Ain’t been much for shinin’ my own glass,
‘n it ain’t some selfless thing. Want you to notice,
just don’t want to make you.
But it ain’t fair to ask you,
if I ain’t gonna even gonna try.
So, I wrote down here some things I want you to know:
Sixth grade, I played my first onstage role,
caked in shimmering silver make-up I terrorized an audience
with a terrible “gangster” accent.
I’ve been in love with theatre ever since.
I love that dusty scent of granite beneath feet,
as the valley opens up below,
bluffs, ‘n rivers, ‘n sights that make the gods feel small.
Land carved by time, unfathomably subtle.
That same gunpowder scent from childhood,
playing Risk by flashlight as we watch over the fire-works,
That same gunpowder scent,
highway smells from dry days hand out the window trailing the breeze,
That same scent.
I won a hundred dollars for standing in front of an audience at the verge of tears,
and far too drunk,
too drunk.
I have no pictures in my college yearbook,
but they mentioned the poems I read.
Junior year of highschool, a play of mine won the chance to be put on as a staged reading,
an actor gave me his card and I kept it in my wallet for years after the text had faded.
I’ve rewritten that same play fourteen times since then.
Put on staged readings of my own,
Put on full productions.
There are two roles that I have played that I’ve adored.
One was Picasso in A Picasso.
she left and I was left in a place where I could not seem to express.
I remember nothing about those weeks but rehearsals.
The light went up and I forgot.
I don’t know if I was good, but I was… I dont even know.
The other was a nameless man in Burn.
In the climax I delivered a crazed painful monologue about fire,
strange visuals behind me,
sweat dripping down my skin as the lights pound down,
my emotions raging madly as I try to hold them pin-hole thin,
thunder in my chest with my heart in my ears.
After the show,
there was no bow.
I was just off school grounds, far enough to legally smoke a cigarette.
I rolled a Pall Mall Red between my fingers,
and thought about ad astra per aspera.
Thought about Kansas,
and all the since and the soon to be–
When I was younger, there are many memories,
all formative, but I think about two when I want to write.
I was homeschool in 2001.
I sat on my couch watching the news for hours after the first one fell.
I was nine, and I had no idea what it meant.
I just knew it was terrible.
Before that, long before it, we lived in another house,
in another part of Topeka,
the kids took me to this overpass down the road,
the street underneath had never been completed,
so behind a gated fence, was this void in what seemed urban to me at the time,
I remember a hill up to the highway,
and a gnarled leaveless tree.
It’s my blasted place when I read Waiting for Godot.
That should tell you pleny about me when I write.
I will write love poems about you.
And I will mean every one.
You’ll never know if I’m lying to you,
or to me.
But they’ll be beautiful.
You’re damned right they’ll be beautiful.
The day I met you,
the sun was warm,
and the air was dry.
It had an almost gunpowder scent,
as the dust kicked up.
