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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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Notes

Written 22 July 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brian Fuchs, “Meeting with Tlāloc” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

__________

Original Version

untitled

Life’s all pauses and breaks;
my feet don’t seem so eager anymore to get to those places
I’ve always kept close to my heart and deep in my dreams.
There’s something soothing about stasis,
something unnerving as well.
I’m peering through cracks and holes of a life that is always shifting,
searching for someone who might be peering back at me
from the other side… of what?
The winds are picking up and I can feel change creeping over the horizon.
Storm’s comin’ and I’ve not gotten ready for it this time,
thought I’d enjoy more of this part of life,
thought there’d be more,
thought I could find comfort in being alone.
Blow me into bits; create something new and magical,
something more than I’ve ever been.
Grasping for hands to hold, I realize that there is only me.

7.22.2008

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10th & Cordova

I’m working on feeling unconventional
in a world of unconventional people.
I’m melding with others,
with those whose lives barely cross mine,
I am again like a loose bit
dangling from a ragged tree branch.
And I feel love. Love.
Quantified love. Finite and sequenced love.
Quantified?
I know I’m last. The love left is different,
the love is coated with a sticky doubt.
Denis is made up in shades of green,
needlessly feeding himself pain, gorging himself on his own thoughts.
His love is ranked, ordered, defined by hierarchy.
Denis uses his love to feel closeness,
and he wraps that love in money. Family.
Quantified? Finite?
David makes diplomatic concessions,
talks in circles and understanding tones, tries to hold together
things that aren’t in danger of slipping away.
He spends his time adding on to the structures, stroking egos,
helping Denis find even brighter green vestments.
I can’t even seem to get attention from myself.
Love? Love. It’s possible.
Expanding, filling the room, I feel uncomfortable
and take up too much space. How can I be ignored?
Sometimes I deflate the elephant and shrink to almost nothing,
transparent.
I shrink into a corner and watch my family below grow ever closer
without me, saddened by my own inability to include myself.
Daniel has come in, found David, taken him down a path I cannot see.
The fields of sweetly scented flowers cover the trail.
There is an increased interest in green.
I try to figure out how to be seen,
how to understand quantified love.
Denis longs to not be green, but I only know about this too late,
after I have purchased green tinted glasses that I wear when I look at him.
David and Daniel playing in the flowers makes me
simultaneously happy and enraged.
Enraged at me, at my ignorance, at how insufferable I’ve become.
Daniel brings back flowers and shares them with me,
and I am happy enough. Family.
Quantified? No.
David keeps tabs on the situation, sometimes,
very occasionally checking to see how I’m doing.
It’s easiest when he speaks about Daniel, about secrets and sex,
about the fields of flowers down the path.
I feel happy when he mentions Daniel, free.
The cracks are forming, and we are all distracted with our efforts.
I’ll soon need to purchase another pair of glasses, this time in rose.

Notes

Written 14 June 2008 in McCarthy, Alaska. Revised 1 October 2018 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “10th & Cordova” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Adding Names to a Dog

It is all I can do at times when I see you
to not fall in love because you are so handsome,
It is all I can do at times when I see you
to not giggle in glee at how quirky you are.
You arrived clumsily, drunk on beers you keep hidden,
giving new names to a dog I’d known for seven months.
You arrived on the shoulder of a man who is never happy,
a man who needed to be happy.
You arrived lazily, not trying too hard
because you are so handsome.

I am not trying to covet, failing to think
about things that are not you.
I am losing myself in daydreams,
kissing boys who look like you, boys who are you,
but not so much you that I’d blush when you smile.
But I blush when you smile.

You are forcing me to recoil and giggle,
return to dreams that I have been the one to discover you.
My friendships in jeopardy, I struggle.
My friendships melting away, I want you to kiss me
the way I remember kissing you in my mind.
I want you to arrive at my door, drunk on beer
not trying too hard because you are quirky and handsome,
and when you smile I will blush.

Notes

Written 26 March 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brian Fuchs, “Adding Names to a Dog” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Hymn III: Birds & Vapor

Before knowledge, peace existed.
Innocent children don’t long for the touch of others.
I’m reflecting on bird calls,
sorting out in my mind the ones that seem familiar
from the ones that are new.
Except for the mockingbirds —
their song has changed as much as I have.
I can barely tell the difference between
childish pursuits and adult desires.
Except for skin.

I find myself a poor litmus test of what I want,
what I remember wanting.
Whispers in my ear from the past — or is it the future?
I’m forgetting things I thought were important.
I don’t remember the smell of skin pressed against
my face as I sleep.
I’m trying to remember how close I can get to the sun
without tumbling to the ground.
Have I reached that limit?
The men are turning to vapor, mists deposited in a wizard’s pensieve
filled with what I choose to remember as unbridled passion.
I’m searching through windows for faces,
for quiet morning sun spilling in through panes,
spotlighting the drifts of dust as they dance
like a great flock of tiny birds.

It feels like he’s still standing there, if he was ever standing there,
eating cherries on the front porch,
spitting the pits out into the garden.
I am thinking about fruity cereal.
I am thinking about the taste of cherries lingering in his mouth and the taste of mulberries lingering on mine.
I am thinking about birds and music and sex and dust.
I am thinking about the faces, the many overlooked faces.
I am thinking about vaporizing.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
calling for you and for me;
see, on the portals he’s waiting and watching,
watching for you and for me.


Notes

Written 2 November 2001 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Hymn III: Birds & Vapor” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

Published in Social Distances (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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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)

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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.

Notes

Written 28 December 2000 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Hymn I: Mulberries” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Miracle

for Jennie Lloyd’s baby

Enveloped in darkness —
surrounded by perfect blackness
(the comfort of mother
on all sides)
Grow gracefully, child of
Love — inside your peaceful shelter.

Your mother is special — young and
full of energy and wonderful
thoughts and hopes and you.
Kiss her often, precious child.

Feel the smile you bring
to her face when
your mother sees herself
in you and sees
things she wishes she could be.

Be careful of the world.
Hold tightly the hands
that guide and protect you.
Know when to run home and
when to soar free.

Sometimes parents need
a shoulder to cry on —
welcome that moment
and comfort those who need you.

Be who you know you are.
Don’t let the world hold you back.
You can be whoever you want.
This world is big and is better
now because of you, child of Jennie.

Notes

Written 20 February 2000 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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

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Shy Child

Spoiled with love and round
His bright wide eyes look in wonderment
The figures to him are blurred and scary
He does not smile

Notes

Written 5 October 1998 in Claremore, Oklahoma.

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

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On the Balcony

Toast
& strawberry jam,
bit of butter,
3 cups of coffee,
and the latest
poetry journal.
The smell of burnt toast
and scorched coffee
smells like morning.
The balcony is nice
this morning,
despite dead plants
left in pots from summer.
Spring is nearly over
and neglect is everywhere,
my time consumed by
words.
The jam is sweet and
the hum of an idling car
distracts from the peace.

Notes

Written September 1998 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “On the Balcony” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)