53 Fragments Part 2 – childhood & youth

 
 
fragment 19
 
 
The Way We Remember Forgetting
 
is to keep the carousel in the distance.
Walk toward its mirage of missed youth
until something lifts from the path –
reflections of lamps you leaned into,
mother’s face and a pair of blinking lights –
patching holes in the big top.

And summer would comprehend its long days
flickering between the slats. Clouds disappearing
like memory on the tongue. The wind flaps
the tent mouth and shares a glimpse of snow
leopards making love. No cages for the cats, why?
This is a dream after all and what goes on
in your youth may never repeat.

Sometimes the monster grabs your ankles
from under the theater seat and you’re the only one
left in the dark. But there are times when the corn
bursts from its seed, covered in butter and salt as fine
as moon dust and your hand never reaches
the bottom of the bag. You walk outside in time
to see the milky way is a chalky haze you sketched
once in the park. And that elephant you placed
in the sky, stays put.

You step sure-footed as a carny after the calliope
has played and the streets are washed clean with rain.

 
 
Lois P. Jones
 
 
 
 
fragment 20
 
 
the children will illustrate
 
the immortals held between
the material and the future
are not willing to negotiate
the children in the color rainbow
the ones with big egos
the ones who remain children
in grown bodies like planets
of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn
try to turn the latch-key
but it is Pierre
the one that said, “I don’t care”
has no idea what he’s saying
but he can be saved with caring
I don’t care, but

have no where to go only
off into this city full of rats
and newspapers, full of second
class services that lead no where
the children that you celebrate
the ones muted
in Jasper John gray
tangled by alphabets
creating a new diction of

I should but I don’t care
the children that celebrate
hopefully it’s not too late for them
try on diversity
try with uncertainty

read Heinrich Hoffmann’s prolific
Stuwwelpeter, where the children
want to suck their thumbs
they still want to be coddled
and coaxed and taught,
becomes a joke, the children
that illustrate with crowds
dreams and strange birds
are leading this destruction
they are being cut off
their fingers are being cut off
they are marginal

 
 
Robert Gibbons
 
 
 
 
fragment 21
 
 
untitled
 
In the sketch, we were four brothers with eleven years stretching between us from eldest to youngest. We are four brothers. However, the years seem now to have gone slack, compared to during our broad span of youth. They don’t so much stretch as loosely hold us together. They are less like distance and more like walls that define a room. Back then, when my oldest brother held me in his lap, tail-finned cars thrummed through the streets, old Chevys, Fords, Dodges—which people collect these days, if they can find one. I remember the bricks in the Midwestern walls radiated newness with their red cast. Their lambency reflected our youth as we sat for the camera—possibly held by dad, who photographed weddings and Bar Mitzvahs as well as stringing for the papers. Time shifts though—bricks blacken, promises perish and boys gray. Not then, though—we still sparkled with the idea of the world. Or, perhaps, I still did, while cringing my eyes against the sun or the future. That brother’s lap was like a parent’s, protective and warm. That brother looked out for me, although shade already hooded his eyes when he thought no one saw. The years between us pulled tight across our family, trying to tie down the bulging, angry secrets and fallen stairs, ghosts creeping up from the basement and children quietly crying in bed. The artist friend of my father who drew from the photo hints at the lack of innocence in that brother’s youth, our youth. Inked lines in place of the photographic silver merge into dark shadows, faces part night—unromantic youth at its fullest. Almost eleven years later, no, let’s say eleven years later to the day, dad shot himself, but not with a camera. Mom set her mouth, as though the stone mason had carved her frown along with the gravestone. And youth, which had never been a cloudless day, stopped forever. It had already ended for my brothers, who by then lived on their own. The idea of youth—the idea stopped. The years had always girdled us. The cars had always been second hand, rust showing in the rocker panels, rumbles foreshadowing holes in the mufflers. The bricks had always looked dirty. And we were only four brothers with eleven years from
youngest to eldest.

 
 
Michael Dickel
 
 
 
 
fragment 22
 
 
Easter, Child and the Forest
 
Only a child could see
the spring coloured forest
in an Easter egg and enter.

Only a child could walk
through its darkest murmurings
and rain of shivery shadows.

And when the night would end,
only a child could gently exit it,
possibility-reshaped and whole.
 
 
Petra Whiteley
 
 
 
 
fragment 23
 
 
Remembering Youth
 
Waving goodbye to our virginity
was the best of partings, all be it
a fumble, an awkward cuddle

and my mother catching us
half naked on my bed. With it
went those priestly confessions;

face-to-face lies and penance.
There, among smooth hard rocks
and soft curved dunes, we were free

to sin. Our tidal skin erect not hidden,
sprite in our bones not spite – not yet.
We didn’t spit feathers, we held them

between our teeth and smiled; oozing
with ‘O’, our love for stuffed olives,
cream and white horses. A photograph

keeps you close. Still, when playing
myself, I can bring you closer.
 
 
Kevin Reid
 
 
 
 
fragment 24
 
 
Poetry of Lies
 
You filled my childhood
With your poetry of lies
But did not let me hear
Your soft good-byes
I was a ragamuffin, a changeling
A gypsy, orphan child
Sweet and shy running wild
The wind and sun they were my song
I did not stay a child for long
My cheeks were roses plucked from stem
My eyes vast pools or dark green gems
I did not stay a child for long
I miss the days you gave me
I can count them one by one
Yet in the web of childhood
I do not regret the things that we have done
You showed me how to brave the world
And not be hurt by sticks and stones
That other people hurled
You taught me lessons
I learned them well
Now I live my life inside a shell
Crack the egg the chicken dies
You filled my childhood
With your poetry of lies
And now there’s no one near to hear
The woman in me cry
 
 
Sharmagne Leland-St. John
 
 
 
 
fragment 25
 
 
Follow me, God of the Dogwood
 
wind howled the rain sideways, horizontal
when I was young. My father

was gone. I walked, head bowed
into the wind.

Oh the elements when you are a child!
How you love them.

Follow me, god of the dogwood
and god of the rose.

My mother
pulled aside the homespun curtains

and showed me the Milky Way
like a storm against the sky.

Follow me, God of the dogwood
and God of the rose.
 
 
Jane Blue
 
 
 
 
fragment 26
 
 
Once Upon a Baby Time
 
        (for all the refugee children
        who came to America after the war)

I pretend I am a baby,
walk on all fours, see things
I don’t understand, a couch,
a lamp, a new refrigerator.

Later, my hassock seat
is a blue boat in a white ocean,
the waves higher than
the trees in the front yard,
and I think about the lost girl
in the story my father told me:

Why was she in the wrong forest?
Was the girl dark like the children
who live next door in the red house?
Why did the witch spin in her rags,
dance a polka and then fall down?

Later, I look out the window
and see a penny in the grass.
When I go outside to get the penny
it is not there, but when I stand
again at the window, there it is.

I wonder who I will be
in the story my father will tell
when he comes home from the factory
where he makes white string
like the string in my shirt.

Will I be the sister
who runs away, or King Sobieski
riding a blind horse
searching for her
in the yellow mountains?

Later, I bake bread in the TV set
and kiss everything in the house.
The dirt in the flower pot
tastes like chocolate,
the carpet hurts my lips.

Later, I am a rabbit
and a father afraid of stealers,
and I grow wings and fly
to the ceiling above my head.
 
 
John Guzlowski
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
End of Part 2