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I WANT MY LIFE BACK

I stopped being myself in 2013. When I was talked into moving back to Oklahoma by Mom & Dad, I didn’t know I would do so at the cost of myself, but as I settled in to my new life in Stillwater & Glencoe, I disconnected from the activities and the people I love. I didn’t even realize I was doing that. This was caused a series of choices I made, and a series of inactions on my part. There was plenty of opportunity to find a path in Stillwater, at least at the start, but I was hung up on resentment and frustration. I found it so difficult to accept where I was. I did blame my parents for a while, but they didn’t force me to move. The didn’t fly up to Alaska and stuff me in a plane. They convinced me over time, and ultimately I chose to return. Partly, it was to help Mom & Dad, who had both been dealing with increasingly difficult medical situations, but also I wanted to be back to spend time with my niblings before they got too old. I dreaded being the uncle who they had no connection with because I was so far away, only to see them rarely in adulthood. I wanted to be there for their childhoods.

In the Summer of 2013, freshly moved back, I had my own apartment with Molly & Franz. It was upstairs from Brad, Conner & Jason, which was nice. Mom & Dad needed limited help, mostly with chores around the property and going with them to appointment and sometimes grocery shopping. Honestly, at first I felt duped. They didn’t need much from me, and that allowed me to start a business making a selling artwork, as well as art & craft supplies. And that was going pretty well. It wasn’t initially very profitable, but it was nice to have something to do that was creative and belonged to me. That lasted from June to August when things were disrupted slightly.

Justin, my good friend from Tulsa, called out of the blue one day in August. He knew I was back in Oklahoma, but we hadn’t seen one another yet. His sister had decided she needed the space in her house for her family, and Justin was in her way. She had offered to take him to a homeless shelter, and he needed a place to stay. Justin deals with some mental health issues and therefore cannot work, would be unable to find his own apartment, and isn’t even allowed to control his own money. Taking him somewhere like a shelter is just going to make his life infinitely more difficult. I do think it is fair that she wanted the space for her family. They lived in a modestly sized house with a family of seven people. It was crowded. However, it will never not baffle me that she wanted to take Justin to a shelter rather than help him find an apartment. She had been Justin’s representative payee while I was in Alaska, and I know she hated doing it. But there are people who do that as a job who could have taken over and helped. She did need to be involved in that transition. But she preferred the easiest way for her. Of course Justin could come stay with me. It wasn’t even really a question. He’s always been welcome.

Justin’s presence changed things in a couple of ways. First, I lost the separation between my home office and my bedroom. As much as I tried, it was such a small space that I never could maintain things as well as they had started and my new business struggled as a result. Secondly, Justin requires time and attention. He requires much more than most people, and at the time he had some other struggles that would cause him to absolutely demand attention, waking me up in the middle of the night to reassure him, or calling me to praise him. I’ve never been particularly bothered by these aspects of Justin’s personality, but it can be draining to deal with. My life became about him and my parents quickly, and I was okay with that. I didn’t even really notice I was doing it, but I was giving myself away in small bits.

INTO THE FIRE

My parents built their house in 2015, and I moved to the mobile home where they had been living. That was really nice. There was a bedroom on either end, so it was perfect to share with Justin. And it was spacious. I liked the mobile home, but there had been plans to build a home office. That never happened, and over time talks of that faded as my parents’ needs increased. Meanwhile, my house never got put together and the rooms started to fill up with my intentions and plans, boxes of products I would use in a better situation. My parents property was a twenty acre lot north of Stillwater on a gravel road. It was just far away enough to feel remote, but close enough to go to town frequently. And the property was perfect, completely surrounded by trees except for a natural clearing of about five acres where the mobile home sat and where the house was built. The mornings were frequented by birds, squirrels, deer, and armadillos. Other occasional visitors were rabbits, turkeys, bobcats, opossums, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, guinea fowl, bats, stray cats, stray dogs, the list goes on and on…. I loved that. But I had become so married to my own resentment that the years would go on and I would not.Continue Reading

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Campsis radicans

That house still haunts me;
the absences I feel are extreme.
Brad has kept the trumpet vines,
electric and intense like himself.
He pulled the irises that were once
lining the paths and taking breath
away from visitors as they passed.
The enormous black-purple blooms,
now towering only in our memory.
He inherited too much and not enough,
spending time and money adjusting,
spreading out and stamping his energy
onto the places that had been our center.
He’s added alcohol to the room where
my grandma’s last moments began,
highlighting the permanence of it all.
Where there was once an annual
display of daisies and cleomes,
a chainlink box sits, overgrown with
those intense trumpet vines.
The garden is all wild and unkempt,
like he’s trying to preserve something
that cannot be contained or suppressed.
Life spills out from our dark spots.
The house was full of undue pressures,
now settled into a gritty beauty.
The roots will continue to grow,
the trumpet vines will spread,
and one day my nephew’s children
will wipe tears from their eyes when
they visit a house that meant so much.
And they’ll talk about the intensity
and how much they’d give to have it back.

Notes

Written 20 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Campsis radicans” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Making Circles in Darkness

on the loss of my mother

Sometimes going through the motions
is enough; it’s almost like living.

Sometimes it’s too much effort
to cross the room for heat,
so I watch the snow fall through
the cracked window,
the layers building up
of snow and blankets
as warmth slips out
through the opening.

I’m drunk on my own grief,
and my hand makes lazy circles
in the air to amuse me.
Life doesn’t mean anything;
it never did.

Sometimes there exists in me
a tempest that cannot be contained.
I rebuild and shift things,
furiously dig through the snow
and in the soil,
looking for a place to deposit
the excess energy
and the memories.

Life clings, meaningless
and important.

One day I will forget to feel the pain,
I’ll laugh without stopping myself
and I’ll let the flowers bloom
without shutting myself away
where I cannot see them.

The lazy circles amuse me;
I’m an infant again,
motherless and cold.
Each day feels different,
experienced in ways
I always feared.

I wonder how I’ll remember joy
when it tries to come back in,
and I wonder if I’ll want it
after the years I’ve spent in darkness.

Life clings, heavy
and beautiful.

Notes

Written 7 February 2020 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Making Circles in Darkness” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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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.

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Kindle

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.Continue Reading

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1975

I’m sizing him up and putting him
in the him-shaped space left
so long before I was born.
I didn’t call him anything,
but sometimes he is everything
and there are nights when I sit alone
with the stars and wonder
if I make him proud.

21 September 2019

Notes

Written 21 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “1975” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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Quentin Clingerman Has Died

The winds are picking up
blowing trash into my yard
and announcing a storm that will
fall apart before it arrives.
The worn out flags and crosses
still look as majestic as they did,
but I’m opening by insides
and filling my pages with secrets.
I’m waiting for critiques
by entrenched folks who think
too much about the sex lives
of other people, of my sex life.
I want to reveal myself again,
try to make people see my words
and my techniques and stop worrying
about who I’ve kissed or
who I haven’t, but wanted to.
I want to edit volumes of poetry
about God and America and guns,
poems filled with the lies we tell ourselves
and enjoy them because the author
knew how to write the words beautifully.
I don’t want to read the judgement.
It starts to rain and I’m surprised;
I thought the rain would miss us.

Notes

Written 21 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Quentin Clingerman Has Died” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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The Ravens Became Crows

I stood two feet away, a witness to the moment
when Alaska started to fade away,
revealing the familiar loneliness of Iowa.
I stood close enough to touch her,
unable to find my arms, unable to find words.
I looked at the harsh black words,
old marker on a scrap of paper, trash.
MY DAD IS DYING
I stood, paralyzed, my body slipping further away,
unable to clear the tears from her eyes,
unable to pull time back and change these events.
She looked at me, and in her eyes I could see
her snow melting, revealing fields of corn.
I could see her ravens becoming crows,
and we shared a silent moment,
knew everything would change.
I stood still for what must have been days,
and when I finally moved my feet, Lisa was gone.

Notes

Written 7 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “The Ravens Became Crows” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)