Poem for Friday and I Am Pissed Off

Poem for Jack Spicer
By Matthew Zapruder

It's the start of baseball season,
and I am thinking again
as I do every year
in early April now
that I live in California
where afternoon is a blue
span to languidly cross
of those long ones
you used to sort of sleep
through getting drunk
on many beers, lying
next to your radio
on a little square of grass
in the sun, listening
half to the game and half
to the Pacific water gently
slapping the concrete
barrier of the man-made cove.
I have heard it and it sounds
like conversations among
not there people I can't
quite hear. But you could.
And later you would try
to remember what they said
and transcribe it on your
black typewriter
in your sad, horrible room.
When I read your poems
about suicide and psychoanalysis
I feel very lucky and ashamed
to be alive at all. Everyone
has been talking lately
about radiation, iodine,
and wind, and you are in
your grave, far from the water.
I know I don't care about you
at all but when I look
at your photograph,
your round head tilted up
so you are staring down
at everyone, I remember
how much you hated your body.
Today I will go down by the water
where you used to sit and think
I do not hate my body
even though I often do.
When I die please write he tried
on whatever stone you choose.

--------

Despite shaking my head all morning at the repulsive rioting in Penn State -- people outraged not at the crime no one bothered to report at once to the police, but at the coach being held accountable? -- I had quite a nice Thursday: lunch at Bagel City with my mother and mother's friend after visiting the Strathmore Museum Shop Around, dinner at California Pizza Kitchen with Paul, Gblvr, Wolfshark, and Sharkie's husband, picking up Adam and his friend who had also come to the mall for dinner unbeknownst to us via the friend's mother, watching Deep Space Nine, getting Adam's report card which while not perfect was pretty good.

But along with his report card, Adam was given in his school homeroom a flyer from PFOX, "Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays" -- an organization funded in large part by the virulently homophobic Family Research Council, which defines itself as a Christian organization and in turn gets money from religious extremist organizations that have no business evangelizing in public schools. Apparently, they have done it before, though there must not have been too much screaming because I read all the local parenting blogs and this is the first I've seen of it. And the organization specifically targeted this county. So I am pretty much too angry for coherence. Instead here is my Superpoke penguin at a pride parade:



Thanks and best wishes to all our veterans and active military.