I’m almost sixty now,
breathing in the sweet green
fairway of life.
Once the streets were home,
***** and alleys my best friends,
dingy rooms, torn carpet,
typewriter clanking away.
I prayed each key
would drive the lines home,
hammer the words
through my madness,
half afraid to look away,
to flinch,
to hit the wrong letter
and start over
again
and again.
Paper plates, scraps
of loose-leaf, lined, unlined,
stained with blood
and whiskey, all prep,
all diligence for this,
the smooth grind
of the quiet room,
pink and violet dawn
breaking
through the blinds,
ten to fifteen poems a week,
published books, read
and reviewed,
sometimes loved
by a drunk in Tennessee,
or hated
by a hotel manager
in Idaho.
The black edge of this Tuesday night
peers into the window.
My three cats doze,
knead the soft flannel quilt.
Green and golden eyes
like lanterns
study shadows,
and chase invisible friends.
Bookshelves loaded with history,
novels, gritty books of poetry,
and the lonely biographies.
The books watch me,
cheer me on,
silent witnesses to years
of psych wards, jail cells, detox.
And still I pounded out the lines,
tasting fear like a pomegranate,
spitting out the seeds,
choking on verbs
like walnuts.
I remember being five,
understanding plot and tragedy,
writing a note to my mom
on a piece of blue construction paper:
Dear Mom, I have left home.
All my love, Thomas,
a child alive with pathos.
The internet hums
like a world I never imagined.
Messages from strangers,
lonely and tired.
Conversations across oceans,
lightning-fast responses
that would have taken months
back in the stamp-and-letter days,
when fifty bucks
bought a page
in a vanity press,
poem buried
on page six twenty-seven.
Words have been faithful,
kept me alive through the horrid days
and brutal nights.
My friend, my lover,
they held me when nightmares walked
around the room
and sat beside me on the couch,
sipping cheap, warm beer.
The words kept me honest,
gave me breath.
The antique maple desk welcomes me.
Fingers dance over the glossy keys.
Heart and mind carved in ink
and sobriety.
Ghosts of broken typewriters,
paper plates, spilled *****
and crumpled mistakes
lurk in the corners of my brain,
laughing at every line
I write today.
Sometimes I chuckle
at the absurdity
of this cosmic waltz.
Sometimes I talk to the ghosts,
comfort them,
tell them it was all worth it,
that I understand
they’re lonely.
I tell them to lie down,
they can finally rest.