“Okie Dokie”
Written 17 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma
Brian Fuchs, “Okie Dokie” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Posted 16 September 2020
“The Ravens Became Crows”
Written 7 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “The Ravens Became Crows” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Posted 14 September 2020
“Duncan, Oklahoma”
Written 1 October 2018 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Duncan, Oklahoma” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Posted 29 August 2020
“Daucus carota”
for Angela
Written 17 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma
Brian Fuchs, “Daucus carota” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
“Before Kennicott”
Written 13 June 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska.
Brian Fuchs, “Before Kennicott” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Now Available!
It’s finally out. And I can finally get some sleep! Here are the links to my book on Amazon. I think it looks so much better in paperback, but there is a Kindle version available.
If you don’t already know what’s up, here’s a little backstory. I’ve been writing since I was a child. My first poem that I remember was written in October 1988 when I was 9 years old. When I was 12, my teacher accused me of plagiarism because she didn’t think a child could write. I don’t say that to congratulate myself at all. I’m not even sure if that was worth all the aggravation. It has been lost to time. It was titled Paige and it was about the life of a woman who never finds happiness. But I imagine the actual poem would seem completely juvenile now.
I started writing in earnest in college and since 1997 I have written consistently. While I veer off into other projects, like short stories or novels, I find poetry that I always return to poetry and enjoy writing it. Over the years, I’ve developed my own style. That is a good thing. The problem is that I also haven’t had serious critique of my work since I graduated from college, so I don’t actually know how my work is seen by others. I’m amazed that I’ve managed to spend the better part of 20 years unwilling to share my work for fear of rejection. And I really should have managed that sooner!
When I lost Mom last year, the first thing I did was crawled into a metaphorical hole for 9 months. I wanted to disappear because I didn’t understand how one can live without his mama, and I’m not too proud to say it. It also brought a few things into focus. One of those things was letting go of the expectations and opinions of others. Now, I mean of me as a person, not my work. That is a lesson that has been taught to me my entire life, but sometimes things need to cook for a while.
So, now I’ve got a book. I worked diligently over the summer to get it done. My garden is sad and neglected, my roommate is sad and neglected, and my family… well, they are too busy to have noticed, but if they had I imagine they would feel sad and neglected. For this first collection of poems (because I don’t want it to be the last!), I wanted to focus on a few things: 1. Poems with very specific references to people. It’s not that I won’t write that way in the future, but I wanted to give people the words I had written for them before getting into other subjects. 2. Epitaphs. I’ve lost a lot of people and I often have things to say about that. I’d like to get through a lot of those I’ve had lying around, but there are many more. 3. My very favorite poems I’ve written… that aren’t too scandalous. I get it, family will buy this first book. They will even hang on for a second, but by the third they won’t be too fussed about it. So, I have actually created a plan where my third book is where I completely let my hair down. That does mean I have to do at least 2 more books, but it also sounds like I’m censoring myself. In a way I am, but I’m not completely either. I want my prudish great aunt to be able to have something she will never read, but that won’t make her blush too much if she decides to open it up.
Last thing I will say about it, I decided to make notes on each poem. Rather than include them in the actual printed book, they can be found here… in the writing tab, or at this link.
“Gleditsia triacanthos”
Gleditsia triacanthos
You were beautiful once, and maybe you still are.
I rarely revisit those moments when we became adults
on Sunday mornings, skipping church for each other.
I don’t think about the length of your neck
and I don’t dwell on the smell of you skin.
I’ve turned you upside down, exposed the roots
and tried to understand how they worked,
rubbing the soil into the grooves of my skin.
I don’t want to return to your kindness or cruelty,
and I don’t want to put you back how I found you;
Your branches are thorny and I’d end up hurt again.
So, I’ll repaint the photos I have of you in new colors
and we can pretend that there were no feelings.
And I’ll send you copies of the new versions
and you can pretend that you don’t remember.
Written 18 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Gleditsia triacanthos” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
“Pieces of Dissected Butterflies”
Pieces of Dissected Butterflies
I left Tulsa when my friends had died
and we were all set adrift, angry and lost,
wondering if staying meant more of us would die.
I tried to go to Dallas, to a life I wanted.
They boys swarm thickly there,
and I still wonder if my days would have been
spent in the beds of strangers if I’d gone there.
I’ve always longed for the beds of strangers,
to feel taken for granted and awkward.
In moving, I detoured, finding myself in Anchorage,
near the place where my dad spent his youth,
carried on winds I rode for too long, or just long enough.
I was not qualified for life in Alaska,
not qualified for the men who had gone there.
But I was determined to find myself,
or to find Dad in the places where his friends still lived.
His youth was left in an Alaska that no longer exists,
so my mind found new reasons to keep me there.
I found the spaces I understood,
the pockets of the city that seemed familiar,
bookstores filled with other refugees,
of lives that had started to drift.
My mind invented the things I didn’t know
and the people around me became gods.
I didn’t question that, and I formed a religion.
Their lives were spent being perfect
in ways I could never spend my own life.
They are still gods; I pray to them in darkness,
my soul crying out to be acknowledged.
On cold mornings, I liked to price books,
scanning their barcodes and attaching a sticker.
I would think about my friends,
wonder about the shapes of their bodies,
and worry that they could hear my thoughts.
I’d worry that I was saying the thoughts aloud,
and I’d wait for Kevin to go upstairs to inject his insulin
so I could stop thinking about his waist.
I’m still thinking about his waist.
The decade I’ve had to reflect has made me more curious
and sometimes I worry that he can still hear my thoughts.
I have been dissecting butterflies,
stained glass wings pulled apart
by unwieldy spinning steel fingers
as I think about beauty and conformity,
praying to my gods, mindlessly offering
the insects as a tribute.
I didn’t intend this massacre
and in the lawn lie the tiny lifeless parts.
In the hot sun of the places of my youth,
I don’t have new shapes to fill my mind,
new boys to think about.
I dwell on the boys of my past.
I’m reaching back, feeling myself grasping
for people I can’t always recognize,
the names apparitions in my mind.
Some of the gods’ faces have merged & morphed.
I’m taking the ones I wanted the most,
or the ones I wanted to be the most,
and placing their pieces where I can sort them
and try to hold onto them in my mind.
I’m still thinking about waists and hips and shoulders,
still wondering about the firmness of skin.
They haven’t seen me wondering,
their lives have pulled them toward much happier places,
some growing beautifully in Alaska,
others found scattered by the winds
that had first deposited them near me.
The butterflies are whispering secrets,
understandably warning each other about me.
In new cities and states, in their new lives,
they think about the times we spent together
and I go on thinking about their bodies.
Written 12 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Pieces of Dissected Butterflies” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
“David Eugene, look at me when I’m thinking about you!”
David Eugene, look at me when I’m thinking about you!
I’m a disciple, a child of your narcissism.
an inadequate acolyte of your worst impulses,
treasonous and suspicious, even in my reverence.
Love is wrapped in sarcasm, in mocking and making-fun.
I pray these are truths, and that you are as transparent as you seem.
I only see the Davids for who they are,
blind to who they want me to see, who they wish they were.
I only see you for who you are,
but I feel the person you want me to be
growing cynically inside.
Oh David, do you not recognize the idolatry in my loyalty?
Does my face not give away my desire to be looking at my own face
when I am looking at you?
The tears stay close, pooling in eyelids, fighting their impulse
to race down my cheek toward knowing I am fully myself,
and not who I am trying to be.
I am trying to be bold in the ways you expect,
no longer cowering in the corners where you found me.
I remember the safety of home, and the emptiness.
I felt safe in my denial, but I am liberated by your sacred teachings.
I grovel, prostrate myself before you,
foolishly and joyously feeding your need for attention.
David, you have shown me that you are more important than I am.
You are more than I am. You are existence.
I meant to steal the hearts of those around you,
meant to show them how much I had learned at your feet.
They exist, you exist, and I have revealed myself to be fragments.
You have reassured me, patted my head like a Lhasa apso,
my head cocked to one side as I attentively await praise.
Oh David, I have not been enough!
The fragments have betrayed me and revealed that I am not whole.
I’ve tried holding them together with glues and tape,
but the picture never seems real;
the other congregants have moved on, my failings insurmountable.
They have found me lacking and are uncomfortable in my presence.
Selfishness is a difficult lesson to learn; I am trying.
I’m still dwelling on my heartache, trying to release it,
unchaining my tongue and allowing bravery to escape,
to become the person I see in you, David,
or to at least to become someone whole, beautiful and brazen,
someone rewarded with love, sex, warmth.
I humbly bow, giving thanks for even a chance
to be blessed by your acceptance.
Brian Fuchs, “David Eugene, look at me when I’m thinking about you” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Written 17 March 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska & 7 September 2018 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
“Dale”
Dale
I sought the council of trees, Dale’s name lingering in my head,
hoping to glean wisdom from the aged assembly,
hoping to hear God through the woody branches.
I studied the structure of oak leaves, how each attached to a branch;
watched sunlight fall through the new growth on cedars;
made note of the greenbriar’s leafy fingers wrapping around the trunks of pecans.
The world was still and hot and dotted with tiny white butterflies
emerging from the thickets to enjoy a field of nectar-filled flowers in the afternoon sun.
My mind had been typically cluttered, with family dramas,
thirteen years of grief, first loves, comedy routines,
and parts of a jingle from a TV commercial I remembered from childhood.
Sitting in the surrounding quiet, I waited for the ancient botanical knowledge,
letting those thoughts drop away, heavy and viscous,
and leaving behind a calm in which I could almost hear the butterflies landing on petals.
The wind came gently then, in small bursts that the oaks seem to enjoy,
allowing the trees to flit thousands of leaves about merrily.
A rustle, a calm and relaxing rustle accompanied by silent mimics,
of a host of lesser plants vying for the favor of the post oaks,
standing as the monarchs of this dry woodland.
A slightly stronger breeze, a creaking sound as older specimens swayed,
some long dead, the bony outer branches moaning hauntingly in the current.
The tranquility was broken, butterflies scattered unceremoniously into the air,
having been blown off their perches by a strong wind that moved through the grasses,
flattening it in waves as it moved across the expanses.
When the wind reached the sentinels of trees standing bravely against it,
they found themselves unprepared and leaves and branches erupted into chaos.
Dale had died.
He had been my namesake, the hero and villain of his own stories,
his name lingered, attached to mine as a reminder of who he no longer was
and as a reminder of who he had been capable of being,
a reminder of who we all had been, of what we wanted to say we had been.
And now he was gone. As the gust moved on in the distance,
stillness returned to the trees and I still faced them, waiting for answers.
We were all there, waiting for different pieces, prostrating ourselves before them.
The instructions were lost, the knowledge never passed on,
the person whose position had been placed so highly seeming to fade
with great distances, separated by different trees, grasses, weeds.
His name lingered, attached to mine as a reminder that we should hold on,
hold him up as he fell, his wings revealed to be a mirage.
It was not always enough, we were not always enough,
and we allowed Dale to slip into humanness.
The trees had again become silent. The distances now as close as they would ever be,
as far somehow as they had felt before when inscribed books would
arrive by mail, wrapped in symbols of birthdays or holidays or plainly
when a book had piqued Dale’s desire to share it with me,
a boy he barely knew, but to whom his name was attached.
And there were songs and great conversations, which are things
of which plants know little. And things that had defined him
so importantly that it felt proper to discuss them now, with God or the trees.
The heat had started to intensify; beads of sweat formed on my neck and face.
Still I waited, knowing that lives had become altered, knowing that we had reached
both the beginning and the end of everything.
And I thought about whittled walking sticks, carefully crafted from the new growth.
His name lingered in my mind, attached to the trees, I now realized, a part of it.
The presence of butterflies had increased in my focused state;
they now seemed to be everywhere, clustered on flowers
and dancing through the space between the trees.
I turned and went back to the house, knowing and not knowing,
melding now with the air and grass, with the trees.
And I thought about Dale, his name lingering there, attached to mine,
attached to the moment and those memories,
attached to the wings of hundreds of tiny butterflies
And I smiled because I had known him.
Brian Fuchs, “Dale” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Written 25 July 2015 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
“Meeting Skylar & Wesleyan at the Grey Gardens Disco”
Meeting Skylar & Wesleyan at the Grey Gardens Disco
Secrets feel more like friends than flesh,
written on the tightly rolled scrolls and tied loosely with a scrap of string.
These are the days when life is slipping past so quickly that I cannot seem to find a way back to it, a way to engage. I want to write my own secrets on tiny scrolls, but their contents would drive away even those I’m barely clinging to and they’d slip further into the torrent
away from me.
Time has been cruel, much more than I could have expected.
Mine will be the story that goes untold, unrecorded, unremembered.
Inaction fuels inaction and so I do not move, do not move, do not move. There are lives happening, I’ve been told, beyond the threshold I’m so afraid to cross. The moments I should’ve had hold me back, keep me wondering, force me into the safety of my empty bed
where the quiet loneliness can comfort me.
After the house has filled with leaves and dust and snow,
beyond the carefully orchestrated solitude, celebrations go on without me.
The most beautiful hear the music within themselves, gaily swinging auburn hair and laughing at their own unfunny puns. Merriment and giddiness come on like migraines and I find myself waving a flag and dancing joyously, still unable to coax myself from my home.
Happiness feels so foreign.
Ugliness greets me in every mirror, an old addictive friend
and the voids I’ve created have grown to feel comfortable on my miserable soul.
I’ve failed to learn the steps, and I am terrified that the dance will go on with out me. I look at the hollowness of the collected things around me, dismayed that I’ve become this me. This is the me that will keep happiness in its place
far away.
Nothing excuses knowing about leopard print,
a secret that seems to have allowed me to let go of ill-advised longings.
How incredibly sad it is to not find me so alluring that you can see past my plentiful flaws. I have known for quite some time that if I live my life alone, dying before I know love, that it is not me who is to blame, although I understand the temptation. It is others
who fail to see how happy I would make them.
Could these children have caused my empty world’s destruction?
set in motion events that will cause this tomb around me to collapse.
It’s too soon to know, but I welcome the crumbling. My stacks of nonsense are poised to fall into a blissful abyss. Oh, what exquisite joy I know I will feel when the rooms are all empty and there is just me to fill the space.
And someone to help me fill it, I hope.
Hope, indeed. It is all that keeps me from dropping into the crevasse myself,
cementing my loneliness forever with my inability to change.
I’ve begun to remember who I used to be and have found people who make me hate myself less and less every moment. But not even their patience can be endless, so if I am not to miss out on the Brian I’ve been trying to become again, I need to ask fast
and meet my friends for a drink.
Written 2 December 2012 in Anchorage, Alaska.
Brian Fuchs, “Meeting Skylar & Wesleyan at the Grey Gardens Disco” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Formatting on WordPress ended up looking a little off, but this was as close as I could get it. The first lines of the stanzas shouldn’t be separated, but indenting a line requires making a new paragraph. If I figure out how to change that, I will.
“12:07 am 4.14.12”
12:07 am 4.14.12
There is a plane going by and it could be you. I’ve been somewhat obsessively thinking about you all day. It was stupid of me to not insist on spending more time with you, but I so often felt like I was a piece of a life you’d left.
Written 14 April 2012 in Anchorage, Alaska.
Brian Fuchs, “12:07 am 4.14.12” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)