5/25/2018 Poetry By Steve HennSeven Wonders Perambulating in the track one might’ve left on the side of the road If the road were not concrete but dirt and the shoes soft moccasin, not Horsehoof, un-animal, as if narrow deerpaths beside streets and sidewalks Through incandescent neighborhoods alive with children On bikes and sketchy motor scooter riders. I knew I’d changed when a blonde mother with her young children Saw me walking and said hello, some mask of illness lifted Or manifestation of brokenness unseen, shed like a jacket On a 70 degree day in February celebrating greatness and folly Two Saturdays ago at the morning meeting the Wise Man said we are all Of us Broken Toys, every one of us. As if God were a Child Who loved us recklessly, who mangled us with love I am confused about my place in all this and I don’t know If I’m meant to be awed or upset, frightened or mystified Or having an experience that once we called religious – is that what this is? It seems so self-congratulatory to suggest these things Were here for us all along to experience if only we’d say we wanted them And mean it. When young we used to pluck dandelions gone to seed Fashioning the stems and heads into a kind of gun and pop it off, Mama-had-a-baby-and-her-head-popped-off, right here In this neighborhood, in this backyard I’ve never left but circled And returned to, wide circles stretching to the coasts – I wasn’t born here But I have taken up residence like a Lion in a children’s book purported to represent The Way, The Truth, and The Light and don’t we know real lions Would just as soon bite your head off as save your ass from a white witch? And so now I can really start asking questions: Is God benevolent Like a dictator or benign like a tumor or malignant Like the thoughts leading my thoughtless legs to the bar on a Sunday afternoon? I am trying To make sense of things, I am trying for an acceptance That doesn’t feel like a submission – this happened once before, the world Felt as if it would surely go on beyond my puny self without asking my permission Or caring either way, unconcerned with reward or punishment Simply sloughed off the walkway like an insect with broken legs Is this the blessedly depressing gift Mind had in Mind? Is this my piss-poor Enlightenment? . . . we are Lightyears removed, we are Eons removed from the Center of the Universe. Ubiquitous In the 1990s in Indiana and probably across The Midwest a neverending cavalcade of Jeremy’s tromped the halls of high schools and middle schools, newly-minted alternative schools and juvie halls, they slung fast food in Arby’s and Wendy’s, they went out wakeboarding on Winona Lake with six Purple Passion beverages for their sexually inexperienced teenaged admirers, The Jeremy’s like an ooze, a blob, a Blob of Jeremy’s oozing from the painted cinder blocks that led from Math to Science to History to English, the Jeremy’s oozing and creeping and insinuating themselves into everything, the scuttling Jeremy’s like cockroaches gather and disperse, collect and scatter, some of them hoisting up three pointers under Friday Night Gymnasium Lights, some of them pissed off beating cheap drum heads in a rented parks department building playing a punk show, the righteous Jeremy’s, the angry Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s of ubiquitous understated retort, the ever present Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s of the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen, fumbling with the bra strap of their Saturday dates parked near the boat ramp at Carr Lake, the Jeremy’s sitting at home staring at the wall masturbating to full blast Danzig, the horrible Jeremy’s, the terrible Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s like fascist soldiers goosestepping their way door to door in Student Council community service leaf raking, the Jeremy’s smoking marijuana seeds from a jerry-rigged pipe of assembled miscellaneous hardware parts, the Jeremy’s trying to stone themselves infertile on a spacetrip into light, the Jeremy’s escaping the basement via easement to climb into the night, the Jeremy’s walking the highway to Dad’s house high on half a box of Dramamine with a Robitussin chaser, the Jeremy’s with their never-stated questions, the Jeremy’s with their quiet rage, their misunderstood understanding, the Jeremy’s with their weary vows, the Jeremy’s with the girlfriends they try hard not to knock up, the useless Jeremy’s, the ugly Jeremy’s, the Jeremy’s waiting and waiting and waiting to get out. ![]() Bio: Steve Henn wrote Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson Press, 2017) and two other books of poetry. He teaches high school in northern Indiana. Comments are closed.
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