Let Them Read Poetry

Still trying to figure out how to integrate my 12,000 different interests into Substack, but Beachcomber Mike is likely to remain your window onto my poetic brain at work.

Fifteen months past spousal departure, I’ve still got lots of home to reorganize and recalibrate on a number of levels. Today I started moving around files and their cabinets, and found a stack of notebooks from the past couple of decades. The earliest one I found was a gift if I’m not mistaken from an ex of mine in San Juan who got it for me on a tip to Mexico. It used to have a stone or bone or shell of some sort in that putty colored divot.

That was in the early weeks of 2000, but the first entry in the book is dated May 23, 2006, and it’s a first draft of a poem. I appear to have drawn a big slash across the page, as if to cancel out the entire poem, all except the last three lines, which I enclosed in a box, my customary way of telling myself, “Keep this part.” I was right. Those last three lines are the best part of the poem. The rest of it is a sort of canned Michael Broder script that I’ve written and re-written a hundred times, some of them keepers, most of them not. But this newsletter is about process as much as it is about perfection, so here’s the whole poem—not exactly as it appears in the notebook: I relineated here and there, and made some other little edits, some of them even suggested to me by myself in 17 year-old parenthetical notes.

Untitled, and here she goes…

I have tried to outpace you,
to turn off on a poorly marked path
and run deep into trackless acres—
but without any seeming effort
you alter the field of play,
switch the scene from imagination to dreams
where my grip weakens,
where you impose your will
and my powers of parody and satire fall away.
I am stripped of the ironic jibe, sarcastic quip,
I quiver in a pool of longing—
contrive to ride in the same car as you,
sleep in the same bed.
People notice, they smile.
The girls gather in their bedroom,
whisper about us behind our backs,
and giggle.

My favorite part is the last six lines, but the very best are the last three, don’t you think?

Okay, that’s all for now. Time to order a burrito from L.A. Burrito on Underhill Avenue in Clinton Hill. I think I like Xochitl Taqueria on Fulton Street better, but they close in 15 minutes.

More poetry soon.

Take it from Beachcomber Mike: Keep your sneakers on when you walk in the sand, or you might cut your foot on a flip top.