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Grandpa's Circle

my court officer test is scheduled for december 13th at 2pm.
my grandpa says he is tickled pink that things are going so well,
and that that is a very good omen
because december 13th, 1959
is when he took his police officer test. he said he never forgot that.
i've actually seen his test. i saw his handwriting, and his answers.
i saw that he did very well.
i see that things come full circle.
i see that some things happen again, but fifty five years later.
he told me this is just the beginning but
it's painfully funny how beginnings almost always start with an end.

i wonder if my grandpa suffered an absolutely horrible loss on august 31st
and when he was shattered to pieces he lost most of them
because a girl was so imprinted on all of them
he had no choice but to throw most of them away
and make the best of the ones he had to keep.
those were the ones that didn't equate sex with emotion.
those were the ones okay with kissing and not knowing names.
those were the ones that panicked because they realized
they were the only ones left.
it was the 30th or the 31st
i really don't remember
a day or two before classes started.

i wonder when my grandpa started drinking.
will this date be synonymous to some addiction i will develop
in order to fill this kind of pit that i feel now, somehow,
and i am afraid to try drinking.
my family is prone to addiction.
there are such things as third generation alcoholics
things tend to come full circle.

i wonder when exactly my grandpa quit cold turkey.
when did grandma threaten to leave with the kids already packed up
and one foot out the door after he had disappeared for three days.
i wonder if it will ever take me three days to buy bread.

i wonder
does she wonder
sometimes
about how true it really was

i wonder if my grandpa wondered
about that girl
i want to know if he promised her his everything
and then told her to leave if that was the right thing
because he would never be the one to do it
because he's too damn selfish

i wonder if he lost her because of a miraculous, brief, small moment
of selflessness
in which for once he thought of how he was hurting her
and how he loved her so, so fucking much
that he would do anything to make her happy.
more than anything to make her happy with him.
i wonder if he broke every rule, so many rules
just so she would be happy i wonder
if she begged him to break the rules
if she liked it when he said he didn't care what would happen.
i didn't care what would happen.

i wonder if after
he didn't have a single reason to listen to his mother anymore.
did he stay out much too late because going home somehow made her real?
did he resent the fact that he had to go home
and did not have a place of his own to fall apart accordingly
did he cry for her?
did he struggle not to beg for her back?
did he fall down and
down
down.
so far down.
so very far.
was he tired?
did he feel like a different john

i am different now and
i wonder if somehow
my grandfather was

i wonder if a girl did this to him, too,
and i wonder if in that way
it was some different girl
that did this to me

Editing stage: 

Comments

where worlds simple drift together like mists
and rage like a storm tempered by the indignations
of humanity let loose
and to whom we give power too
and too whom takes it from
us like a load
like snow falling on an aching roof
in increments
like the grass growing in the field
till the ruts are lost
and things unseen

of the entirety of the poem your last
line sums up the equation in an emotional
few lines
"if a girl"
to
"it was some girl"

if it and was...etc
a good technical writing poem
or word phrase story
for this read aloud can be
elocuted to a poem setting
with pause breaks and
enunciations

so much of the intimate
becomes the same
in the light
in the shadows
like movements
a dance
a gliding
towards and beyond
the beginning
till its hard to find
the steps

like walking in the forest
sometimes
our intuitions
draw us back to whats familiar
so we may never venture
far beyond what we know
as truths
as home
as importance of being

I really like this poem
late fifties was a pivotal
moment...an industrial
boom.....excruciating
poverty and race issues
sexual powers tested
and the courts put through
the traces of a colonialism
to the brave new world
then of tail fins and sock hops
but it was turning
turning to the now
the third generation
striving to repay honors to the
past....the history of our blood
and families
to uphold the upheavals
wealth and losses of those
moments of years
that flicker fast
in motion like an old millimeter
film..

addictions tear away the soul
and the torch led righteous
lead wanting retribuition
and affect
for all the effects
and the savior angels
whom are bored
or thrilled with another
addiction and need
find in the suffering
a calmness in its wild
calamity

Thank You!

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