Wrestling Light
by
Michael Neal Morris
Smashwords Edition
copyright 2012 Michael Neal Morris
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Midlife
For Dave Dravecky
Handy
The Painted Grasshopper
Cicada Song
Cottonwood
Cottonwood Beetles
At the Back of the Backyard
Grappling
Episodes
Sitting In The Car Outside Walmart While My Wife Returns A Christmas Present
The Turtle
If Murphy Is Right
Divorcing T.V.
A Poem About Being Fat
The Heat Sign
Don’t Be Sad
Bridge Across Lake Lavon
Jumping to Conclusions
The Game On
Chill
14
Shock
Organizing the Debris
The Table
Dream Fragments
Not News
Missing
Fragment of a Lament
Hard Hearing
Talking About Losing
Five Missing Lullabies
Four Prayers
Warning
The Wrestler
Abandon
Fear At Burger King
Approaching The Hawk
Seagull
Two Ghosts
Cave
Killing Words
On Violence
Love/Work/War
Waiting For The Doctor
Doctor Jude Sings A Requiem
Dragging
The Insomnia War
What I Want For My Birthday
P.C. Jazz
For Now
Bio
Acknowledgements
The following poems were previously published in the following magazines, journals, and websites:
“Two Ghosts” in The Distillery: Artistic Sprits of the South.
“A Poem About Being Fat” in Our Journey.
“Dream Fragments” in Pudding Magazine.
“What I Want For My Birthday” in Illya’s Honey.
“Grappling” in Lynx Eye.
“Jumping to Conclusions” in Concho River Review.
“The Painted Grasshopper in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review.
“Midlife” and “Missing” in The Alternative.
“Hard Hearing,” “Five Missing Lullabies,” and “If Murphy Is Right” at The Electric Mayhem (online).
“Talking About Losing” at Liberty Hill Poetry Review (online).
“Fear At Burger King” at Chronogram (online).
“The Heat Sign” at The Mid-South Review (online).
“On Violence” at Poets Against The War (online).
“At the Back of the Backyard” at dotlit (online).
“The Game On” in Credenza.
"The Insomnia War" at Flutter (online)
"Cottonwood" at The Adroit Journal (online)
"Bridge Across Lake Lavon" at The Sonneteer (online)
Midlife
It is midlife. You are between the blank, unknown
moment when you dive, no, are pushed into the black
pool that drains toward Heaven and the trip you made down
your mother’s body where your first stranger slapped your back
and handed you to a weak protector. The frown
you give your children does not yet come with the tact
your grandfather has painfully learned, and the sounds
the kids hear you make are from a familiar act.
You can’t watch television without complaining,
but whoever loses your remote is in for
an hour of your angry silence. But you hear
yourself telling people your age now, explaining
the shortness of breath, temper, and joy. And the more
you sleep, the less you dream, the more you have to fear.
For Dave Dravecky (June 18, 1991)
If the visions I had when I thought like a child
had come to fruition
then I might have been an enemy of sorts--
hoping against the strength of your arm
studying your moves to keep from being picked off
swinging for home at your expense.
But you got lucky.
I was too asthmatic,
too bookish, lacked too much talent
to cut giants down.
How fortunate did you feel
when the power of the comeback arm
snapped at cancer's return?
Hanging, falling from the mound,
dethroned and returned to mortality.
St. Paul the mortifier
might say you are lucky this morning--
you lose an arm to the black mass,
but I struggle with my whole live corpse.
This suspended moment
under the anesthesia
I try to blame the god of science
who takes swings at the faith of cripples.
Someday, my daughter
will cry over what I know is trivial,
and I'll take my two arms
and squeeze out the sobs,
but you--
you'll adjust.
And maybe I won't be angry forever
at the dark we wrestle with
at the light that let this happen.
Handy
The desk is, after a fashion,
orderly. I sit with coffee
in perfect reach of my weakening
right hand. The cap of the pen
lay a few inches from the cup
out of the way, not as I
seem to remember being taught
resting on the opposite end
of the pen (so it won’t be
forgotten). I’ve shucked
the childhood habit because
now my hands are so sensitive
to any poke or pressure.
At my far right, a marker
having already served its purpose
stands precariously erect
as if awaiting orders.
A folder filled with waiting
work sits at the desk’s corner
the papers inside in no human
hurry to be noted. Next
to it (to my right, its left)
is the stapler. Its mouth is
away from me. It reminds
me of a dog panting, guarding
if not the territory,
the space beneath him.
In the center (until set
slightly aside for work)
is the book I’d rather be
holding at a beach or
on my back porch, a separate
music playing, resting,
working in me.
The Painted Grasshopper
After the lot was striped
a variety of gray, black, blonde
and ash colored birds came
to get the morning
grasshoppers that had
wandered there.
I made my rounds
and birds scattered
momentarily. Insects
waited to move until
I proved a real threat.
All but one plump body,
its speckled brown and yellow
painted red, eyes vacant
like one patiently awaiting
ambulance or hearse
preferring neither.
I pushed it gently
with my toe. Nothing.
It merely rolled over
a gaudy, misplaced ornament.
When rounds came again
all the grasshoppers
were gone -- at least
from the parking lot.
At first I thought
the painted one
had been taken, but
I found it a few yards
away on its back
bent in half.
On my next pass through
nothing remained but a leg
and a discolored wing.
Assuming some crow had developed
a taste for painted insects
I returned to my post
drank my soda knowing
I'd never know where or when
the poison caught up to the beast.
Cicada Song
In dark green trees at the edge
of the site, cicadas drone
the same low, wordless adage
I heard when I walked alone
in no hurry, at the age
of seven, to reach the home
where centers sat on a ledge.
Here, someone builds a golf course.
They work as if another
was needed yesterday. Hoarse,
they shout above the tractors.
There, a boy touches the source
of music while his mother
worries, becomes her own force.
Cottonwood
There's enough breeze
to swirl fluffs
of cottonwood clouds
in a languid dance
above the grass beside
the empty playground.
Some birds chatter
like fast forward wind chimes,
but there's also the caw
of grackles, the bark
of a dog behind a window,
the grating roar-whoosh of starting cars,
then tires crushing pavement
as they go, the steady
warning beep of a truck
backing up at a nearby
construction site.
Every hour or so,
one hears the fading wail
of a siren speeding
to other accidents.
Cottonwood Beetles
Suddenly I remember cottonwoods
and the sticky black and white beetles
that crawled around them. Perhaps
it is the eve of summer
with humidity and sleepiness
in the air that makes me
think of this. I’m not sure.
But those trees and insects
-- though I’m sure they’re still around –
were before my allergies
and I haven’t seen much of them
since we moved from the house, but not