First Draft Poem

Clip

First the feelings swoop,
free in places.

Then separation pens them
to one time, location,
person that you have slowly
shed until,

Eventually, the feelings bind
into memories.

Deliverance

A big guy came to the porch, its single bulb the only source of light in the driveway/parking lot. He yelled, "Whatchuh doin' here" over the fence and board pen full of an uncertain number of barking dogs. I walked away from my car, past the pen, towards him. Another guy, this one even bigger, also with a buzzed head, came to the porch.

"I'm droppin' off my car for Mike to work on."

"He know 'bout it?"

"Yeah."

I guessed so. Hoped. I hadn't actually talked with Mike, nevermind met him. A coworker said his friend, Mike, would change my timing belt at a good price. The coworker also told me about the dogs, and that he'd let a roommate know I'll come by that night. He explained that this last detail was important because the roommates have an arsenal as big as the police department's, and may not like an unexpected visit.

I thanked the roommate for letting me park my car, then thanked my Texan friend - by giving her fried pickles - for following me to the place in her Jeep and driving me home. The next day at work, when I thanked the coworker for giving the well-armed roommate the heads up, he said he was glad I found a ride back, that he felt bad not going with me because I'd probably thing I "was getting into some 'Deliverance' shit."

(Written on October 7th. Posted November 23rd.)

Relatives

Lately I've been talking a lot with one of my co-workers when the place isn't too busy. Today, as we were discussing politics and music, I realized that I was unintentionally comparing him to some of my friends. It wasn't a comparison to decide if he is as good as them, but a search for who he reminds me of. As though pinning down someone to connect him to would give me a better grasp of who he is.

I think everyone does this sort of thing, to try to better understand or feel comfortable with something new by connecting to to something familiar. Like how people always say, "you look just like (or remind me so much of) so-and-so." Maybe it's a basic urge to link things and seek patterns. In any case, I wonder if it's possible to see anything as it is by itself, to take that raw, new thing and process it alone.

(Written on September 3rd. Posted on November 17th.)

He Who Laughs Last

I probably understood two thirds of what people said to me when i was in France, especially in the first few months. Normally that, plus context, was enough to get the general message. Though often I wouldn't be exactly sure what someone was saying until the end of it, so I'd let things to that I didn't understand. I figured it was better to let a couple of things slide in a conversation than to interrupt it each time I didn't know a word or phrase. Because of this, there'd be times when someone would finish talking and I'd have no idea what they said. At that point I'd decide whether to have them repeat themselves, based on how important it seemed, and usually I'd just let it go.

Unfortunately, this habit of not asking for clarification when I didn't hear or understand something - or worse: going on as though I know what the person said - has transposed to my US mind. But I'm working on it.

(I wrote this on August 31st. Not sure why I hadn't posted it yet, or anything for that matter.)