December 30, 2017
There is a weird mist in the streets tonight,
and in my heart a howling.
My four dead friends are in the mist,
less dead than usual.
All around the world,
people are wanting a drink,
and I’m no better than them.
Jøtul
In high school I took a handful of mushrooms
and spent the whole night in communion
with a pot bellied stove,
a warm god in that cold cabin.
The name of this minor deity
was Jøtul: squat, strong, demanding
nothing but kindling, which was plentiful,
and giving in return
a place to be safely lost.
Truthfully I was drawn
in the wild destructions of my adolescence
to many less worthy saviors
than Jøtul.
Here's to that good old stove
and to the long talk
that lasted deep into the night.
Manhood
Men are terrible to women; this I have always known,
hearing from my own mother the stories of her deprivation
and abuse. How to process this, as a boy tumbling headlong
into his own manhood? I didn’t know then, and don’t now.
The robes of power are presented to boys; we are allowed
to hide ourselves in them, and wreak havoc. Most try it.
Some abandon it.
Men are terrible to women, because men are strong and
lost, with no purpose for their strength, and no map.
Men are terrible to women because men are weak and
yielding, weaponized by the world.
Men are terrible. And yet in the arms of my brothers I feel
a beautiful manhood, perhaps not yet born,
or perhaps we abandoned it.
Men are terrible to women because pain hurts, and we
put it on whom we’re allowed to put it. — Carry this for us,
we say to the women, not waiting for a response. Oh,
there is little dignity in this life: mostly humiliation
and shame, passed back and forth like a burning cup.
— Carry this for me. — I can’t. — Carry this for me. — I can’t.
— Help me abandon it.
Weight
I carried you as long as I could.
I sank lower as you hung on
like a heavy child. My breath burned.
I lessened as you grew large.
But when I left you by the road’s edge
you seemed not heavy but frail:
a clutch of leaves, a bird’s bone,
my fearsome lonely father.
