“Stillwater, Oklahoma : 1. Heartbeat”
2020-02-19
Stillwater, Oklahoma
1. HEARTBEAT
“a vast and magnificent landscape. The prairies bordering on the rivers are always varied in this way with woodland, so beautifully interspersed as to appear to have been laid out by the hand of taste… to rival the most ornamented scenery of Europe.” — Washington Irving
I’ve felt your beating heart;
thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
Old folks still make weekly
pilgrimages to pray,
to seek God and solace.
Many hours of my youth
I spent rubbing the hands
of my grandma, wrinkled
and loose-skinned like mine now,
while the congregation
sang hymns from “the blue book,”
while old family friends
talked about love, dryly
reciting the red words.
Three times or more a week,
we’d gather to worship.
Thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
I have felt the comfort
of belonging there, fell
for empty dogma long
before my welcome stopped.
Written 19 February 2020
Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)
and also and so and so and also
2018-08-17
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
A few days ago, while organizing paperwork and whatnot, I came across my writing journals from college. It’s interesting to revisit oneself after 20 years. It felt familiar, but not so much that I recognized the author. I could remember writing the words, but the fact that I had done so struck me as bizarre. For the most part, I didn’t like the person who had written those poems and fragments and notes. He seemed silly, immature, and at times overly serious. I wish I could go back and tell him the things I have learned on my journey.
That said, I haven’t been writing much lately. I haven’t even journaled this summer for obvious reasons. But I’m very much feeling the words gathering into lines in my head, and I am eager to write more poetry. I’d been in a dry spell on poetry, but mostly that was due to the lack of quiet I had been dealing with. Quiet seems easier to achieve recently. That should help.
When I was studying literature, it was easy to fall for specific authors who I just connected with. It wasn’t always clear why those connections happened, but it was this that introduced me to Galway Kinnell, Sylvia Plath, Frank O’Hara, Geoffrey Chaucer, & Tim O’Brien. I latched on to these, and to others, quickly and they helped guide the type of writer I would be. I was also discovering contemporary authors at that time in my life and their words would guide me as well — Jim Grimsley, Bob Smith, Gary Reed. Gertrude Stein was one of the authors I discovered in class, having been aware of her for most of my life. It’s odd how little one can know about someone who has such a well-known name.
Gertrude Stein wrote in several different styles, but all of it was filled with her characteristic repetition and rhythm. I was especially interested in added that to my own work, and I gave it a try many times. It’s something that still comes up. A nod to Stein is a very common practice for me, and I thank her for being one of my muses.
“Hymn II : Reading Tolstoy Naked”
2001-10-29
Hymn II: Reading Tolstoy Naked
My reality merges with memories, with desires,
is there a reality? Have these lives been mine?
Events appear in my mind, translucent and ethereal.
A lanky man in the doorway, light spilling
around his silhouette, casting him as a sort of deity,
a cigarette hanging from his lips
like he’s come from a previous century.
A burly man, his chest a thicket
of soft hair for fingers to explore,
reading Tolstoy in a dimly-lit living room, still naked.
The lamplight shines on his skin, casting strange shadows.
Is he really there?
I’m searching through faces,
longing for the smell of cigarette
smoke rubbed on my back as I’m
pulled toward a mouth still tasting of tobacco.
Or maybe I’ll find myself coyly asking about Russian literature,
massaging muscular shoulders, satisfyingly corporeal. I’m distracting him and pretending not to be distracted by him.
I’ll kiss him until everything is wet and beautiful.
Imaginary friends rarely press their lips back,
and never with such force.
I’m searching through faces,
watching men sleep for hours.
Eyelids dance as they dream and I wonder
about the wide-eyed boy, belly full of mulberries,
a face on fire from the attention of adults, strangers.
He didn’t know about men and the uncontrollable smiles
of the attention of adults, strangers. I miss him.
The nights are filled with breathing and rustling, peaceful.
The mornings are filled with coffee and cigarettes
or the pungent sweetness of a joint
which I pretend to enjoy because he does.
Weekends are a tangle of arms and legs, old movies,
sweaty and lazy afternoons.
It is well
It is well with my soul
I stay, huddled on beds or floors.
I don’t tell stories about playing in the woods,
or about finding an armadillo skeleton,
or about my preschool teacher.
I’m searching through faces
for the man who wants to know.
Written 29 October 2001 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Hymn II: Reading Tolstoy Naked” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
“Hymn I : Mulberries”
2000-12-28
Hymn I: Mulberries
I didn’t know then what I didn’t know,
what I wanted to know.
Desire was reserved for cartoons on Saturday morning
and drinking our bowls of fruity cereal flavored milk.
My bowl would be abandoned next to those of
brothers, and we would go outside for the day,
exploring the spaces already familiar.
We would eat mulberries until we felt sick,
or we would run down to the
wooded area where ours met the adjacent street.
My days were spent being alone in groups,
keeping to myself and drifting off in to the clouds,
thinking about how beautiful everything is.
A smell wakes me from the foggy daydreams
of childhood. The ends are pulling at me,
I’m remembering experiences I haven’t had.
Leather and old cologne… and sweat.
Absence and anticipation compete for the space,
waiting is agony when the body has been
unlocked, when the ignorance melts away.
I’m searching through faces,
looking for cowboy boots (I think)
or the smell of fruity cereal and milk.
I’m waiting to feel hands on my skin,
imagining them rough and gritty, remembering
a feeling I’m still anticipating. I know these things now,
I feel them in my heart and in my groin.
Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I was once lost
but now I’m found
Was blind
but now I see
I want to conceal the existence of my youth,
but I want to share stories about morning cartoons
on exhausted weekend mornings when he and I
would rather stay in bed than face the lives that existed
before one another, without one another.
These days before him are long, full of longing.
My skin is eager for the feeling of another’s skin. I’m searching through faces,
forcing myself into crowds,
looking for the boots, cologne, memories, dawn.
I am looking for a man with bad habits,
who I can grow to resent, a person who doesn’t want me.
I can still taste the mulberries
and I can already feel his body.
Written 28 December 2000 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Hymn I: Mulberries” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)