{"id":8587,"date":"2014-12-08T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=8587"},"modified":"2014-12-15T16:47:18","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T21:47:18","slug":"70th-anniversary-bouquet-and-other-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/70th-anniversary-bouquet-and-other-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"70th Anniversary, Bouquet, and Other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bouquet\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

70th Anniversary<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

They spent their 70th anniversary
\njust lying beside each other
\nin the frozen cold of the church yard,
\nthe snow heaped on their graves,
\nbut together again for the first time in years.<\/p>\n

I remember my grandfather,
\nthe day before he died,
\nsinging \u201cLara\u2019s Theme\u201d at his birthday party,
\nhis eyes wet as he sang about his love,
\nwhose eyes had faded,
\ngrown distant,
\nclouded over with confusion
\nbefore they closed forever.<\/p>\n

I think how lonely it must have been
\nto sing alone those years
\nafter my grandmother died,
\nwhat it must have been like
\nto have the hand you held for decades
\ngrow cold then be gone.<\/p>\n

Oh love,
\nif I\u2019ve known you,
\nI have never sung your name.
\nI have only heard it on the air
\nin the music that passed between them\u2014
\ntwo people less lonely
\nbecause they still had each other
\nwhen everything else in the world had gone.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bouquet<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The paradox at the root
\nof every moment I spend with you
\nis that every second of happiness
\nis the seed of the sadness to follow\u2014
\nthe knowledge that you are yet one more man
\nwhom I will love
\nwho will not love me in return,
\nknowing that every smile you give me
\nis not one I am meant to keep
\nbut simply to admire
\nfor the boy it will one day belong to,
\nwhile I get to own the messages
\nof how he never loves you right,
\nnever loves you well enough,
\nor never loves you at all.<\/p>\n

I will be the sounding board
\nfor every first date, romantic notion,
\nthe things you want to say to him
\nbut are afraid to.
\nYou will say them all to me
\nso I can listen and advise,
\nbut they will never be meant to be something
\nI can hold in my hand,
\nfeel it take root in my own being
\nto become real words and feelings that belong to me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not my first time as second best\u2014
\nI know this feeling well,
\nwhat it\u2019s like to finally let a little of the light out
\nthat I\u2019ve kept shuttered so long
\nonly to find out it is never enough
\nto light the night between us
\nand is just that much less illumination for myself.<\/p>\n

People used to give flowers
\nto represent meaning\u2014
\nlilies for death,
\nroses for love,
\npansies for thoughts\u2026.<\/p>\n

If I were to give you and every other man
\nI ever truly loved
\na single bouquet of what\u2019s unsaid,
\nI would need to find new species.<\/p>\n

Give me a flower that says,
\n\u201cTime alone has stopped seeming like solitude
\nand is now just empty space
\nthat nothing seems to fill.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would need two that say,
\n\u201cI notice the other side of the mattress
\nstill looks pristine,
\nbecause no one else has slept there.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would need accents around the edges that said,
\n\u201cI write you poems I won\u2019t let you read
\nbecause words released into a vacuum
\nnever become more than silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

And at the center,
\nsome simple blossom that said,
\n\u201cPick me.
\nChoose me.
\nLove me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if that flower existed,
\nit would be dead,
\nwouldn\u2019t it?
\nPicked, put in a vase, admired
\nand then gone.<\/p>\n

Nobody listens to flowers anymore.<\/p>\n

I tend my gardens,
\nthough they\u2019ve gone to weeds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sacred Geometry<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In response to Flower of Life Glass Etching by Perception Photography<\/em><\/p>\n

The ancients saw God in symmetry,
\nthe even Hand defined by the edges
\nthat could overlap in the even fold,
\ntouch your finger to the center line
\nand you can find the Center of Everything.<\/p>\n

Lay the moon over the sun,
\nlay the Earth in the sun\u2019s shadow,
\nand watch how geometry can consume
\nin a way that could only be seen
\nas evidence of the All Powerful.<\/p>\n

Hold your hands together in prayer,
\nthe lines overlapping each other,
\nso Life and Love run parallel,
\nraise up the name of what you hold holy\u2014
\nwe have not stepped away from symmetry.<\/p>\n

Life, someone said, is a casting off,
\nbut maybe the things we leave behind
\nare simply the ones that would not align,
\nas we seek to be our godlike selves,
\nas we move closer to being one with the All.<\/p>\n

I etch circles into the frost on the glass
\non January mornings when it seems all is frozen,
\nlooking for the spaces that could match
\nwere my world to fold over,
\nwondering if I am closer or further from God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Touring the Battlefield<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are no civilian casualties
\nin the war fought in my family.
\nWe launch the most precise strikes,
\ntake out the primary targets,
\nnever hit the wrong embassy.
\nWe are trained and tested
\nin the ways of combat,
\nknow the slice of guilt
\nworks better than any blade,
\nare disciplined in the nuclear devastation
\nof silence\u2014
\neven more powerful
\nthan the measured word.
\nWe can itemize the artifacts
\nof every major battle,
\ndisplay them with the proper narratives,
\nrevealing every detail:<\/p>\n

this is the china cabinet your grandfather insisted on installing
\neven though your father would have done it eventually
\neven though eventually had not arrived
\nin the two years it had sat in the corner,<\/p>\n

this is the open space where the gun cabinet was
\nbefore your mother died
\nand your grandfather reclaimed the weapons
\nbecause no one in the house knew how to use them
\nand your father kept threatening to turn them on himself,<\/p>\n

this is the stuffed animal your father bought for you
\nwith the five dollars he had in his pocket
\ninstead of getting lunch,
\nand even though that was twenty-five years ago
\nthose hunger pains still echo.<\/p>\n

Each attack is precise and planned,
\naimed to hit its mark,
\nand somehow it does,
\nevery
\nsingle
\ntime.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Well of Loneliness<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One night
\nI find myself suddenly not wanting to sleep
\nin the room we used to share,
\neven though it\u2019s been years,
\nlong enough to have packed away all these feelings,
\neven though I thought I had somehow
\nreclaimed every corner of this house
\nthat was once ours
\nfrom that memory of an us
\nthat was only half me.<\/p>\n

But it seems, suddenly,
\nas though this house has been built
\nupon a well of loneliness
\nthat sinks down thousands of miles below,
\nand the springs that feed it
\nhave suddenly surged,
\nspilling their waters into the basement
\nand up into the walls.<\/p>\n

It drips from the outlets and wiring,
\nfrom the light fixtures themselves,
\nleaves the bedclothes damp and mildewed
\nand the bathroom tiles slippery with the sense of loss.
\nThe carpets molder and rot,
\nand the floor boards themselves soften
\nand threaten to give way.<\/p>\n

And I suddenly wish I could be anywhere else but here,
\nwhere your sudden, too brief return
\nhas torn the hardened tissue from the scar,
\nleaving me to remember a love I was careless with
\nin this house that seemed only like a home
\nin the time you were inside it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Carlton D. Fisher is an Instructor in the English department at SUNY Jefferson in upstate NY, near the Canadian border and the owner and Executive Editor of Jane\u2019s Boy Press. \u00a0His work has appeared in Assaracus, The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Sugar Mule, OCHO, MiPOesias and other publications , and is forthcoming in Weave, Main Street Rag and several other journals and anthologies . \u00a0He was a finalist for the Allen Ginsberg Award in 2014. \u00a0He is currently completing several manuscripts while working on his doctoral degree at SUNY Binghamton. \u00a0For more information on, please visit his website at www.carltondfisher.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They spent their 70th anniversary
\njust lying beside each other
\nin the frozen cold of the church yard,
\nthe snow heaped on their graves,
\nbut together again for the first time in years.<\/p>\n

I remember my grandfather,
\nthe day before he died,
\nsinging \u201cLara\u2019s Theme\u201d at his birthday party\u2026<\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":8590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,219,199,217],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/235"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8587"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8591,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587\/revisions\/8591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}