A Mess of Poems

So I've been messing with a few poems for a while, dug up one I never did anything with, and I've been reading a few new poets to expand myself. I'm sorry that all I really ever post now is poetry but I'm trying to keep myself focused and writing. You never know if any poems will make it beyond this blog or if I'll get sick of them and retire them like minor league ball players that never made it. Here's the first poem. It's a major rewrite of something I wrote last year. It may or may not work yet.

Thanks again for putting up with my posting. Like I said, there's really not much to say I suppose on a blog but sometimes it's good to get some positive feedback when I'm not in workshop. I can get the cutting tools on it later.

Cloud

For a summer, you were an island of a boy.
August alone, idling on Shaker Lake,
refuge on an innertube, cataloguing clouds.
July the rains howled around your trailer
and June, your mother said Leukemia,
a word that sounded like a door shutting.

You swore all August the same cloud
was following you, a gray cirrus wolf,
skulking on the skylines, behind the flocks
for your slightest inattention.
You steered your tube to the most middle,
the place you had the clearest vantage
of every approach.

Because you know the ending to Red Riding Hood,
know the wolf will swallow her gone.
I wish I could warn you that this path in August,
this race over the river and through the woods
will define everything you are to become,
will create me.
An endless need to sentry for your family,
a desperate peacemaking, a smile overclocked for everyone,
the morbid humor for release, even that look,
the face you will rearrange to say:
I am not aware the world has weight.
Like fairytales, you will acquire the tools you need
to meet all demands.

I can’t say I want you to choose the other way.
For in a way that is a wish to undo me.
To instead wander the circuitous path home
and not to labor in futility against things invisible and certain
so that when you arrive, you can be surprised at what big eyes
and what big time and what big indifference death has.

Most of that summer, I know you wanted to pull the plug,
sink to the bottom, and depth charge the whole mess.

If you’re heading my way, try this:
when the balance of blistering rubber on your back
and the shiver of thawed lake on your feet feel like something to learn;
on those days, just spin around. Forget what’s overhead.