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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.

Notes

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.

 

Original version posted 17 March 2008

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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.

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Armadillo

I squish through
henbit and moist soil
under moonlight, slowly
taking the usual path,
intriguing cats who think
they might soon be fed
and startling an armadillo
digging for grubs or worms
in the yard, ensuring that
it will continue being soft
and moist.
She’s a frequent visitor,
nearly at times earning
a name, an honor not
even given to the cats I feed.
The distance increases,
nightly pulling, stretching.
The air is cold and heavy,
the armadillo a distraction
from the fear and frustration
I find myself falling toward.
I’m anxious to see Mom,
the path has turned to gravel
and the house seems further
than it was last night,
when the armadillo was on
the other side of the yard,
making a racket through
last year’s dry leaves
still undisturbed where
they fell, spilling out
around the trunks of trees.
One day, the nights
will be for sleeping
and everyone will be whole.

Notes

Written April 2018 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

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

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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.

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Quercus shumardii

for Papa

A great tree has uprooted,
exposing the branching mass
caked in the red soil of the Western Plains.
What was parched had been made rich and loamy
by the giants that fell before,
pioneering specimens that germinated and made
a home under the endless horizon of Oklahoma.
The water that made those plants flourish
had come from England and Ireland,
from Galilee and Missouri.
The roots of those ancestors fed the saplings
of the new generation.
Entwined, two young trees grew close together,
feeding on one another,
strengthening each other’s roots.
Acorns became a thicket and then a forest,
spreading out in all directions.
The flaming red soil has changed over time,
fertilized, nurtured, enriched.
The acorns have been found scattered,
rooting in Texas and Colorado,
in Alaska and Kentucky.
A tradition of strength and serenity
tested in new soils, clays and sands,
ultisols, entisols, crider and port silt loam.
Lightning took out the second tree,
ripped away what had been life,
forcing the survivor to stretch out new branches
to cover the fallen companion,
to show strength in the face of tragedy,
to learn to love when love seemed to disappear.
The branches, sprawling out massively,
became only sparsely covered with leaves, but
never lost their majesty, their humility, kindness, dignity.
Now the great tree has joined its long-fallen partner,
stretched at the base among those it had given life to,
cradled by the thick trunks of trees
that have become mighty themselves.
They stretch impressively toward Heaven,
mimicking the once proud figures
now so apparently absent in the canopy.
The sun can once again burst through,
but this is no longer the harsh and arid place
it was when ancestors first arrived.
In the clearing a small field of flowers
will spring up in memorial,
attracting the beauty of birds and insects
until new saplings join the congregation.
That great tree is now one of the ancestors,
enriching the soils for future generations.

6.7.2014

Notes

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

Written 7 June 2014 in Glencoe, Oklahoma

HANDOUTS FROM FUNERAL (Poem included as “The Tree”)

Posted 7 June 2014

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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.

Notes

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.

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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.

Notes

Written 14 April 2012 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brian Fuchs, “12:07 am 4.14.12” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Earthquake Season

The whole world started ripping apart from skies and ground,
shaking those Okies into a frantic state.
Run into the path of tornados,
sink into the cracked ground,
nothing is there to save you.
The politicians and tigers are waiting to eat you.

Notes

Written 11 November 2011 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brian Fuchs, “Earthquake Season” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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Daniel Naranjo

I itch for the subtle way joy emerges
from your face – overcome with yourself,
with yourself.
It’s lovely. You’re lovely.
You aren’t so familiar, aren’t so unfamiliar.
In the long months between,
everything misses you.
My senses feel achy and empty without
your enchanting aura of smoke and wine.
I smile, thinking of that laugh,
you know the one,
that erupts accidentally when you’ve
amused yourself.
God, I love that laugh.
You blew in on winds you could’ve
ridden forever, resigned to not settle,
loving the feel of the dust
whipping through your pores,
hair, teeth.
You seem reluctant,
you seem reluctant,
reluctant. Or is that me?
I decided to write you a poem,
a poem of you, the you I know of,
the you who is only a slight version of you.
It took four years to say
things about your loveliness,
about the smoke and the wine,
about Oregon and Alaska,
about loving your laugh.
It wasn’t just joy, was it?
I detected some shame,
loved that shame, if that’s what it was,
wanted to live in that feeling.
I’ll remember that face,
remembering how much I love you,
and I’ll exist for a few seconds
in that moment, that feeling,
inside a space you created.
I believe in horses and you,
I believe in me and you,
I believe in you
and you.

Notes

Written 25 October 2011 in Anchorage, Alaska.

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

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Geneva

a squash blossom
perfect and lovely
so often overlooked.

Notes

Written 3 January 2010 in Anchorage, Alaska.

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

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Seahorses

We struggle for life, gasp for water
and we die, wriggling and contorting into position.
Our dried carcasses serve as amusement.
Fifty years we’ve been on display,
dust gathering in our rigid and bony structures,
souvenirs for those whose lives were more exciting.
They pull us out to reminisce about their wild youth,
our magic now stripped by time,
and they talk to each other about us and how they miss us.

Some of them forget about us,
about how we thrived in the waters before being rescued,
collected as memorials.
They don’t know about the vibrant reefs like we do,
about the others who didn’t make it or we carried back
to other grey places where they too would be forgotten.
Many of us are labeled for easy identification,
classified and sorted so onlookers can gaze at our husks
in wonderment or disgust… or a bit of both.
Our tiny bodies have become too numerous,
too many have been broken or discarded,
but most of us will fade into the dark obscurity, lost.

The new fashion has been to provide a tank,
to adopt a bit of our habitat and collect several specimens,
lives lived with names and memorialized
as members of families, temporary and disposable.
We exist as novelty, and still a part of their youth,
a part of that colorful past they will talk about one day,
sharing the photos with their children and grandchildren.
They’ll talk about us, about how much they love us,
pulling us from the drawers and boxes to prove themselves,
they’ll show videos they took of the tanks filled with water,
convinced that they are showing great love for us.
But when they are no longer beings asked to show off
their specimens, their carefully curated collections,
they’ll put us away again and go back to their real lives.

We will keep wishing that our dried bodies would stop
finding their way into souvenir shops of those who
do not want to dip into the water and experience our lives.
We don’t want to live in tanks either, playthings of people
who do not understand that our beauty has not been for them,
that our magic was meant for ourselves.

The sun is coming up on the horizon,
Christopher Street is quieter than it used to be,
and I wonder if a generation is coming
who will realize the world that was fought for,
and I wonder if they will long for the days
when they were precious trinkets of other people’s youth.

Notes

Written 1 July 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska & 5 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

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

Original version

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Bea

The swan lands, awkwardly gliding
into water among strangers, among friends.
On the far horizon, the ponds edges
kiss coy stars, lurking in the dusk.
The swan gracefully turns her long neck;
her eyelids close softly — contentedly.
A world escapes behind veils of thin skin;
the murmur of voices fades to silence.
Gently, the elegant bird tucks her beak
under her wing and lets peace take her.

4.26.2009

Notes

Written 26 April 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska.

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

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Literary Debris

The deities are losing cellular cohesion, gasping desperately for breaths as they become liquid and evaporate.
The poets have been usurped by melancholy memoirists,
aching to have original lives.
Every story seems to be told, despite repetition
despite repetition
despite repetition,
despite…
repetition.
I keep sweeping up the dried remnants of fallen giants:
Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, O’Hara;
I even find Baum and Steinbeck and Spyri in the wreckage.
I collect the bits I can in a beautiful vessel where they remain safe, more pieces having been spared than expected.
Few search for the treasures, worried they’ll cut themselves on the old words of masters.
Picking through the pieces still brings me joy
even if I’ve no one to share them with;
I wish I could be as beautiful whole as they are in shards & residue.

Notes

Written 16 February 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska.

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

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untitled [mediocrity]

How are we preparing ourselves to be gods,
to shed these skins and rise to greatness?
I’ve been expecting miracles and have found
normalcy.
Mediocrity is punishment for lack of passion,
a pain I’ve allowed to flow through me,
finding ways to penetrate my fibers.
I’m looking for ways to free the me who
screams and wants to be released.

10.15.2008

The creative block continues. It took considerable time to squeeze the above from my head and I really believe that while writing should be a lot of work, it shouldn’t be this difficult. Perhaps I need to put aside my silly fears and just write the things I know would flow easily. Perhaps I should try harder. I’m waiting for that elusive muse the deliver a swift kick to my backside and get me moving. Maybe I’ve waited too long; I should just do it myself.

So, the snow come to us about a month earlier than it did last year. I’m both annoyed and relieved by its return. I do love the crispness of the air when I walk outside in the morning. It blasts me awake in a refreshing way. I love the stillness of a busy city when it is blanketed in softness that blocks out the sound. To be surrounded by bustling and still feel peaceful is a surreal experience that summer doesn’t offer in the same way for me. But I had already forgotten about the driving. I’ll get over it soon enough and it won’t feel like such a big deal to never seem to get through the intersections fast enough. In the meantime, I’ll try to be careful and not let the roads distract me. This place is already piling up with cars crashing into one another. I don’t really want to be a part of that.

Inspiration will come. I trust that. I also know I’m probably forcing it a bit, which won’t help. Maybe I need to get out, have a little fun for once and let my creativity work itself out.

Happy Birthday to KC, Meghan, & my 7 year old kitten, Franz.

Featured Image Art: photo of Franz

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The 2 f’s
run through giraffe
like 2 giraffes

{Ron Padgett}

Happy birthday to a couple of people I love. Y’all know who you are.

I spent a couple days in Seward with my Sourdough family. It was nice; our trip was in celebration of another marvelous year ticked for Mr. David, but somehow transcended him and was a welcoming moment in all of our lives. I rarely am able to share the beauty of my own birthday and I remain impressed that David was so willing to do such a thing. Some sort of Alaskan magic permeated that place and made our outing seem like some sort of grand vacation instead of the overnight quickie that it really was. Denis, thank you for guidance. Daniel, thank you for the camaraderie. David, thank you for being born. And a very big thank you to the folks in Seward who were uncommonly wonderful people.

It snowed yesterday.

Although I was one of the many Alaskans who sighed a financial sigh of relief recently, I must say all this freedom from worry has made Brian a dull boy. I’ve been doing what I want and when I want to do it. Time to pull back the reigns a little before I find myself begging for food. With this enthusiastic consumerism has come a huge creative block for me. Nothing is flowing as freely as I want it to and my site is suffering for it. Sometimes, there is nothing painful to say, which I suppose is a good thing in a way.

I need to get out of town more often; I enjoy this place.