Tomatoes rested on the kitchen
windowsill,
waiting for the sun to turn them
orange.
The humidity was stifling.
I sat,
mesmerized by
the turning blades of the ceiling fan
as I pondered an
unanswerable
question,
then pretended not to hear
as you quietly closed the door —
left alone to wonder
when,
if ever
you would come back —
finally realizing
reality lies
somewhere
between dreams
and
broken promises.
If only
from out of the aching
of this visceral inflammation
I might be reborn
on the shores of your lips –
cast like a spell
in whispered ponderings of awakening, and
be worn upon your sleeve
before partaking of skin
ripe for the taking
and delving deeply under it, and
be the bridge that crosses
into the taboo
where risk becomes exquisite and
your incarcerated secrets are freed, and
be the temptress
of scalding pleasure
and the sorceress of scathing pain
only to slather your rawness
with a richly emollient brew, and
be the driest sauvignon
to quench your parched soul
and stagger the indignation of the righteous,
and mostly
be the one to slake your desire,
then create your longing for more.
This is my divine need.
© 2008
god is an overdue library book
an empty sardine can
an angry santa claus.
god is a school bus full of strangers
a sixty on the test
a dad who’s always pissed
a mom with scar tissue.
god is a prison guard with rheumatic fever
a flying squirrel in a cage
a deformed colt in a field
a member of the john birch society.
god still lives with his parents
he fights with his brother over pigs
drives a milk truck on saturday to make ends meet
makes me wear an athletic supporter
watches hee-haw and listens to country music
on the radio.
god has a workshop in the basement
he picks the dump and smokes white owls
takes his teeth out when he eats
makes me cry in front of the whole class
stands in our driveway and tells my dad
he’s no good.
god wants to punish me for something I didn’t do.
_____________________
Excerpted from Iron Man Family Outing: Poems about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood by Rick Belden. Copyright © 1990, 2008 by Rick Belden.
They say,
Beyond equivocation,
That we are what we eat
(So to speak)
Or in other words,
What we embrace
And ingest spiritually,
Or mentally, or physically,
Defines what we become, and
How we feel about our fellow man,
And how we interrelate with the world
Around us on any given day,
And how we extract and
Express the verve
Within us
And since
My Byzantine self
Struggles with the baggage
Of bad choices, (a lifetime of them
To be quite honest) and the idea that
Being predestined – by a higher power –
To experience melancholy; to struggle; to
Suffer, and to battle daily against those
Who operate only in jealousy and envy
Is somehow a result of my bad choices
Seriously limits the potential of my
Personal dreams ever finding any
Realistic fruition
So I ponder in a desert,
(Unwilling to compromise)
And feel the wind, blowing,
And I ask myself, can I become
More than just another grain of
Sand in this cloud that buffets me?
And if so … whose words do I believe,
And whose thoughts find in me a resting place,
And if gifts have been given, what do I do with them,
And if I am dissatisfied with being in the cloud,
What kind of a grain would I like to be?
But beyond that, aside from what I desire,
Aside from what I believe, aside from whom I
Construe myself to be, aside from how I am perceived,
Aside from what I personally see in the mirror looking
Back at me … I have come to the conclusion that the more
That I question my life, and death, or the meaning of existence,
Or my place in the grand scheme of what is greater than
I could ever understand, the more that I lapse into the
Depressions that cause me to make the
Choices that suppress my dreams,
And inhibit those around me
Selah …
But still I feel a dagger
Slaughtering my thoughts,
And see a worm that never dies,
And a fire that is never quenched,
And the impotent self-consumption
That cannot do what it wants, when
It wants, to whom it wants, for the
Reasons it wants …
So I reach out and touch YOU
In the only way that I know how,
To quicken your thoughts, and make
More malleable the wineskin of your heart,
Hoping that I have not become the outspoken
Homo-harbinger of another spiritual deception,
Or the living newspaper of another’s conjuration,
Or the colorless aberrant blossoms of a false spring,
And also hoping that I have not breached my calling
Somehow in the awkwardness of artistic application
Richard Lloyd Cederberg
8/08
It took a long time
For mother to die.
Everyone believed
She would go first,
With dad,
The last dirty-old-man,
Playing the field
Since he loved women.
Mother wore out the pages in her
Medical encyclopedia
To speed things up
On the highway
Of exotic diseases.
Before turning forty,
She had a hysterectomy
When cancer cells multiplied.
That didn’t help
Her state of mind.
Soon after that first surgery,
She left the Catholic Church
Becoming a Jehovah Witness
Getting ready to join God
Since death was eminent,
A heartbeat away.
After forty, a malignant tumor
The size of a grapefruit
Recruited an army in one her kidneys;
Like the Battle of the Bulge
During WWII,
That nasty Nazi,
A Hitler in disguise,
Was surrounded
And cut off from the rest of her body.
A rare encapsulated,
Parasitical alien life form without a visa
That the City of Hope’s doctors
Exorcised.
After Lola’s fiftieth, she asked
Her three children
What we wanted
From the house
Since death was close and
Father would outlive her to marry again.
I said, “I don’t want to talk about death.
Let’s take one day at a time
And enjoy what remains.”
My older sister and brother
Made out lists
Carting valuables home
Like picking flesh from
The carcass
While two hearts
Were still beating.
My dad died at seventy-nine
With a sour expression on his face
As he gasped his last.
The doctor told him,
“You quit smoking ten years too late.”
He was younger than her.
My brother took
Dad’s tools and the beloved Cadillac
Leaving it wrecked
Beside a road.
She cried a river of tears
After fifty-four years of marriage.
She missed dad.
I missed him too.
He was the quiet one
That listened.
Loneliness settled
Around mother like
A hot summer day
When it hurts to breathe
The scorched air
As one friend
After another
Left this earth
While she lived in that house
Alone in the desert
With her Bible
And five acres
Surrounded by a chain link fence
And sage brush
Two hundred miles from
My condo and job.
She told me once,
“In the mornings
Before I get out of bed
In this silent,
Empty house,
I forget how old I am.
I think I’m fourteen again,
But the mirror
Does not lie
And God
Is always nearby.”
At eighty-nine, cancer
Arrived one last time.
There was surgery
Removing the bleeding
Tumor in her intestines.
Mother lingered for
Two painful weeks
Screaming in agony,
Praying for an end to her story.
The call came during my
Fifth period English class
With students reading
The dramatic, tragic death scene
From Romeo and Juliet.
That day spelled an end
To more than one love story.
Sometimes death is a blessing.
I never told my students.
Let them find out
For themselves.
It’s better that way.
she was an oldest profession ploy
so much desired as
most ardent satisfaction
a prelude to my vanity
i gave in instantly a supporter of the arts
at time of a poetic cholera writing
my poems of approximate death of self
on the wings of my pale passion
her path of light touch entered as a
a shady cloud of dust hiding the glimpses
of the thorny moon, her mechanical love
becoming libertine’s play of
secrets suffering in my dreams
disillusioned pulse of a stoned heart
as her arms embraced me like a serpent
Eight years have passed and
I still remember the pain in
Your eyes that June afternoon
As though it were yesterday.
I wanted to reach out to touch
You — hold you — brush the
Tears from your eyes.
Instead, I sat — motionless —
Silent — fearing your rejection.
Every so often, you
Invade my thoughts —
Forcing me to wonder
How different our lives
Might have been if I had.