bedroom and seeing his child like that, not being able to grasp what had happened. He picked up a tiny piece of blood-soaked quilt from the floor. He doesn’t know why he did this but now wears it around his neck in a locket that his daughter had made for him. He is a shell of the man he used to be. Too thin, too jumpy, painfully sober, a chain smoker. His perfect suburban life blown to bits in less than a second.
I never asked for details. I didn’t know a thing about Jack’s life until several days into working with him. Yet, when he mentioned he had lost his son recently, I almost cried. I felt that this was a good man. Good people. Ryan’s death was still fresh and painful for me and it was something I could relate to in some way. I never spoke much on my end about Ryan and never asked any questions about Jack’s son, but every couple of days he would just talk. I thought it must have been therapeutic in some way for him. He told me that he and his wife had tried to talk to someone but that didn’t last long. He argued with the therapist. I could relate to that too. The detailed description of his son’s death came on my last day working with him for the season. I guess he wanted me to know for some reason. Maybe he never talked about it before, maybe he did all the time. I don’t know, but I felt like there was a reason he confided in me.
Repetition
complacency
capitulation
the breaking of hours
the death of sparrows
and failure
and victory
the resignation
to structure within
the heart
the relegation of soul
to dull reality
forced to listen to
the opinions of others
to get from A to B
forced behind the
teeth of angry mouths
at work or at home
passively dying by the
minutes
without a second thought
or the trace of concern
the absence of words
the absence of laughter
the absence of release
the beating
heart
lessened
of
blood.
Hanging moon.
Nebraska. Interstate diner. Feels like a bad song. Kid behind the counter has glasses even thicker than mine. Greasy little prick's probably the one who called the cop. I paid for my coffee. I paid. Man like me gets the dick in public no matter where I go. The beard and the age, the backpack. I get it. No point in dancing around the obvious.
The little shit pile glances at the cop then talks at me while he wipes down the counter, "Cold as a fuck out there, mister. You got a place to stay?"
"I'll be alright."
"Close in 15," the cop says. Fat piece of fuck, this one, "And we can't have you lurking around here, buddy. Jail's closed for the night, too, just so you know."
He nods at the human shit behind the counter, smiles at him, walks out. Car door closes. He sits there. He'll be sitting out there in 15, too. The kid walks in back. Out the window there's a full, crisp moon, but it ain't no moon, it's a fuckin' burden. Time blurs. I'm sick. All my people are dead. The kid flips the sign in the window around and opens the door, stares at the fuckin' floor and waits for me to go.
