March 27, 2019

BIOGRAPHY

He made this panel for all the lost, unknown, and unloved people who died of AIDS.

I woke this morning feeling very ill.  I sort-of lay there, sweating, and waited it out on the bed.  Around 0930, I came alive again.  Alive is a good way to go into a day. 

When digging around for that lost poem, I was very surprised at the number of poems and essays I wrote in 2010.  Unfortunately, many of them have a heavy, negative weight to them.  This piece is another from the same era but not one that ends negatively.



BIOGRAPHY
           
I was told I was needed at my branch library
how strange then to be left standing
speechless, rebuffed, unwanted
in an age when library funds are cut
not needed to volunteer.
           
I’ve always been immediately
grabbed,
volunteered,
put to work scrubbing pots
for Father Joe’s homeless,
picking lunch from shelves of donations
or out of the back of trucks
for those long lines of humans
wrapped around the building.
           
Once I copied things ad nauseam
sorting, recording, moving
strings of papers and boxes
those items of historical importance
that escape me now             
but were significant once.
           
There were other years
I dodged senators and cameras
wet politicians, canoes and other irritants
while helping to save the slough
while digging ditches
while hand writing invitations
for those wine and cheese things
that never pulled in the constituents.

There was a while when I was
more concerned with
working on my own 15 minutes of fame
than of saving the world.
           
There were also moments
while schlepping mountains of fabrics or
sewing machines, notions, and other
serious stuff
endlessly,
for the AIDS Quilt,
when I wanted to quit.

Now I find myself shelving books
at last,
first for a non-profit
sorting endless piles of books and clothes,
things and stuff, items, gear, effects, donations.
Now I’m at the library,
home at last,
taking no prisoners
with my boxes of books.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

  • Himself:  Much of the morning spent on a Cadillac, a Mexican motorcycle, and a Freightliner.
  • Myself:  Copying my old writings to a new hard drive.  The old hard drive is full….the new is very empty even with all that stuff I just dropped on it.
  • Photo:  Mine.
  • Bald Eagle Cam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b2dUgK6VV4
  • Reading:  A very old JA Jance that got marked as a Young Adult and shouldn’t have been.  I never read it before.
  • Gratitude’s: 



9 comments:

  1. Well done with the poem — very readable and laudable too.

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  2. Thank you. I feel it too long.

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  3. It makes me sad to think of people being unloved and dying of AAIDS. I hope times have changed!

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  4. unfortunately, books spark joy............

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  5. So many people die, even without the AIDs crisis, that we fail to love and mourn, just by an accident of their life and a wrong decision. So sorry about your illness, start a diary on this because I think this might be an infection...don't let it linger.

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  6. I too hope you don't take that ill feeling too lightly.
    I worked with a young woman who contracted AIDS from her husband, a long distance truck driver who frequently enjoyed Lot Lizards. What a terrible disease that still attacks men, and women, children. Bless you for doing your part to call attention to this disease.

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