All I wanted was to see a smile, to hear a word that didn’t hurt,
I’d go to sleep at night thinking about how different it could be,
How happy I’d be if I could only go through the world unafraid,
And in my vision I would have a friend who listened and who cared.

Every morning it’s the same.  I wake up knowing that they are waiting,
Putting on my clothes I try to make it so I’m invisible, a ghost—
That way no one will notice me walking down the hall,
No one will call me names and trip me, my books spilling on the floor.

Every day I have to live in this hell that others call life, waiting,
Knowing that each classroom brings its own special torture,
That each bell calls me to yet another soul lashing,
Another stinging name they’ve invented for me to keep the wound raw.

I did nothing except not knowing how to act or what to say or how to belong,
And so they took my shyness and used it to make sure I’d pay for my disdain,
Making me the target for all their own pain and anger, the crucible of their cruelty,
Each day spent inventing some new way to make me bleed tears.
That old singer is right—there is a meanness in this world.

They took from me everything I was, everything I wanted to be,
Finally, they managed to take away my reason for staying alive
So I went home and locked myself in the bedroom, made sure the rope was tight. . .
And put an end to the unendurable pain of belonging nowhere, with no one, ever.

I saw you walking down the road the other day—You didn’t see me.
It gave me time to think about the slowness of your walk,
About the years that drifted by while each of us pursued our lives.
Your gray beard betrayed the years spent working, worrying,
Taking care of those you loved, taking all you had to fill their dreams,
And learning as we all do that nothing could save them from hurt
Or from themselves or from the toll that life would wreak on them.
I thought of the moments we shared, those precious hours holding life at bay,
Sharing if only for a time the hard-fought freedom from our daily cares.
How many times did we save each other from the burden of loneliness,
Talking or singing or simply sharing the silence of mutual understanding.
You stopped and saw me looking at you, and you nodded with a slight smile—
No need to talk or to indulge in some meaningless hearty hello.
You knew, too, that words or waves would have been too little, too insincere,
Letting that nod say everything that needed to be said between us.
Letting the years and the memories speak for you, a greeting we both understood,
And you walked on, the smile still playing almost imperceptibly on your face,
Acknowledging the truth of friendship, knowing that I too had no need for words.

On the other side of the pumpkin patch there lies a narrow path.
Just a dent in the woods it seems, until getting closer you can see
The ground worn smooth by those who know to use it.
A short, dimly lit way through the thick brush opens out
And suddenly you find yourself on the gravelly bank of a railroad track.

The track cuts a swath through the dense forest that leans over it
As if jealous of the ground taken from its midst.
In each direction the track finally loses itself in a tunnel of trees,
Curving out of sight to reach some distant and unknown end.

When the train comes through, robbing the woods of the solace of silence,
I wonder where it’s bound, and how long it will take to get there.
The rhythmic clacking of the wheels, the endless line of boxcars,
The power and speed of the thing arrogantly announces itself to all--
Blind to any purpose or direction other than its own inarticulate need.

As the trains moves out of sight, I look again at the empty track
And wonder about the choices I have made.

The change shows soonest in the eyes,
Eyes that invited you to look at the world they saw—magical, raw, resplendent—
Now lost in the unfocused numbness of another day with alcohol.
They focus on a world of their own making, a limbo land not alive, not dead,
But free of all that could matter, free of caring, free of pain.

The mouth sags under those dead eyes, not angry, not sad, not anything—
Betraying the wreckage that the years of drinking have taken as their toll,
Clamped shut as if in mute appeal to those who can hear its silent message.
When the mouth opens, empty syllables escape, words devoid of meaning,
Trying to say, trying so hard to explain the emptiness inside, the need,
But nothing comes of nothing, and the words do not cohere.

Looking at her face, I grieve for what has been lost,
Wishing that some miracle would bring her back home, return her to us.
The truth will not let go: she is gone, and never coming back.
I search in vain for a face I used to know, for a love with nowhere to go,
Lost in the fog of her mind, she turns to me and nods as if in agreement.

And so, aherem, the nano, rrmpph rmphh
Of 21st century ahem thinking will be er
En, en aham eroom  neurological medicine
So that topsoil tch tch avat ahem growth
Will er er ahumph outstrip human thinking
If only aratonkamaroon we learn the
Hem, haw, ar argch lessons of the past.

This poem would not let me write it.
For years it kept me looking elsewhere,
Kept me at bay with other, more seductive subjects.
Hiding in a corner of my mind in its invisible cocoon,
Slowly growing, transforming itself, evolving,
Until one day it announced its presence like Hamlet’s ghost,
Asking me to remember what I thought I never knew.
There is a secret that no soul will willingly share,
A hurt so deep we bury it alive and pretend it never lived.
What was it that crept out to pull me back, erasing the years—
A picture, a random thought, a boy shedding tears?
The poem now commands me, insisting on its need to be,
Refusing the excuses, rejecting my self-justifying fears--
That after all I will not be able to write the words,
Too weak or too afraid to make the thoughts a living thing.
The heart aches to find a way, to manage the voice,
To shape the words and sounds so they come out true.

Da, I wish you’d have let me know who you were,
I wish you’d have allowed me inside your life,
Your mind, at the end, was a sealed vault, locked,
And I would never, never know what you loved or
Why you lived your life, and what you thought of me.
We went fishing twice, together but somehow irrevocably alone,
After that, there were visits, the Christmas dinner, the tv.
What became of you and me?  Just before you died,
Lost in the fog of a morphine drip and numb to the pain of life,
You placed your hand on my head—and that was all.
It was enough, I think, to let me know what I needed to do.