Excavating

I’d been asked to find them, but couldn’t.

It started with the tail light

to my bike;

it flew off

or walked off

while the bike was chained.

So I began riffling

through boxes,

knowing an old one

was likely in an unlikely place…

I thought they were gone,

as I was expecting
ammo boxes,

hinged and clasped steel

that contained them

for 20 years;

the notebooks,

the rantings,

the scribblings

of my some boy

I’d grown to hate.

But it was just the steel;

the paper had been moved

to a file crate,

milky plastic clear enough

to show words,

and somehow

I’d stained all thought

of this crate

with a curse

(Whosoever opens this box

shall incur the wrath

of an arrogant child, time

and memory,

and will know

no happiness

for all their days.)

thus had forgotten it;

an erasure hurts less

than a lurking fear.

But

looking for a light

I opened it,

and found pieces

that had pleased

Beat Night crowds,

Open Mic sign up lists,

and strange scraps of

beer-washed blurred ink

smeared fountain pen

babble.

And no pain.

I continued my excavation

finding genealogical information

sent by a cousin I only knew briefly

and electronically.

A 21 year old Stockpot placemat

with demons and dragons

doodled by Trevor Bartlett.

Psychological test results

from when I’d finally had enough

of pain

and painful questions

and started to learn

the whys.

Strange, disparate,

unlikely

time-capsule finds.

But these were not the items

that merited a curse;

I’d opened the Pandorica,

the most dangerous thing

in the universe

awaited.

I picked up the first notebook

and read my words

from longer ago

than the writer was old,

and felt relief:

it was from the time before

the shattering,

and the boy was writing Love

in hubris

and too many words;

it was cute,

but not dangerous.

(Nor was it good,

but I had expected

psychic pestilence;

weak poetry

was welcome.)

I read through

all the notebooks,

until I found the first one

that showed my character

breaking.

(Having hated myself

through all grades

I crafted a man to play,

practicing through high school,

and perfecting him

after I graduated.

But he was much cooler

than I actually was

and much of him

was fabrication,

a construct to distract

from the desolation

of his birth.

He was named for a fake

and I

was left with no one to be

that I could stand,

just someone who couldn’t

keep himself safe

at as a child,

but couldn’t accept that

his safety

at that age

had been another’s job.)

I traced the initial cracks,

and

feeling sorry for the boy,

put the notebook

back in the crate;

I remember all the pieces

he’d end up in,

and there was more to read:

notes from women who once set me alight

but burned off my life like touch paper;

entries of what I called The Journal Of The Immaculate Bastard

unconsciously combining hubris and self-loathing in the title

under which I recorded events of the day;

the beginning of a play I started with someone

I can no longer stand;

A note about the requirements

my first freshman literature class,

3 books and a notebook that matter less than the class itself:

“LI123 Sec A

David Wallace”

(Later I learned his middle name

was Foster);

all evoking unexpectedly tender, even happy memories.

And The Folder:

grey, embossed with an Emerson College seal

in gold,

falling to pieces,

and overfilled

mainly

with results of one semester of poetry class.

Pieces from a Puerto Rican student who’d only taken the class as a requirement

but turned out to be excellent;

“Geese Are Mean Fuckers” detailing the cruelty of a girl’s sadistic father;

A piece by a southern poet named David Evans

I remember looking like David Koresh

who devastated me with humor or truth;

And a poem of mine

that I feared seeing

and feared more the professor’s note upon,

a word painting of parental insanity, dark, brutal,

and full of itself;

but with one note from professor Martín Espada:

“Very Good Poem!”

I put The Folder

in the crate
having seen my work

was worthy of the company

of the others therein.

And I put the crate

with its clear-enough sides,

in a place where it can be easily

drawn out,

and not forgotten.

Chris Walters

September 25, 2013