Cranky with the Dude

Photo by Brian Patrick Tagalog

 My "Poetry and Memory" class at Sarah Lawrence had its last class on Wednesday.  I actually wrote my last poem for the class during my memoir class when someone else was talking.  Yes, that's the kind of student I was and it seems that at age 69 (heh heh heh) I'm still that kind.

So, here's my last minute poem from the prompt, "write about wounds"

 

 

WOUNDS

 

How can I talk about wounds without mentioning Yours?

 

Fuck You. Fuck You and the ass you rode in on when You

went to your death for love and justice.

 

I was not anxious for suffering. Wasn’t ready for his

wounded brain’s release of his bodily function.

Wasn’t ready for our life of gradual forgetting

 

as forty years evaporated, one exploded neuron

at a time. It took so long.  It was so hard.  And You,

how did you answer my prayer for all to end?

When I told you I couldn’t bear it anymore?

 

You let my rage release as he locked me out again.

You let me forget the other ways inside.

You let me pound on the door and call him with

all my power.  You let my hand go through the glass,

an instant geyser from my artery.  Blood everywhere.

 

This is how You show mercy, is it? Saving me by

offering me death?  Answering my prayer with blood,

a neighborhood of rescuers, friends taking charge of my

demented sweetheart, seven hours of face-masked rest in ER,

and a brilliant surgeon?

                                    Huh. Ok.  I get it. I get it.

 

Your prayer about losing that damn cup is for all of us,

isn’t it?  We all want to let our bloody fate pass from us.

But Life (or your Dad) isn’t about that. Life is learning

that love is loss and compassion is costly. Life is suffering.

But life is also others acting as Your wounded hands, others

walking with Your wounded feet, carrying Your love and grace

for wholeness and healing, even if they’ve never known Your name.

 

 

© Kake Huck, 2022

 

Time

 Dear Will:

Jonah and the Whale by Pieter Lastman

I had a couple of weeks of just plain happiness after San Francisco.  I was looking forward to ending my history of depression with ketamine therapy.  I was feeling able to call people.  And then I got triggered.  I had a conversation at coffee hour with a new church member who has Alz.  Then my movie on Sunday night, Metropolis, flopped.  Then a friend told me I'd hurt her feelings last June.  There's also the fact of completion.  You know how I always got when I finished a project -- post show downs.

We were asked to write about a myth in my poetry class and this is what I came up with:

 

THE COMPLAINT

 

 

Have you ever been inside a damn fish?  You think you got so much to say about it.  Sayin’ it ain’t necessarily so and all.  Well, let me tell you it stinks.  It smells like your cat vomited out its dinner, ate it again, then shit it out, ate that then threw it up again.  It feels like you’re bein’ squished by some huge, wet, slippery snake.  It’s dark as a dungeon, deep as a well, you know what I’m sayin’?  But I wasn’t inside for no three days.  No, your boy didn’t need that much time to tap out. But I sure didn’t wanta go to that city, I tell you what.  It was a hella tough assignment. Was why I was on the damn boat in the first place.  He tells me, “Go straighten ‘em out in Nineveh.”  I said, “Hell no, I’m goin’  the other direction, if you don’t mind.”  Then He blows up this storm so I gotta jump the boat and wham!  I’m bait.  I’m thinkin’, “Really?  Really?  This is my reward for years of service, a fucking fish?  So I hollered, “I give, I give” and that thing barfed me back on the beach. So I did it, preached destruction and hellfire if they didn’t shape up.  Just hopin,  y’know, they’d keep sinnin’. No such luck.  No Sodom, no salty lady, no punishment, no rain of fire. Just a hundred thousand people sorry as shit for their sins.  I couldn’t stand it. So I’m sittin’ here under this tree suckin’ my teeth and starin’ at a  beautiful big city that should be smoke and ash.  Ain’t no profit in bein’ a prophet these days.

More Out Coming

 Here's some data about an important quality that Will and I shared.  While both of us worked hard on what we enjoyed and what we were specifically assigned, both of us also didn't feel compelled to do "extra" work on assignments we didn't enjoy.  So we stayed married even at a time when most people would have divorced - in part because of lethargy.

This old fact occurred to me this morning as I thought about how often people need to "come out" if they don't fit the profile.  But why?  Why is "coming out" important? 

I realized last week that I don't even know what label to use anymore. One of my Exploring Faith Matters students in talking about the feminist reading they had for last night mentioned the "13 different genders" and then said something about how challenging it must be to wake up and decide every morning.  Hahahaha...but she doesn't know yet that I'm whatever I am.

Do I have to be politically correct when I label myself?

So, here's a little poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago in response to the prompt, "Write about an object that was important to you in the past.

JACKET

 

It doesn’t smell like leather when I pull it from the closet.

Its black has become gray or brown in spots.

 

The five steel zippers with their stainless teeth

have lost none of their bite.  I slide hands down

 

satin lined sleeves and zip them tight. My fingers find

no holes in the pockets. The epaulets and studs still

 

speak a style once built for combat. Years left of wear.

But not for me.  The decades since San Francisco

 

took me as the man I thought I was have widened hips and belly. 

Age and life in Oregon have softened hunter’s eyes.

 

So I bundle my old armor into bubble wrap and box

and post it to a thrift store on that street in that City

 

where I bought it: the city where I left my heart,

where every gesture had a meaning back in the day

when freedom was in the air there,

when I wore my keys dangling on my left hip,

when I wore a black bandana in my rear pocket,

before I’d ever heard of body dysmorphia.

 

And after our visits to the city, when we returned to Idaho 

smelling it reminded me of that purchase at Hard On Leathers.

 

Wearing it in those days (before the Plague made

my natal gender safer than my chosen one) I felt protected.

 

Safe in black leather and black jeans, I stalked the streets,

my head on a swivel, my eyes dead except in the safety

 

of the Castro or Noe Valley:  a short, plump chick

costumed in Tom of Finland gear. So long ago.

 

Remembering the young queer I once was, I put a paperback

of John Rechy’s The Sexual Outlaw into the inside pocket

 

and UPS past proof of my pirate phallus to Polk Street Thrift

making peace with the living and the dead.