2025
After Allen Ginsburg’s Howl
I.
I did not see my generation’s brightest minds destroyed
by madness, not starving, sometimes hysterical, but
often naked in the way that I can look at myself in the raw
mirror, sometimes clothed, always in the eye, always
pieces of our mothers poking out, always the fingertips
of our father’s minds (even if he was touchless). How do we
leave those bits behind? Is there a place to store brothers
and sisters other than in the deep folds of the mind? Deep folds
of the palm? Deep cracks in the nail? Deep holes
in the yard; the dog dug them, all wild fur and ears with
roots flying behind him, left there without a second thought,
just like your sister did for school when she warned
you to seek out a therapist the second your heel clears
the threshold of the new old house, she hopes that you do
every night before you close your eyes to fall asleep because
the things our parents gave us cannot be outrun in our sleep
but only in dreams, maybe nightmares, maybe in sloping
backyards that end in creeks that flow to lakes and to tire swings
that nobody will particularly mind if you sit on for a while,
flinging feet in and out of that long river (so long as you
dry your feet before going back into that old house) so long
as you kiss your mother hello so long as you call your sister
on Tuesdays at 4:03 pm to let her know just how it’s going
and hope that you don’t have to hear her wailing down the hall
from your bunk bed any more or ever again on the other end of the phone
but she calls from somewhere else is home now, so it’s up to you to climb
the ladder down and find your way to the bathroom where
there will probably be a soft yellow light.
II.
Who lives in the rolling trolley beneath my old bed? Who cracks
its knuckles in the darkness between supper and breakfast? Who
is supposed to help me? Who was supposed to help my father? And
his father? And his? The ugly black maw of unforgiveness is only
ever feet away from our children, but who are you to fight it? What
tools has your mother left you? Her mother left you? Her mother left
you? How can it be up to me to stop her? To save her? Can I? Can I? Can I?
III.
Kimberly! Robert! I’m with you on Brookton
where my hands first saw light
I’m with you on Ashgrove
where our feet bored pits into the shaggy carpet that we felt new but instead of seeing softness for what it was I
found shittiness in old porcelain
I’m with you on Lancelot
where there is an unacknowledged rage that somehow keeps us each warm in its way
I’m with you on Huntington
where a sorrow still sits, on its own, but attended to with gentleness
I’m with you in Elmwood
where your father’s father’s bones are settled in a box that one day we all might know once we lay down our fat bags
of agony to beat on into the current of the ceaseless to come
North Carolina, —