Poetry through the eyes of a tough guy.
Three sample poems
SHE SAYS
© 1997
I will continue to love you
but only if I stay in my power, she says.
I will stick around with integrity
and be with you only if I remain strong,
she says.
I will only love you
from my womanly passion,
not my needy little girl, she says.
I am no longer looking
for someone to save me, she says.
11-97
THE EVER-PERFORMING MALE
© 1997
My trial and sentencing as a man
continues in my ability to pretend
that I know how to have sex with a woman
without performing.
When I let go of my
tried and true little tricks,
my pathetic, well-versed bells and whistles
when I release my need
to please her at any cost,
I find my gangly, nervous teenager
next to someone I’ve never known,
myself.
When I cease my incessant search for the goal,
I find my body and heart are numb.
11-97
THE LIVING WOUND
© 2002
Whether through serrated remarks or the back of his hand
we all live with wounds from the father.
If we found ourselves controlled or abandoned to live on our own,
his ghost sits with his sons and daughters.
Was it simply that we loved the same woman, our mother, his
wife and ever-fading lover, tearing us apart when we became men?
Did he survive or devour his competition, or was it we that turned away,
rejecting the old, tamping and trampling him in our haste to be the future?
It’s taken too many years, but our father is forgiven for reacting
with such vengeance, taking so personally the inevitable
strikes and blows of the son.
10-02
Read the Author’s Notes