Five Poems by Brandon Shane

 

What if 

 

I sometimes imagine 

my father didn't beat cancer, 

brother didn't make it back 

from that deployment, 

I would have been homeless, 

if not for their help, drugs 

would've came easily; 

my youth was one impulse 

led by another, then death 

just a laced batch away. 

  

I woke up to a blue jay singing, 

and there are worse ways 

to begin a Monday, thinking 

about that Bukowski poem, 

and my lovers have betrayed, 

friends in some distant county, 

buried dog too sad to get another; 

looking at the sun, I saw all suns, 

and some twelve hours later, 

the moon showed me all moons; 

a sky is never just one sky. 

 

Morning came, 

I fried three eggs, scribbled 

on a white page, thought 

about my high cholesterol, 

then tossed a slab of bacon 

on the pan, walking around 

the house while life & death sizzled; 

yesterday I met a woman who kissed 

me before knowing my name, 

and every minute since I’ve been hoping 

she didn’t transmit a sexual disease; 

 

I’ve gotten so old 

and the calendars have never 

gone quicker. 

  

  

  

 

Possession 

 

In my childhood home, 

glass bottles escape the trash, 

dents roam along the walls, 

and a beloved dog 

has made it to fifty-three. 

  

There are portraits, 

and invariably, one will look 

elsewhere, but not at me; 

like a prisoner, I'll seep 

into my cell, hear the bloc echo, 

wondering when my orderly 

will lovingly set me straight. 

  

They whisper, gossiping spirits, 

always looking, but never 

brave enough to gamble, 

set this final debt; I won't know 

until the end, and this anticipation 

is enough to be worthwhile. 

 

 

 

 

Postcards of a Dying Marriage 

  

Maybe he shouldn't have explained 

in detail how he was unfaithful, 

and that the car trouble that stranded 

him in Nashville, was actually 

an excuse to spend one last weekend 

with his ex-girlfriend. Mom wouldn't 

have bashed his forehead with a glass 

that required a hundred stitches, 

and nearly had him dead 

due to exsanguination. 

  

I was born amid great violence, 

and his blood would flounder 

on my chubby cheeks, how 

nothing elicited such laughter, 

another day spent painting 

the world like Courbet. 

  

He would escape drunk, to the hills 

when the fights became too much 

for his failing body, and she 

could bludgeon him effortlessly, 

but found revenge unappealing, 

against a man three quarters gone. 

  

And he'd always tell me, cigar, smoke, 

you won't find me dead in there, 

as we left the hospital after treatment, 

a bottle of liquor underneath the seat. 

He drove to the old freight railroads, 

rusted to hell, serviceable, abandoned, 

and laid in his casket, getting drunk 

on the tracks one final time, 

with all his war medals, 

humming tunes, flycatchers, 

drifting with desert wind; a casino, 

his final coin, you got me again, 

he muttered, and then let go.

 

 

Your Age 

 

And the leaves fall a little slower in Autumn, 

pumpkins grow to momentous heights. 

I've spent another day staring into the sea, 

searching for a mythological creature, 

imagining infamous pirates walking the plank, 

storms heaving royal galleons into coastlines 

painted by the pigment of mutilated wood. 

this is the legacy of a thousand weeks 

spent panicked, hyperventilating, ambulatory, 

how we blame bee attacks on the pheromones, 

rather than the billions slaughtered by men 

pillaging hives for all their honey. 

  

I'm thinking of my first day madly in love, 

a recruit to the bleak of things; believing 

levies were unneeded & how everything 

soon flooded, the future became solitary, 

the young mind robbed of naïveté, 

imagination became something to be sought, 

promising opportunities became saboteurs, 

and on days where it rained cataclysmic, 

no longer did I explore the LA River, but 

watched newscasters beside a closed window. 

  

The veil lifts on misty nights, 

and I see life through my childhood, 

mostly bad, but the good times were enough, 

before medical anxiety, where every ache 

is a blood clot, headache; aneurysm. 

I didn't have to try to write a poem, 

life was the art, the form, without any effort. 

  

I've never told anyone to act their age 

and I don't think I ever will; 

do everything to find that place again. 

 

 

 

From a Distance 

 

I said goodbye to him in May, 

and held his ashes in July, 

how decades of existence, 

can fit so squarely on the palm, 

a legacy of alcoholism, brawls 

in broken alleys, county jails, 

multiple divorces, losing it all 

in underground casinos, how 

morgues know no difference, 

rich and poor burning 

to the same forgetful powder.  

  

I loved my father from a distance, 

which means I despised him as a child, 

and it took years of therapy 

to answer his calls; he'd 

gained a wisdom only accrued 

by a guilt so momentous, nights 

are spent mourning unescapable 

memories, and the worst part 

of becoming a better person 

is knowing others know you 

as a terrible beast. 

  

This urn could fit many places, 

and sometimes I felt him whirling 

around the bedpost, desk, shelf, 

demanding a little less sound. 

  

On the night of a most luminous moon, 

stars that shimmered for a lost sailboat, 

I dug a little hole in the torrential rain, 

swallowing insects, mist, back turned 

to coyotes dying of maniacal laughter, 

and settled him gently, in a place, 

I could watch from a distance.

Brandon Shane is a poet, born in Yokosuka Japan. You can see his work in the Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Sophon Lit, Marbled Sigh, RIC Journal, Heimat Review, Ink in Thirds, among others. He would later graduate from Cal State Long Beach. Find him on Twitter @Ruishanewrites