God—these hands were in a war?
—Tim O’Brien on Fresh Air
They’ve been building three houses next door since I moved in last August. When they’re done for all I know the new owners will price us out. I’m up before dawn, my body still responds to the call of war, and so are they, back hoeing and cutting brick. The Office glows in the early spring light. The snow’s melted and the wild cherries fell. Behind the trellis and the wood fence rich kids throw the ball and whine at each other. I’m standing, drinking mint tea and staring into the sky. The worst kind of trouble blankets and blinds me. The best kind puts me to work. I’m about to start my 46th year and I’ve regret but it comes with a wisdom to go at trouble and get to work or let it take me and just lay me out. I was born with a rabbit’s acuity and raised in a climate of forced loyalty and fear. Blame is fun but it’s a distraction and if I could destroy my enemies I’d only end up with corpses. Though they’re here and my love is, my loved ones are not. I lived a life running and got away with it mostly. I’ve come out on top of every turn but rehearse my every bad deed. At it’s best the pain I know reminds me to be present with them especially when I feel a drift when I look in their eyes. The reminder of my pain reminds me of theirs, though some cannot be helped, and this is the wisdom that made losing you a trade. Which isn’t to say it’s easy. It’s never easy. I’m a default working-class Southwest Philadelphian. Out there it’s survival and I’ve lost my center. I gave too much fighting. I tire quickly and easy but when I look in your eyes there’s a lightning that splits me wide open.
I read you that Bukowski story. I think I came home drunk and living in my father’s town. Though I’d head out eventually, from Albuquerque to Toronto, and those rooms are empty of me and the Hermes—that night you listened, through the phone, as I read you to bed. That afternoon coming up from the cocaine morning, I’d been talking to them but my eye went round the room. You left and I don’t blame you and now you’re gone but not all the way. It’s a crowning shame, to suffer and lose, but be left only with the suffering that made me run away. It was some decade falling through the city but falling’s only good for a while. You’re alone in free fall, your laughter gets hollow, but it’s quiet of shame and there aren’t these thoughts you’re always trying to forget. I’m done with drunk living, and the cocaine, I stand in the court as the new city is raised around me. The rich kids go in, and the back hoe’s still scraping. I can’t hold on to your loss. The smell of March rain is hanging in a sky paling to the hue of a healing bruise. I come in and sit, put you down in writing, gold-panning your memory and feeling your femynyn crack out of dumb bars and late night telephones. I appeal to the goddess, lay this time like alms. I remember you to the point of buckling. I don’t want to let go of the pain even though I’ll have to, to get on with living and giving all you gave me back to the world.
Curator at Going For the Throat, columnist for Into The Void, progenitor of stand-up tragedy™. Jim Trainer publishes a collection of poetry every year through Yellow Lark Press. To sign up for Jim Trainer’s Poem Of The Week, visit jimtrainer.net.

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