Tag: Inspired by Paul Ferguson

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From July to September

It is September 4, 2021
and I’ve decided that
I’m taking a break today.

I’m at Riverview Campground
and I’m missing my mom.

This is the hardest hitting day
because the memories are Little Jason’s;
our mother wasn’t perfect…
but she had graceful, beautiful,
quiet, unrecorded moments,
which are all I am remembering today…
1 day after what would have been their 39th anniversary.

At times, our mother seemed psychic.

She begged me not to take Jamie to the theater
to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show;
she told me that something terrible was happening
and though Jamie never forgave me,
I knew that our mother believed what she was saying
and I broke my promise and left Jamie at home…

Later, Paul (who I had seen Rocky with the previous year)
called to say that he had been raped across the street from Oz.
She knew. Somehow she knew.

And she knew about Katie.
And she knew about other things…

Back in my memories and
my mother is looking out
across the low green field,
storm rolling in toward our backyard –

I’m a small boy child,
clinging to her mysterious silence,
her wary hypnotized gaze is exhilarating
in its graceful stillness…

The emerald sky sparks
and forms tear drops
over Janet Lynn forest
years before that tragic coupling
will leave me forever scarred
and always haunted;
a dark harbinger of things to come.

Could she see all of that then?
I’ve never imagined that she could…
but who is to say what stirred within her?

“The shameful secret she never shared.”

Written by Jason Wright
September 4, 2021

For Myra Canell

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Broken Beauty

I remember you,
the you before now,
the you from back then.

You were older than me
but you were young when I was,
glistening nakedly
as you ran in for water
after yearly mile run.

I didn’t know you well,
though we smiled for one another;
we drank and frequented
the same bars…
you, weaving in and out
of my existence…
you wrote letters from prison
to my dearest of friends,
and I thought perhaps you had died.

I drove you home once;
but I doubt you’d remember it;
you were drunk and clinging
to that night’s latest trick.

I was jealous of him
as I made sure you both arrived at your home safely,
as I ensured your survival and my own cuckoldry…
even as you stumbled from my car
at gas station to vomit on the sidewalk
and on my left rear tire.

You told me you were sorry
and you sounded miserable…
and that night’s lover looked embarrassed
if no less interested in sharing your bed,
not that I blamed him…
you were beautiful in your blindness
and completely unsuspecting.

You were already broken then,
but the glinting light
from those shards of self
shone like diamonds
in a world filled with pebbles.

That same night,
I drove home alone
to my little village farm house,
where I sprayed the vomit off my car
with a garden hose
in the far too bright, sunlit morning.

I never saw you again.

Written by Jason Wright
April 13, 2019

For Dale Lipke

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The One That Stops Him From Feeling

Ian music is song of drug addiction
ascribed to crazy haired Cure fan
who raved about Mood Swings
near Autumn, in the magic of her
midnight gallery opening
I would never witness in the light
of 90’s Ann Arbor Michigan day.

I met him 3 times
before Pizza House friend
cursed his life
and sent him to his smack filled
heroin infused ever after…

But I never knew “the asshole”;
I only remember his kiss…
Paul’s longing description…
Carrie’s guiltless confession…
and Dorian’s unexpected words
which brought all these memorial ingredients
into focus and allowed me finally to mourn –
listening to Numbness on NYC downtown train to The Prom –
no tears –
but a sad smile
and a kiss goodbye
in the same deep water as you.

Written by Jason Wright
March 1, 2019

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