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I think the previously posted poem Hiking At Kennicott will either will be edited to be shorter or fleshed out to be an essay. I like it, but it is almost begging to be prose. I find myself rather blocked this week. Perhaps it has been the turmoil this past week seems to be in. Things are in disarray. It causes me to not want to face myself and I slink into my corner and pretend I don’t want to write. In reality, nothing would bring me greater joy in difficult times. Facing myself always seems to convince me that I like me more than I thought and still troubles me because I don’t understand how I can still be alone. I’m feeling rather desperate to have what those around me have and desperation causes foolishness. I hope I can keep the antics at bay. In the meantime, I’ll risk a poem on here that could potentially offend those mentioned in it. It is about three people I love a great deal — a family of sorts. Like all families, it is the quirks of individuals that sometimes receive the focus. It rarely means that those quirky people are thought of any less.Continue Reading

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I got out of Anchorage for nearly three days. David, Daniel, Denis, & I took a trip to McCarthy & Kennecott in the Copper River Basin. Kennecott is an old mining town that was abandoned in 1938. The trip was beautiful, therapeutic, and well-deserved by all of us.

Honestly, I imagined great tension and possible distance on our return, but the four of us play very well off one another and if I can get over my jealousy that the other three live in two adjacent houses far from me, I think we’ll continue to have a strong relationship.

I’m not a nature person… so I say, but I do really enjoy getting out and doing things like this trip. I mainly say these things about not being a nature person to prevent people from inviting me on adventures that I can resent them for going on later. I should see someone about that, but for now I will just admit it and try to deal with it. I seem to be all too willing to sabotage my own happiness. Curious. I think getting a little nature all over me was good.

My pictures will be around soon. Too tired to care tonight.Continue Reading

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Before Kennicott

Even before it begins, I want the end
Age has made me inflexible and cantankerous
I don’t want to live in the moment
don’t want to live
don’t want
don’t

I beg forgiveness for being inflexible and cantankerous
Waiting, sitting, forgetting why I agreed to do this
Sigh
I’m over heartache and jealousy
Clichés
I can see happiness in front of me, my arms outstretched
It is simple to vacation and so hard,
busy people all frantic about different things
personalities that barely mesh in the relative ease of our daily lives

I feel my rage staying near the surface
ready to explode at any moment and I hope I can suppress it long enough
and then scream into my pillow later
They’ve never seen my rage
I don’t like it
I feel like a child
Spoiled, inflexible
Things should stay as they are
As they are
Not quite
Not this
As they are
As I am
Inflexible
Cantankerous
Impatient

We’ll find ourselves soon at a lodge
a disappointment to my urban sensibilities
to my immaturity
and I’ll feel ashamed to not be more connected to nature
or Nature
Connected to the universe
I am clichés
waiting for a beginning I want to end
longing for moments I fail to experience
I’m waiting
and Daniel is sleeping

Written 13 June 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska.  Revised 1 October 2018 in Glencoe, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Before Kennicott” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading