Pulling the Curtains

The encircling mountains
harden into blue
then jagged black
as this high valley 
rolls away from the sun

as greens fade to gray
the feral cats on my porch
begin their slow walks
to wherever 
they will be
in the night

I undo the sashes holding
the curtains in their orderly halves
to draw them together
before the big picture windows

I’ve begun a habit of saying
Farewell and good night
to each day by its name and date
in honor of all the babies born
all things begun and ended

I want attention paid
even if it’s only mine

It brings nothing and no one back
soothes no one’s pain
even aggravates mine
to think of all the time 
I still waste each day
while so many others 
have been denied
my options

I name the day and bid it good night
then pull the curtains
I’ll keep doing this until I get it right
or a better idea.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2019 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Faith, an Elegy

I miss God sometimes
Rather, I miss when I could believe
He might be the father to stand in
for the father I never had.

Like so many others, though,
in the fullness of time
I fell upon that belief 
with claws and teeth

It wasn’t enough 
to cast off allegiance
I wanted to hurt 
that imaginary being

I wonder if this 
reaction has a relation 
to the urge some young girls have
upon the onset of puberty 

to mutilate, burn, or otherwise 
ritualistically torture their dolls

mindless, gleeful violence gloating
over the remains of 
childish affection

for some it appears a necessary development
the artifacts of a once sweet and loving child 
not merely destroyed
but desecrated

memories of happier, more loving times 
slaughtered, the more cruelly the better
so that the more practical 
sensible adult may take the place
of a child who somehow
vanished in a single night’s sleep
went out to play that one last time
came back
ate dinner, went to bed
and that was that. 

Of course, God was nothing like a sweet child
making up stories and enjoying tea with her toys
but a cranky old man who created us flawed
and hated us for it

therefore He had to permit His only Son
His avatar on Earth to be mutilated, tortured and
killed oh-so-slowly (those glorious Romans
being such expert practical, sensible adults)
that we might be washed clean in the blood
wrung from agonized flesh

ah, and that final detail—

the son of heaven
crying out for his father
but the father has withdrawn 
and so the son dies
humiliated, in pain
alone

salvation born in plain hateful meanness
for some reason this was necessary
the practical, sensible, and 
most God-like thing to do

The story should have lost me at the
sticky, stinking, so gratuitously spilled 
gore washing us clean

we’d been treated like rotten little children
promised something better if we only behaved
while the Favored Ones were as rotten as could be
and rewarded before our faces
right here on Earth
right where and when it counted

so we acted out like rotten little children
at once rebelling against our father
while most faithfully imitating Him.

This is far from 
the Greatest Story Ever Told
but it’s certainly among
the oldest.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2019 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

St. John's Wort

I’m two capsules removed
from those toxic sunbeams 
shoving 
down
on my 
shoulders

choking my heart 
with poisonous gray dust

these New Agey herbal supplements
keep me as hard & as ignorant 
as any expensively groomed putz
making six-figures worth
of contributions
to the great multinational
people-eating machine.

a good thing because 
when I pass my son’s room
I see the friendly faces
of the trains, his talking
teddy-bear
& suffer that 

terrible knowledge 
everyone else ignores 
(what can you 
do?) that the

six-year-old 
boy with the 
big gap in his teeth
is dying one day 
at a time
& the smiling 

faces of the trains
his talking teddy bear
will soon entertain rats 
in a rain-soaked landfill
unless they

manage to find 
another home
where

other children are
decaying into dull-witted
teenagers

at best too hassled
to realize they’ve been
dead for as many years
as they’ve been interested 
in grinding hips with
other corpses
like themselves

I have no problem
with growing older as
I’m long since resigned that
the sweet young
things I so adored are
old brittle miseries showing
their true faces at last

I don’t have to look at them 
if I don’t want to
& I don’t but

I have to watch my
son

I have to watch all 
interest & curiosity 
& pure joy flake 
away into a series 
of surly poses

which may or may not
amuse the people to whom 
he sells himself
into slavery as a 
(we hope) 
Responsible Adult.

I took my children’s passage into tweenhood hard. It tore me apart seeing that innocence and joy of play go. Fortunately, they grew up to be great adults, so there was a happy ending to this. Still, you miss those children. You only have them for such a short while.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2003, 2019 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Observations on a Haunted Summer's Evening

In the late afternoon light
Slouching regally
Upon the hard gray faces of the trees
I see the end of everything.

The dry brown sorrow of the grass
Reddens in tune
Before glowing
Once more golden in love
with every sunset I have ever known.

Brassy as newfound faith
Or a missed lover’s smile
Before fading
one last time
from my life.

One last time
Like every other last time
I spoke to that face
Went along with that laugh
Knew the smell inside that car
I junked years ago.

I see them all
Loving me with their eyes
My ghosts a-bloom in bright youth
Slowing darkening among the trees
Fading with the last silent shriek
Of light on this late summer’s day.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 1994, 2018 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Mercy Is a Wrecking Ball

You see so many empty houses 
in small towns like the one 
I live in. I imagine this one’s
final moments

as the life last 
coughs out its door

the key turning 
the feet turning 
thumping away
a home’s last heartbeats 
fading from the porch

Who were these people who showed
their backs to this place?
Did children wave goodbye
from the rear window
as the car crackled from the drive?

Or was this an adult child 
settling the affairs
of the last parent dying
and for bad debt
or worse childhood
would not could not 
keep these walls, these floors
this sagging embrace of roof?

I imagine those first five 
minutes of abandonment 
the sunlight sliding down 
a corner where a child 
once played with his toys
where lovers squeezed hands 
under the table
where 

now
not even memory 
only dust 
settling
until a stray breeze through a 
widening, necrotizing wound
among the neglect 
finds it

Those first five minutes couldn’t
have been any more agonizing than
all these days, decades of emptiness
but to think of that final abandonment
the good times over for good
the seasons tucked in to feed….

I hear the surly child in my head
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer”
so I do
and I walk on

“If these walls could talk” 
as the saying goes
I expect they would 
tell me just that.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

A Very Political Poem

It’s easy to get caught up
in any given slipstream 
of outrage, just pick your stalking horse
and develop a rhythm as you
bludgeon your gentler sensibilities 
day by day, podcast to podcast,
one radio show or blogpost to the other

Savoring the sweet heady mead
of hatred for Those Bastards
and this just goes on 
and on because
people are so stupid
so uneducated
and they just don’t care
those bastards….

The hell of it is
they’re not entirely wrong

This being, after all, 
the known universe’s
longest running musical.

What’s most telling
is when you break from
the cycle and find yourself 
crazy-dancing drunk 
with bubbly, refreshing
freedom 

So you become evangelical
about getting others out of their 
rage cages,
you want them
to feel good like you

and you find out 
shout-in-your-face fast
there’s a reason politics
and religion were once taboo
topics at dinner
and everywhere else short of a
bloody-mouthed barroom

now the whole world is a sticky,
stinking barroom, suffocating in the 
hot, despairing minute before Last Call,
no one there but bitter, bloated 
pigwomen spoiling for a fight,
and surly bouncers looking 
for an excuse to throw you
face-first to the curb

and all you want is to get out
for a glass of clean
pure something
and laugh with cheerful
friends

What can I tell you, but
stay clean, stay serene
amid your giddy freedom 
that dares not speak its name

Avoiding eye contact
and always, always
keeping an eye on the exits.

“Oh, so this is what we’re talking about now? Excuse me while I run for the hills.”

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Parable in Dying Light

In the early evening light

the shadows of the ants working 

stretch away for seeming miles 
as if their lives and work

meant something

even the sand grains 

stand like mighty quartz

monuments 
to an epic race

I could say that Claude Monet fella

was onto something and

to hell with each and every one of you

middlebrow twits congratulating yourselves

for getting the joke

A fleeting moment

of eternal truth

gone with the fading light

dead to time

alive in memory

and fading with equally

insignificant me:

This is the holy paradox

the lesson I will own

in time for my 

last sundown.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Santa Claus Deathwatch

Last call for

castles & bunnies

percussive play with
tiny blue men scattered 
across hardwood battlefields 
seem more

grown-up than
knights & their
swords which don’t
stand a chance against
heavy artillery with
air support

The knights & bunnies have 
held out for longer than I 
thought but my son is 
very much my 
son for I’ve 

stumbled upon him more 
than once talking back to his 
talking teddy bear as if that 
might sustain the magic 
a little longer

it’s no use, of course
the jolly old elf
breathes his last
this Christmas

& it’s past time I
pushed him into
sports.

___________________________________________________________________
From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2005, 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Yet Another Self-Absorbed Twit of a Writer Ruminates on Suicide and What It Means to Him

You no longer see it as death
so much as the end of worry
the finale of fatigue,
the null of aches, chills & coughs

and glorious emancipation
from that most hateful tyranny 
of other people’s schedules

“It’s just so selfish!”
screeched my ex-
girlfriend when I mentioned
having these thoughts. “You
don’t even think about
how this will affect 
everyone else
around you!”

“Maybe I’m just
tired of worrying about 
everyone else around me,” 
I shouted back.
“Maybe I’d like to
do something for myself
for a change.”

Really, all I wanted to do
then was sleep. I’d been up
nights and nights and nights
and the days were getting more
and more awkward 
as if the very sunlight 
was disgusted with my
presence.

“You’re still here?” Mister Sun
seemed to say

“Get off my ass” I’d snap back.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Why Thomas Wolfe and I Are Getting the Hell Out of Dodge

I wrote this shortly after a road trip I took to the Baltimore/ Washington DC area in 1987. It’s strange how the American Deep South creates some of the best artists and art, yet so many of us have to put it in the rear view mirror to make that art happen.

The scrub oaks on the rolling sand hills,
the pines greening the ancient sand dunes

fade into the bare white bones of 
trees I recognize as 
alien. The familiar flattens 

into the coastal plain of 
Northern states and those 
Northern states of mind 
where restless Southern boys,
aloof in strangeness, might

furiously reproduce 
the diseases of their souls
in the laboratory
of another world far more friendly
than where those viruses incubated.

a common ground to be
as uncommon as I like
as the aches I’ve 
carried with me become
the only familiarity
which threatens but soon 

will flounder and drown
in a depth of distance
my car easily conquers.

___________________________________________________________________
From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 1987, 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Elegy for a Century Barely Begun

What I miss most
is the sense
of something
Better

“These things are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah.”

coming

a new song
a new dance 

a whole national
mood 
to love
or fashionably
Scorn

Lord pity these children
who look forward 
to nothing
but the next
Summer Christmas
Blockbuster Event

of stale
fart jokes
& obscure culture 
references
to make 
mom & dad
feel clever 

& remind 
the rest of us
there’s nothing new
but the remake
of

the toys in the
Happy Meal™
the joyless
Sex the
senseless Toil 

only
a few more
Shopping seasons
Left
until


___________________________________________________________________
From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2004, 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.