SHEDDING THE FRAUD SMOCK

I felt like a fraud plenty of times in my writing life. Not really sure if I liked poetry enough to read it to learn how it worked. Not really sure if what I thought I was reading and understanding was true. Not really sure who to read and why some people who were read were considered good. I imagined myself in a dream one night walking down a library row of books. Of course it was a poetry section. When I came out of the row, I saw Thoreau sitting on the ground, eating sunflower seeds. He was apparently waiting for me. After this dream, after eating sunflower seeds with Hank, I figured it was time to stop being neurotic and write.

When I was at Spalding this past May, I felt like my whole existence as a writer was sharpening. I understood the world enough to create the work. And by world, I'm talking about the world of poems created. There's nothing wrong with modeling one's poem after another. With drafting to understand things. And when I talk about accessibility, I realize I've got a slanted view, but how many Billy Collins supporters do we need among our blog. I think his contingency will go on, quite well I imagine, even if we stop mentioning his name. Yes. He's damn good. Yes. He's found his niche. But you can't out Billy Collins Billy Collins. Just like you can't out "To be or not to be" Shakespeare.

Learning that you can only be free as a writer when you're moving away from what you know, what you're comfortable with, has been the great discovery of my writing.

I got an idea for this poem on the airplane. Apparently I always am going to be writing about airplanes or getting ideas on them. The idea was a synthesis, as all good poems are. Good ideas rarely are whole and singular. They're this massive movement of thoughts, images, words, fragments, colors, and smells. I held as many as I could in this poem, the one I'm excited to show Rane in a few weeks. In case you don't know, I am into writing love poems. But love poems in a different sense. Like I said, you can't out say what's been said. So I find myself looking for what I can say about my place with my wife in time. And somehow, with a collision of all my personal risings, this poem appeared. It's dangerous to try and say everything (or at least a lot of things) in one poem, but its interesting to see how things combine. I hope this poem
sheds my fraud smock forever.


TWO THOUSAND LILACS

1.
Spiraling toward the sound of water, I could not lead
or understand the park map. Among the budding lilacs
I found myself climbing gentle slopes,
trying to understand
what is common to us, what has brought
thousands of people to walk
these paved paths immersed in lilacs. Moving
in rhythms
with your hand enclosed in mine, you tell me
there is a top to this hill, a place to look and see the city
in which we live.
I could not lead, and you had no idea
where we were at least once or twice that afternoon. Lost
among pine trees, you unbuttoned your denim shirt
then removed it
revealing your shoulders
against the sun for the first time all summer. Lilac salts
clang to your collarbone. I collected them
later that evening
as thirst idles as we whisper aged
songs
teenaged shadows taut with aching prayer.

2.
Kissing in the shadow of your spine, I trail a few steps behind
admiring you,
a flower, the only one I touch. Kissing in the shadow
of your spine, I was conscious
of my mind attempting to memorize the scenery—heaven, anonymity,
a comfort
for lovers like us. I don’t know how this happened,
how I envisioned
entering heaven as something like spiraling a hill, but I found myself
trying to memorize everything—a bird’s song, the constellations
tiny birthmarks on your shoulders, the sound of water.

Later, as my lips traveled up vertebrae, I pictured you walking
ahead
reaching your hand back to me as we ascended the final set of stairs.
Later, my lips worked up your back,
beneath your clothes, beneath your name.
Later, listening for heavy breathing, I smelled lilacs
in your hair, your skin, in your mouth.
3.
Holding you as we lay to sleep, purples and pink petals
remain in my nose and mind. It is dark
and I can’t see anything but the shadow
of your body. I inch there, pinching petals with open palms,
refusing to end a day
where I was a witness to my whole life
rushing together in focus.

4.
Drifting back a week, I think of your mother’s mother
walking
the paths we did, her steps recorded on eight mm film. Silent, black and white,
the images unfold: her smile breaking through bushes and trees, the way
your grandfather loved
to be
in the way of the camera. Wandering
back to Highland Park, my mind
thinks its found a way to preserve this day: delay night.

5.
How many times did we see that little barefoot boy? His dark skin, a fire,
a voice, an angel? Running through the paths, I thought
perhaps he was an orphan
without knowledge of his mother. I thought perhaps
he knew this of me—
he stared a whole through my silence
as a way to communicate something toward heaven.

6.
It is late now as I touch your back, or rather, where I imagine
your spine. I touch
nothing but blankets, boarders. Thinking of being lost,
I wish it happened more frequently. The moon rising to its zenith, the glow
of stillness calls me toward sleep. I touch your ear
and say everything—your spine, the way to my soul,
my soul, the way to experience, experience
the way to the lost nation,
the lost nation, a way to see everything
you must mean to me.
When did I ask you to become the country who banished me?
When did I know the joy of touching my Korea through your hair?

Korea, you could break me as a child.
You will not break me as a man.

7.
Returning to the darkness of our bedroom, I turn away
from you so I can sleep. I can’t face you and forgive myself for ending a day
so sweet as today. Not touching you, I wander among a pantheon of mothers
only to break their hearts.
I break their hearts
only to show you
that you are my country, my world,
my wreckage. Only to show you that while I cannot lead us
to heaven,
I can remember the way I felt when your shoulders crushed the sun.
I can remember I wanted this day to be the day I come to fear the maker of earth.
I can remember how your lemonade was sour, lacking water.
I can remember how that little barefoot boy looked at us. I can remember the city,
tiny buildings in the distance rumbling, shaking in development.
In this darkroom, I hang pictures for you.
I am sorry
that I cannot lead us to heaven—you will have to do that, but
I will remember
what we said to each other
while napping under trees,
while walking through a park holding hands,
holding centuries of pain
in our lover’s palms
as we kissed on bridges who structures could never hold
the sweeping ash of our love.
I don’t know why
this lifetime
is made of molecules of suffering. I don’t know why once I rescued you
I demanded to be rescued too.
I don’t know why I handed you the lyre
and can’t say why I ask you to put bandages over all my cuts, those feigned snakebites.
A snake-bitten bride, I carried you
and your song
over the gaze of disbelievers
who could not understand how we were tapped by clouds,
draped with affections we neither knew of
or could deal without,
with affections so deep
that I am sure enough I am a man alive
2000 years after The Way was made, 2000 lilacs
enough
to need nothing
to define myself
except your body over mine.