My Introduction

My Introduction

(“So he handed over everything he had to Joseph and didn’t pay attention to anything except the food he ate.” Genesis 39:8)

If I could introduce you anew to my self
I believe I would take the chance and offer the true.
Time has passed and, with each year the misunderstandings
multiply until
you and I
are left behind by the scars words marked upon redwood
picnic tables and
summer camps. We held hands.

If I could tell you, without fear of abuse, that I have loved
every person I’ve met. I regret my mouth, sometimes my youth,
in unwitty stupidity,
poked fun at a grimy sore I had not seen. He was such an angry
man
and I loved him for the pain he still carried from his first love.
I never looked for social motivations; psychological motives
are a guessing game for me. I am no scientist
and never looked for clients, only friends. Nothing else mattered,
their pain, their pursuits, diluted aspirations or cast-iron stains.

To a few I gave my heart; not lovers, but a simpatico few
I assumed
would treat it gently, having seen the maze of scars.
Because some wore their spike as they walked across my soul,
because a few wore a mask I did not recognize and tore at my spirit
like a cat with tissue paper,
fewer know me now, and my tree has two, maybe three good limbs
with leaves that may sprout in the spring.

I once loved a study groups and discussion panels,
walks in the Oakland hills or wandering book shop aisles
filled with old ink and early editions. Mostly tattered in
bins on Telegraph in Berkeley; sometimes Los Gatos;
they are the friends who, giving them my spirit, have never
wiped their feet upon it pretending to clean up my mess.

Some leave me lonely, some with horror and pain,

but, having begun the story, I am always certain my own soul
will not suffer at the hands of fiction inscribed by genius. Perhaps
turning each page,

I will walk, once more out of that space between odd and even
and let a trusted one peek within my heart again.

If I were an author, I would say my private time is all about
creating the next world that, exposing everyone, exposes none.