real men fear spiders

 A subtle sunlight feel on the lawn

as if Dad was putting C batteries in the Hess truck again

and the lights popped on, half bright, knowing that the

batteries he took out of the flashlight were old ones. Sometimes

calm is what is necessary to love beautiful things

because sometimes there is security in the little things

of substance.

Beauty will decide for you which side you choose;

which fake interstate you sail along in dreams while

the little rest of you clings to childhood and pre-puberty.

I've studied the glossed pages of the Sears catalog

so long that the women in long legged girdles

started to speak in the tongues of adolescence.

I scream when I realize just how close

sex and milk duds mingle in memory or just

how far away the sun seems accidental to me. And to

all those who dream after Coltrane and Ginsberg

blew us up in the stained sheets of flying things and

thru the stale air of Bedford Stuyvesant

swamp land.

(perhaps were mistaken to think of beauty at all.

Perhaps it's the premise of beauty that matters most. I mean

those who cling to the certainty that a thing will happen

then write about it happening. That a moon in

an otherwise distant sky will matter a tide so perfectly

to release clouds into the silt filled air. That that

filthy air will tingle the flesh of the loneliest spider

below the  felt leaf, and that that same

spider will unknowingly, frighten the

town).

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i never have that certainty of something happening, and end up writing about it afterward...but i do hand on to those milk dud memories...dream of being ferlinghetti sometimes...
but i do love little things, and remember little things my dad did that make me smile now...

like me looking for one of his tools in his tool closet when he asked...and he getting frustrated with me because i couldn't find it....then looking himself because he thought i was so helpless...but eventually admitting it wasn't there but in the garage where he used the last time...

thanks for stirring up such memories...this may be my favorite write from you dana...i relate so well indeed, but am thinking i must not be a real man...cause spiders don't bother me at all...i find them fascinating.

j.

[h d e rushin]

thank you dear brother....and obviously we had the same kind of Dad. A carpenter by trade
and thinking me far too effete to understand and worship wood as he did. I remember popping
a milk dud under my tongue when I felt unappreciated. Corset said they still make them and sent me a picture to prove that they still exist....Thank you for those great words this afternoon my friend...dana

[M. Wellon]

Your voice is musical, and your images alive. Memorable. I felt your span of time, and a connection, somehow, between Detroit and a Brooklyn neighborhood. Nicely done. I even got behind the parenthetical entity at the end, though it took some thought and re-reading. Thanks!

[h d e rushin]

thank you so much M. Wellon for stopping by and for those kind remarks....dana

[alanwgraham]

As a Scot I don't pick up all your American references but your whole poem has a beautiful dreamlike ambience to it which I could relax and enjoy without having to over-analyse. Some of your images are quite unique eg 'the moon will matter a tide'
A superb piece.
Alan

[h d e rushin]

thank you my friend for stopping by to visit.....Much appreciated...dana

[Steven]

Omg, old C batteries/Hess truck/dim lights--you don't know what you just did to me.

It's things like this:

'I've studied the glossed pages of the Sears catalog
so long that the women in long legged girdles
started to speak in the tongues of adolescence.'

that make your writing so gritty and moving. It's almost perverse you know. To take something so lost upon us and say it so clearly as if you always knew. To lay it out there like a burnt pancake. I love it.

Great parenthetical. A chain of perhaps "meaningless" events by any other standard are still effective in their own way, and maybe care nothing for those ascribing meaning. And what is a real man? Who is he? It's whoever the subjective one believes.

Thanks.

[h d e rushin]

I think I still have that Hess truck in my garage since I seem to keep everything from my childhood.Good that someone else remembers that along with me. Thanks Steven for your kind remarks and also for your remarkable mind....dana

[Emily B]

my children feel i have a duty to kill all the spiders who happen to wander into the house
i feel my children should learn to re-locate said spiders to the outdoors

neither of us understand the beauty of the other argument

[h d e rushin]

I have a spider who lives under my shelf where the clock and the BOSE radio sits. He either hates or loves ants, because when they come anywhere near him/her they immediately become food.
Sometimes I wonder, is this the love of survival or just hatred. Thank you my friend for your kind words this morning....dana

[Lyn Anderson]

this is like a peak into someone's memory -- a beautiful snippet in time. The way you string it all together, it flows in like a dream.

[h d e rushin]

thank you KL......fighting a cold (again) in this new year...But loving your words my friend...dana

[M. Shepherd]

There are themes of distance and closeness here that converse. The distance of memories of youth and sex yet their startling gravity and impact on the rest of our history and now, the distance of the sun and moon, which are things we are told and take for granted yet how much do we actually understand them, the relative distances of beauty or fear, how does distance (this is a very general inquiry) affect our perception?
I think this piece sears so deep to an existential core that the light of the beginning, the setting of relaxing on a mildly sunny day is an excellent place to help us relax into the navigation of these ideas that deliver us to our own rabbit holes of memory and musing.

[h d e rushin]

thank you my dear Marcie for your wonderful insight and review my friend....I love you....dana

[Beccy]

Dearest Dana. This is such a beautiful poem. Reading you is like experiencing an epiphany. You make the reader see with different eyes, stir the senses, the memory, as only a poet of the highest calibre is capable of doing.

Curious you might think, for me to say that I understand what you write almost without knowing how, but that is the power of your poetry.

Beccy.

PS. I think spiders weave the most beautiful tapestries.

[h d e rushin]

thanks Beccy.....I've been away for awhile. I love and miss you.....dana

[emmajoy]

' Beauty will decide for you which side you choose; - which fake interstate you sail along in dreams .. .. '

Perhaps we shouldn't analyse fear or pleasure in 'stuff', merely accept both as life's necessities! Past experiences, feelings, mingle with now. Future is the unknown scaremonger -savour and learn from what was.

Your words always point directions to feelings and thoughts and - the good things shadowed by the not so.. I can remember when, in my English village, all the bitsy-itsies became memorable and consequently added to the mosaic of my memories. Still feel and see them with amazing clarity. Surely beauty is how we individually see 'something'. After all, one person's dun-coloured flitting venom flow can be another's blue/silver pin.up

Your life might have been different from mine but the same awareness is there, which makes the core so very familiar. You make merry with beautiful phrasing however, no competition there! But, even the smallest being has a light, we just have to notice it.

[h d e rushin]

thank you emmajoy.....I've been away for awhile working on some things.....I love and miss you....dana

[W.k.kortas]

I think "Perhaps it's the premise of beauty that matters most" is one of the most simple yet prescient lines I've ever read. This piece, from the flat-out brilliant opening image of the Hess truck lighted by the used flashlight batteries speaks to the notion of how all of dreams and our notions are filtered through the taint of everyday living, of being a part of this world, and yet there has to be something else to aspire to, something Platonic and pure, for how can we apprehend the at least nearly beautiful if we have no concept of what it is in its purest form?

Oh, the Sears catalog thing? Yeah, did that.

[h d e rushin]

excellent perspective wk..Poetry, at it's most purest, is filtered thru that taint of everyday
living. You write like that my friend. Never a distant, figurative thing but always people
with real and functional possibilities. Beauty is only poetic when the concept of it knows both
it's history and it's place in it....I love your kind words my friend....dana