Five Poems by David Booth

 

Pegasus

A question arises concerning what you most long for.                                                                                     What about this makes you uncomfortable?

  “Who wants to be found out,” you say, “as a man who                                                                 longs for things he knows can’t happen?” What’s so shaky

        about the ground from which contentment arises? Can                                                 we not talk openly about it as part of the New Masculine?

              “Who wants to burn himself up over half measures?”                                          Did he who first rode the winged horse describe the animal’s moon

                   -shaped hooves before or after it threw him? “The                                     wings made the thing more holy than fast,

                            and as seeable in the sky as Przwalski’s horse                            across the Steppes of Mongolia.”

                                    Does your longing live behind such trivia?              Leave you

                                           propped on your elbows, looking up from the dusty ground?

                                                             Forced to, how would you kill it?

                                                               “I won’t kill it,” you say, “but

                                                               let it have its way

                                                            with me.”

 

Advice to a Cyclops 

‘Everyone is ordinary.’ —Terence McKenna

 

Just because you feel unworthy doesn’t make it so. Yes, the feelings are there. No one denies you have them. But when they lead you to this sense of self-annihilation, they are reliable only insofar as one can say with confidence that our illusions control us. The big ego you get when you do something spectacular like beating out gold into a bowl or a ritual mask, or casting tin-bronze into ingots to smith into bracelets, derives from your fear not so much of feeling as being worthless. Funny how that works. When we stop doubting ourselves, the illusion dissipates to show us that the Self is no power monger. But your suspicion that you are a failed Cyclops creeps back in, doesn’t it? You again try to prove your uniqueness by heaving a boulder or scaring the crap out of a wayward adventurer. You rule out (without consciously ruling anything out) that the man you waylay on his way home to his wife and children has his own inner turmoil. Forgive yourself for this by thinking of it now and taking no action whatsoever. Know that like everyone else you are an original, modest and true, with your famous brow and bulging eye to blink away the grime of daily living. If you have begun to suspect that you are one-eyed by reputation alone, let it in like letting light in, while paying attention to your inner Cyclops and your growing desire, in the parlance of shrinks and neurologists, to re-groove your brain. Whisper to yourself now as your mother whispered then, “Stop worrying.”

 

Cis Men Be Trippin’ 

 

Can                in                    the                     hand,

 

pea                 in                    can                  clacking,

 

a                     graffiti             artist               shaves

 

their                ‘stache         to                     duck    trans

 

phobic            aggression,       they                 write    cis

 

men                 be                    trippin’            in         green

 

paint

 

                 drippin’

 

                           on                    the                   sky      high

 

                         busty               dipsomaniacal              billboard

 

Bylaws for the Boys’ Clubhouse 

 

One
What we celebrate here
We must do out there.

 

Two
We are hungry
But let none of us be exclusive.
We won’t have just perfect people.
No one besides maybe Kendrick Lamar is perfect
When he sings, “Don’t give up, I won’t give up.”
Though we don’t know what other people believe
We don’t ask of anyone, “Are you worthy?”

 

Three
We are here because someone loves us
And whispers like Irenaeus
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
Can we try to say this once a week?
To ourselves? To at least one visitor?

 

Four
In terms of how old we are
We are reaching childhood’s pinnacle.
If we say to ourselves, “In ten years’ time
We will only occasionally remember
What we’re like right now,”
We may nod our heads in agreement
Without fully grasping what we’re agreeing to.
These are our first baby steps in shoes
Of seekers we’re catechized to admire.

 

Five
Every day is filled with pressure.
We must forget about it
Or breathing in and out and in again
Keep it from showing on our faces.
If we’re ever going to meet with the people
Who seem placed here on Earth to guide us
and to receive our artless advice in kind
We must master not only our facial expressions
But also our rebellious natures.
We must learn to be more helpful.

The King’s Two Bodies 

‘I talk but idly, and you laugh at me.’ —Shakespeare’s Richard II (III.iii.171)

 

In the morning, a scene as common as dreaming yourself naked in a public square, only less anxious-making and, like nudity for some, about liberation. If only I’d slept longer. I’m teaching my students the medieval politics of the The King’s Two Bodies. Richard the Second to serve as our model. One of his bodies is natural, which is to say ‘corporeal’ and ‘mortal.’ The other, the body politic, is pristine, mystical, positively eternal, when a phone rings an antiquated ring and, passing amid not a few ardent essayists and at least two furtive chess players waging war on their devices, I start for the back of the room to pick up. Only it’s sixty boys now, writing out my rote description of the body politic as the same body passing from king to king—an animating spirit making kingships Christic—thus rendering the body natural impervious to any defect of age or illness that could mess things up for him. The voice on the phone belongs to my old friend Tim Kane. “Ivo,” it says, “You gotta come down here and get your dad. He’s making everyone uncomfortable.” Of my late father I say for the first time ever, “I’m not going anywhere, Tim,” and I mean it. “Do you hear what I’m saying?” When he doesn’t answer, I say it again: “Tell him what I told you. I’m not coming for him until I’m done here, and maybe not then either.” Silence. “Tell me you understand,” I say. “Say it back to me, Tim. I need to hear you say it. Tim?”

 

David Booth - lives in  San Francisco, California. These poems come from his book-in-progress called 'Men in Funks.' This is a collection about men, boys, and masculinity in our times and across life's stages. These poems reflect on mythology and the deep (real and imagined) past.