By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

Stillwater, Oklahoma

3. THROWING SPHERES: A MIRRORED CLOGYRNACH

My boyhood never depended
on throwing spheres like all men did.
I so often mused
if I had confused
dead with bruised
God forbid

Days in parks,
I’d explore
searching woodland floors
for seed pods and more.
Imagined tree friends, their rough bark
I’d so much missed since our last lark.

“that scattered belt of forest land, about forty miles in width, which stretches across the country from north to south, from the Arkansas to the Red River, separating the upper from the lower prairies, and commonly called the “Cross Timber.” — Washington Irving

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

Stillwater, Oklahoma

2. THE WEATHER

I have stood under skies full of rain.
I have been a scared child, comforted
by the clouds which might burst into storms,
and by hail, the chaos of thunder.
I have seen the bright sun in the sky,
oddly close, maybe more than before,
close enough to reach up, touch its rays
if not for exhaustion from the heat.
Everything start to wilt on those days,
our spirits, slumped lilies still standing,
thinking back on Easter’s soft beauty.

Notes

Written 19 February 2020

Brian Fuchs, “Stillwater, Oklahoma” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

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.

Notes

Written 12 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Pieces of Dissected Butterflies” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

Happy Birthday To Me!  Today is my 39th birthday, and while it has been a mostly peaceful day, I have found myself avoiding a lot of memories and feelings that are just under the surface.  I just wasn’t in a place to deal.

I spent the first half of the day listening to episodes of the podcast Frangela: The Final Word.  TOO FUNNY!  I love these two, and have for a long time on The Stephanie Miller Show.  I don’t know why it took me so long to get into their podcast.  I’m glad I did though.  After a bit of that, I took a nice nap on the front porch, where I discovered one of the kittens had returned.  I don’t have faith in the survival of the others, but his return offered at least a glimmer of hope.  My nap was followed by going up to spend time with my dad, brother, nephew, and roommate.  Justin made vegan chicken burgers and fries and the rest of us gave Conner a hard time.  I know he was getting frustrated, but it was kinda fun anyway.

The gathering was fairly brief, a little chaotic, but okay.  I do find myself needing to manage my expectations of others in these situations.  I have a tendency to want people to put their own issues away for a few hours, and at least give the appearance that they care to spend time with me.  But they don’t.  I should know better.  I don’t mean to sound accusatory at all; they are just living their lives as normal.  It’s me who is expecting too much.

I’ve had a wonderfully productive week.  I got the shelving assembled and put in that goes along the east wall of my bedroom.  I’m putting things together slowly with it in; I don’t want it to just feel like a pile of stuff, so I’m going through things and purging a little as I go… very little.  I did identify some books on ikebana that I intend to find a new home for… if I don’t change my mind.  Those books are so thin that it will hardly make a difference in the end!  I finally put some books on the shelves in the living room as well; I’ve had three shelves empty for the past year or so, which is silly really since I had books in boxes waiting to be put out.

Justin helped me put in a row of junipers that will hopefully mature into a nice hedge to break up the front yard, and we also put in another chaste tree up at the house.  Things seem to be coming together slowly in the yards.  I need to spend some time cleaning up the flowerbeds at the house;  they are covered in weeds, need mulch, and the plants could be pruned.

Plants showed up!  I’m not sure why they were sent so early, but part of the order that was supposed to arrive in November showed up in the mail.  It isn’t a good time for planting.  I might look at how to hold them until fall; they are bare root plants.  If I can’t easily wait, I’ll need to get those in the ground or at least in planters in the next couple of days.  I’m not sure how well things will do if they are planted in August, but it does look like we will have a rather mild week and that will help.

The orange rose, which had put on very pink blooms before, has changed and the newer blooms are much more orange.  Maybe it needs to mature before the roses will be their true color, and maybe they will be pale.  Either way, I’m really liking the look of these and I’m glad I put them near the porch.  In time they will be tall enough to tie to the side of the porch and they can be enjoyed like the ‘Fourth of July’ or ‘Golden Showers’ roses are.

So this next week’s plans are all about figuring out those plants that arrived early.  I do need to mow and get started on the flowerbeds as well, but I will also spend some time uploading more blog posts.  It’s nice to be ahead of the game.  I usually stay three or four weeks ahead, but I’m only a few days ahead at the moment and need to manage things better to make sure the blog is always active.  On that note, I’m looking for feedback on what is working and what isn’t.  Leave me comments on this post or on any post you want so I know what people are thinking.

Artists Featured This Week

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, I was listening to music after spending the night helping my mom in and out of bed as she recovered from a collapsed lung.  I hadn’t left her house yet, and she came into the living room to join me.  We didn’t talk; we just sat and listened to the music as the sun came up over the trees and filled the living room with light.  It was a peaceful moment.  We talked briefly after a while, and then I went home to sleep before coming back the next night.  She stayed in the living room for the morning, watching TV and visiting with my dad.  If I had known then that it was the last time I would spend time with her in her living room, I would have stayed all day.

My days are like that right now.  Everything is about Mom.  The roses she and I ordered came in yesterday, a week and a half after she passed.  On her desk sit the art project she was working on, four 6×6 canvases featuring her with her grandkids.  On her doors hang the wreaths she had ordered for summer; they arrived the week she went to the ER, one being only taken out of its box when we were getting the house ready for visitors.  I’ve caught family members talking about the pain she was in, which she was.  I’ve heard them hint at how she seemed to have lost some of her spirit, which she had.  But I don’t want anyone to think for a moment that she had ever given up on living.  Nobody loved life more than she did.

Mom’s life had become about pain and struggling through the many surgeries she had over the past ten years.  I’ve lost count; she had lost count.  But never did a surgery keep her down.  She fought through it because she did not want to be an ‘old person’ and never meant to end up spending so much of her life in bed recovering.  These recoveries were temporary, and she spent her time either getting ready to fight after a surgery or working on getting back to her life.  Being stuck in bed made her feel left out at times, and it was frustrating for her to not be able to join her sister, friends, and other family on various outings and vacations.  She wished she could go to church every Sunday, as her church family was so much a part of who she had always been.  She wanted to be healthy enough to stay with her granddaughters more often, but did not have the ability lately.  But most people didn’t know any of these feelings.  Mom did not complain about her plight to people.  She didn’t want others to ever feel bad for enjoying their own lives, even if she couldn’t be a part of it.

ER visits had become so routine, so when she was rushed to the hospital on May 18 it didn’t even phase me.  I thought to myself that I hoped she stayed through the weekend; the stays in the hospital were often good for her and gave me peace of mind that someone was checking her out.  I also felt relieved that I would get a little extra sleep over the weekend.  Then they called me from the hospital to say she was being transferred to Oklahoma City.  Dad didn’t seem to remember what the doctors had told him, and Mom and I shouted at one another through his speaker.  She told me it was her colon and they needed to do surgery.  I have no idea what I said to her, but it was definitely not the right thing.  There is no way it could have been.  It was the last time we would talk to one another.  How could I have known, and what words would we have used.  She was aware the next day as she slipped from up, and could nod/shake her head.  I was able to talk to her then, but it wasn’t a conversation.

This doesn’t feel real.  I’ve passed the part when I think I might finally wake up, but now I keep thinking she will come home from a trip she’s been on.  But at the same time, I’m empty.  My whole world has been consumed by this growing emptiness, and mostly life seems pointless.  It’s raw of course, but it is hard to see what meaning I’ll be able to find in life.

I’m babbling.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my front porch, listening to birds in the morning and watching fireflies in the evenings.  The birds don’t seem to know that the color has gone from the world.  The fireflies still light up the night, even though life is so fleeting.  I’m not sure what to think about it all, or even if I’m thinking about anything at all.  Every time I start slipping into despair, it starts to rain and I can’t help but find joy in storms.  Joy seems inappropriate.  I have moments when I laugh or smile and think to myself that I’m being disrespectful.  That’s such a backward thought.  Mom loved life, saw the good it it always, and wouldn’t want anyone to despair.

This was not a part of my plan.  I never imagined I would lose my mom in my 30s;  it feels stupid.  I was ready to watch movies with her, to laugh with her, and to enjoy the nature around us with her well into my 60s.  I deserved that.  She deserved that.  And now I have to figure out what I’m going to do with my life.

Mom’s final moments were spent surrounded by family.  She understood what was happening, and knew she was not going to make it.  It was so sudden, so the fact that everyone could get there was a miracle.  We cried, we sang songs, we prayed.  The room was so filled with love and life, I cannot think of a more fitting situation for her to passing.  We were singing I Can Only Imagine though our tears when the nurse came in and nodded her head.  I felt like I had been shot in the stomach and we continued on.  Brent and Dad were each holding her hands and they felt her relax and slip away.  Sobbing followed, and family trickled out to the waiting room.  I sat in the chair in the corner of the room and wanted to stay there forever.  Once everything had been gathered, my brother and I finally left the room, leaving her by herself.  It made me numb.  It’s typically not fair to a person to remember that person for one day in their life.  People tend to dwell on a person’s death and not on their life.  I’m sure I’ll do that for a while, but if I’m going to have to focus on her last day, I will at least have those beautiful final moments to focus on.

It’s true: Mom won’t be in pain anymore.  She didn’t want to give up on life, but she doesn’t have to fight through so much pain.  That’s going to comfort me one day, but today is not that day.

This weekend, my nephew Conner and I will plant the roses Mom and I had picked out.  And I’ll makes sure they are planted where she wanted them.  And I will just try my best to get from one day to the next.  I’m going to be sad for a long time, but there are things to be done.

SaveSave

SaveSave

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

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.

Notes

Brian Fuchs, “Dale” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

Written 25 July 2015 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

I’ve been very into Art Journals lately. I’ve started several of my own, but have been most focused on my nature journal. There is always so much I want to capture about Alaska in the summer, but I let it slip past me and by January I wish I had recorded the greenness that I have started to miss. A trip to the zoo recently sparked this particular journal. It wasn’t so much the animals, but the beauty of the zoo itself. If you’ve been the Alaska Zoo, you will understand. Here are the pages I’ve completed so far. Feel free to comment and leave suggestions. I’m new to this and welcome criticism.

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

August is more than halfway over. Here in Anchorage summer has already conceded defeat to this in-between drippy season that is a sort of pre-autumn. I love it, as I do most weather. My mom is like that too — perhaps it is from her that I’ve taken this attitude. It doesn’t matter what is going on outside; everything has its own merits and it is all worthy of awe. Mind you, I’m overjoyed that I no longer experience the many many months of humidly hot days that are Oklahoma summers. But even a few days of that should be taken in every once in a while.

My semi-subterranean home has once again become a refugee camp for anything small enough to find a way in and away from the cooling temperatures and the wet. I don’t mind sharing my home with these tiny animals. Mosquitoes are not welcome, and I’m afraid are dealt with harshly. Flies are relentlessly shooed and may also be dealt with if they don’t take my hints that they’ve overstayed their welcome (which is quite short anyway). Beyond that, I don’t give trouble to anything that gives me none.

I was chasing flies around the bathroom, swatting them in the general direction of the open window, hoping they’d move along, when I noticed that this year has not brought a single insect in so much as pairs. It is as if the insect & spider community is sending delegates and are only individually represented. For days there has been a seemingly dumbfounded ant scooting his too big body in and out of the spaces just under the cabinets, always at times that are inconvenient for me to capture and release him outside. As far back as I can remember into my childhood, I’ve wondered about these individuals, about the lives they’ve lead until now. I was initially worried that this was a queen looking for a spot to start a new colony (oh, please! not my little bathroom!), but I think it is just a wayward member of a colony from the flower bed just beyond my porch.

Chances are very great that any ant won’t live long anyway. My house is host to a variety of harvesters and spiders all ready to prey on the other refugees. Spiders are amazing. Even at the times I believe my home is free of all crawly things, I’ll see one appear from nowhere and scuttle off to an again unknown place. This is again one of those instances when the ‘live and let live’ rule applies for me. In my book spiders are good. In a basement environment, the lack of more insects is likely thanks to the arachnid guardians who have set up snares at the entrances. I thank them.

All of this makes it sound as if my home is crawling with critters. Just the thought of that gives me chills. It isn’t like that. Anything that dares leave the sanctuaries of the laundry room or bathroom quickly becomes a brief plaything for the kitties, and then a light snack. Even in those relatively safe places, the insects and spiders have to be fairly clever at hiding. Bothering me definitely includes making yourself too well known. If a garden beetles plops himself in the middle of the bathroom floor, he’ll be excused onto the porch where sadly I’ll leave him to his fate.

But really, I like knowing that the world is alive around me. While it makes me feel increasingly small, it also makes me feel more connected to the world somehow. And allowing benign ecosystems to form in darkest corners of my basement apartment makes me feel a little bit benevolent.

By:
On:
With: 0 Comments

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.

Notes

Written 29 October 2001 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Hymn II: Reading Tolstoy Naked” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)