My father was born without an expiration date.
Nor was he offered an explicit warranty against defect.
One evening he arrived home to discover
free choice was no longer an option, passion a myth,
red food coloring an agent of kidney disease.
They say when you hear thunder,
someone passed successfully to the other side.
They say when you hear the glimmer of a bell,
someone transformed into an angel.
They say bury him with a gold coin tight within his fist,
the river’s swift and dangerous,
here there are too many monsters craving flesh.
My father did not outlive his usefulness.
He discovered, instead,the burden of truth is too often a lie.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
I had forgotten that this poem of Michael’s was scheduled for today. Or maybe a deep part of me remembered, for a poem started writing itself in my own head as I gathered myself for the day. Change some clocks. Adjust for when the birds start looking for me to come out with seed. “Practicing to Die,” my poem’s title is, and it’s writing itself. No lie.
ReplyDeleteFirst draft of “ Practicing to Die”:
ReplyDeleteDon’t! Do! No, don’t do it! I yell at myself
in the silence of my mind.
I remind myself I’m carrying a tray,
Better safe than sorry.
I used to lift a finger to flip off the kitchen light
as I passed toward the dining table.
I have done it many times.
My whole life I’ve reveled in going
many things at once, even since
I started imagining dropping the tray,
myself dropping,
and the tray dropping
after me.
But now I’m warning myself not to,
arguing whether it’s time to stop
trying to prove I’m still young,
still adroit, still steady on my feet,
still capable of doing
many things at once,
even though I know I’m not.
Not young,
not capable.
And time has shortened,
less and less of it left to rehearse.
Do the condemned on Death’s Row rehearse?
Their date is set, and they know it.
Is mine set too but I don’t?
It can’t be far away now,
I’m tireder today than yesterday,
I have more aches and pains.
My body has them, my mind no longer
thinking it’s separate, its life assured
beyond the body.
Assenting now,
assenting long since,
that it, too, will cease.
But today my mind and body still live.
I’M still alive.
Now telling myself poems like this,
still thinking many things at once.
Michael! Really love this one! I myself might break up lines differently or move punctuation around, but your wording is tight and I feel every moment of this poem. I find myself inspired to a possible response poem myself.
ReplyDeleteMoris—Great first draft also. Love the idea and execution. I could see the narrator at his perceived time of death, thinking through the weak knees that are considering a drop to the floor. Will PM a couple of edits, but you have a keeper here!
Well aren't you two a ray of sunshine this morning. It's been in the seventies for a week now and I have had my two shots, the world is looking better than it has for a long time. Let gloom and doom take a back seat and enjoy the day.
ReplyDeleteEd, Roger Owens just left a comment on his poem “Self-pity Sucks” that he could well have made here. I recommend it.
DeleteWhat is it that makes us say these things? And why, like here, do they make us feel SO much? We don't know this exact story, but we all have the same stories and we feel them in our own bones when we hear them from someone else, it vibrates in our DNA. Well, it does with an author like Michael.
ReplyDeleteThank you, everyone , for your great comments.
ReplyDeleteMoristotle, what a great line:
Do the condemned on Death’s Row rehearse?
I'm envious.
My father had an interesting life from killing ghosts when he worked at a hospital during the second world war to fighting real ghosts on the islands off of Alaska. He was always a man of justice, radical in thought and action, and a poet, but, alas, most of his poetry has been lost in the last few decades since he passed away.
For Ed, here's a brighter piece about my father: https://moristotle.blogspot.com/2021/02/all-over-place-dear-dad-happy.html and somewhere on this site is my rhyming poem to my father. I believe it's called Father.
Thanks again for all of your comments.
Ed, here's another link to a father poem published on this site (much more upbeat):
ReplyDeletehttps://moristotle.blogspot.com/2019/06/all-over-place-father.html
Your URL to “Father” activated:
Deletehttps://moristotle.blogspot.com/2019/06/all-over-place-father.html.
The code for that is
<a href="https://moristotle.blogspot.com/2019/06/all-over-place-father.html">https://moristotle.blogspot.com/2019/06/all-over-place-father.html</a>
Some blog hosts activate URLs for you, but not Blogger.
Thanks, Moristotle, for all of your help and assistance.
Delete