The Hollow Tree
You were my tree in the mountains.
A dream of escape from my tiny apartment,
my dayjob keeping the coffee pot full for
the elderly Cadillac customers.
You leaned against the archway that led
from the living room to the dining room,
signalling the opening of a portal
to our temporary hiding place.
Eventually that portal closed, leaving us
staring across an impossible gap.
It turned out, though,
that there was a long way around,
stepping down toward the swift creek
on a snowy boardwalk.
The ducks sail past with no idea who we are.
/ / /
29 December 2022
State College PA
Category: Poetry
I’m sitting in the café at Wegmans in State College, PA, listening to Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue and thinking about the way I use poetry in my life and whether I’m misusing it. Let me explain.
I write very publicly about my life. In fact, I also broadcast and podcast about my life. I post on Instagram about my life. I make TikToks about my life. In short, I live my life very openly. I don’t have millions of followers or anything like that, but the people who do follow me get a very accurate look at what I’m thinking and feeling. The good and the bad.
Also, the primary art I make is poetry. I’ve started getting into photography and I’ve always been a musician, but when it comes to expressing myself in some sort of heightened artistic way, I turn to poems.
If you put the preceding two paragraphs together, you get a person who speaks openly about his life through the medium of poetry.
Yesterday I was talking with a friend who is also a poet about this tendency of mine. My friend said (and I’m paraphrasing a bit here) that they eventually came to believe that writing things publicly, particularly about relationships, is just what people like me do. They said they sometimes used to be bothered by it, but eventually they asked, “Well, what else is he supposed to do?”
We’ll get back to that, but first I want to talk about a TikTok I saw a couple weeks back where the creator said that whenever you’re about to make a TikTok, ask yourself, “Is this for TikTok or for the group chat?” I thought that was a great piece of advice. Going back to the idea of public poetry, I might render that question as, “Is this for my blog or my notebook?”
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. If you’re reading these words right now, there’s an extremely good chance that you know that the love of my life and I ended our relationship two years ago. If you’re a longtime follower of mine, you’ve probably read dozens and dozens of poems about my former partner while we were falling in love and then while we were building and living our life together. And if you’ve read my writing for the past two years, you know that the majority has focused on the heartbreaking end of this relationship, and on my desire to reunite with my former partner.
The question I’m asking myself these days is whether this writing should be in a notebook, unseen by anyone but me, or on my blog, seen by anyone who cares to look. And most importantly, of course, potentially seen by the subject of the poems, who will remember why we were in love in the first place and realize that we should still be together.
I turn some of my poems into videos on social media. A commenter on one of them said, “These poems you write really make me wish your former partner knew how much you loved them and cared about them.” That comment really stopped me in my tracks. Because of course they do know. The problem isn’t that they don’t know, it’s that they don’t feel the same way. They’re perfectly entitled to not feel the same way. And I know they don’t. So, what’s the point of all these poems?
I’ve always told myself that writing poems is how I process my emotions. But it’s more than that. If processing were all I needed, a notebook would be just fine. I do more than that, though. I post them on my blog, on TikTok, on Instagram. I put them in the places where the people they’re about might see them. And I do this even though a poem has never, not once, fixed any relationship I’ve been in.
Moreover, I post them where other people might also see them. People not connected to the situation, but folks who I want to have a good opinion of me, to think of me as a caring, expressive person with his heart in the right place.
I know next to nothing about Lord Byron, but I’ve always had this picture of him as a person who used his poetry to manipulate. To woo. To brag. To paint a larger-than-life picture of himself. And at the risk of a ridiculous comparison to one of the most famous poets in the English language, I do worry that I might be doing the same thing. Tainting the value of what I produce by using it the way I do.
I want to be clear that these poems aren’t calculated in their content. I write what I genuinely think and feel. The emotion is real. The worldview is real. Where the calculation enters the picture is in their deployment, not their creation.
This essay isn’t going to end with an answer. I still don’t know if what I’m doing is right. I’m not even sure if “right” comes into it. And I haven’t decided yet if I should turn to a notebook and away from blogging. Or only use the blog to post poems that aren’t related to relationships, which means I’d be posting very little poetry because that’s mainly what I write about.
Feel free to chime in in the comments. And thanks for reading.
One Comment
Needles
There’s a big needle on the TV show I’m watching.
I never realized how many needles there were
in all the shows and movies until I met you.
You hated needles. “Nope,” you’d say
and quickly look away when one appeared.
After hearing all the stories about your mom
having to hold you down at the doctor’s office,
I went with you to get your blood work done.
The nurse was so friendly, and the three of us
spent the whole time laughing and telling stories.
And you did so well. There was a basket of stickers
on the wall of the exam room and you got one
from the nurse on the way out. Star Wars I think.
Today I saw the needle on the sci-fi show,
and I thought I’d give a lot to stand there
next to your chair in the exam room.
To watch you overcome your fears.
To hold your hand and laugh together.
Then to walk back out into the sunlight.
/ / /
4 December 2022
State College PA
Young Boy Blues
Digging through an online directory
I came across a copy of Jon Cleary
singing “Young Boy Blues” on
Harry Shearer’s radio show back in the day
and I think this is the first time
I’ve heard it since I lost you
and so I’m sitting in the
fucking grocery store of all places
and trying not to cry because
the college kids eating their sushi
and the parents trying to get their kids
to sit down for a few minutes to eat pizza
wouldn’t appreciate a middle-aged man
being reduced to tears with his headphones on
and anyway I’m not sure 49 is really middle-aged
because the current life expectancy for a white male
is 77 and that means the middle of life would be 39
and my current age is nearly two-thirds of the way
to the part where I won’t be able to listen
to Jon Cleary sing “Young Boy Blues” anymore anyway.
/ / /
22 November 2022
State College PA
Digging Bill Evans
I was 21, driving a used car,
no money in the bank, a job
as a waiter in my uncle’s restaurant
awaiting me in the desert.
I moved into a studio apartment:
a bed, a small sofa, a scuffed old
round table from the restaurant.
I had my stereo from back east;
the library across the street
had CDs. I’d sign them out
then sit on the floor, head
between the speakers, trying to
find my way into the music.
Now I have a 20-year-old son.
I can’t afford a studio apartment.
I don’t have a job waiting for me.
I’m still trying to find my way
into whatever story the music is telling.
/ / /
21 November 2022
State College PA
Bound
Tramping through a snowy wood
a few feet behind her,
he remembers all the times
they’ve been here before.
Not these particular woods,
but alone together on a walk,
talking about books or movies
or music, pointedly not talking about
the other people who might wonder
where they are, and with whom.
Their boots crunch in a broken rhythm.
Occasionally a branch whips back;
she looks to make sure he’s OK.
Rust said: Time is a flat circle.
She’s never seen that show.
But she’d get it. And she knows
where they are on that particular arc.
Cars go by through the trees ahead.
The real world is always close at hand,
however muffled by the snow.
/ / /
18 November 2022
State College PA
A Winter Poem
Winter is more insidious than summer.
The low-angled sun is a dull blade,
sheathed in bitter grey.
In winter I play old music.
The music my grandparents listened to
as they took me to Friendly’s or to
a clarinet lesson in the next town over.
It’s the music of nostalgia and longing
and emptiness. Winter music.
Winter creeps into my thoughts,
warns of the approaching holidays,
sets a single place at the table.
In these months my fingers are always cold.
I sit hunched, arms crossed,
conserving what little heat I can muster.
Not every place has a winter.
At least not the way I mean it.
I’ve spent Christmases by the pool,
New Year’s Eves under warm, soft skies.
A friend says, “You’re a real New Englander.”
I say, “Only in disposition.”
/ / /
14 November 2022
State College PA
a million droplets
a million pixels
van life in the rain
/ / /
11 November 2022
State College PA
Day 600 of the haiku notebook project. I’m going to take a break from this project. I’m doing that for two reasons: I’d like to focus on longer poems, and I noticed that forcing myself to write a haiku every day means I sometimes write when I don’t have very much to say. I really like the form, but I’d like to take a little pause from it.
I Get Sad At Planet Fitness
I always get sad in the shower at Planet Fitness.
I miss the little things: sharing a bathroom,
going grocery shopping, holding hands on a car trip
to see your parents. I miss them, too.
Don’t you think life was better when we had each other?
I mean I know the answer to that question.
But finding out the answer is no is like discovering
I’ve been misunderstanding the lyrics to a song.
I looked at us and saw our future.
You looked at us and saw your past.
/ / /
10 November 2022
State College PA
up before the sun
talking into the ether
the window is a black rectangle
/ / /
10 November 2022
State College PA
back in our bagel shop
the weird baby is still here
we aren’t
/ / /
9 November 2022
State College PA
A Supermarket In Pennsylvania
I call this my supermarket period.
I’ve mostly been living
in grocery store cafes since April.
Over time you get to know the rhythms.
You recognize the regulars;
fellow drifters or room renters
or nomads or the unhoused.
I assume the workers know my face,
although I never speak to them
and they never speak to me.
I wonder what stories they might imagine
to explain those of us who are here
every day. Probably they don’t
invent a story at all, because
why would they?
We’re phantoms, passing through
the walls but somehow not
falling through the floors.
Eventually each of our
supermarket periods will end.
We’ll move on or find housing
or get arrested or die.
The hours and hours we’ve piled up
in these identical seats
will dissolve into the ether,
leaving the occasional ring
on a tabletop, soon wiped away.
/ / /
7 November 2022
State College PA
“tell others
what you have seen today”
OK: two squirrels & lawn mower
/ / /
7 November 2022
State College PA