Declaration of Twilight

By Joseph Hesch

Many have lived long
but chosen not to live much.
Others have lived such a short time,
but filled it to overflowing
with the richest marrow of existence.
Me? I have lived not so long
nor so short, but forgotten most
of what I've done in my frugal, yet
misspent time. Apparently, its treasure
went unsaved in the broken vault
of my memory.
Now, as the shadows of my days
grow longer, I crave the need to live,
to experience a fuller life
(whatever that means) in whatever
currency I can spend among the living.
Age has assured it won't be
everything it once might have been,
but if I can, it will be all--
all I can be, all I can love,
and maybe all you can remember.

Courage

By Joseph Hesch 

When some old combat soldiers
tell me over beers how they got to be
what people called heroes,
they seem embarrassed,
saying they only did what their buddies
would do-–even the dead ones.
Then they put on sad faces, 
like pinning on their medals.

One whispered his sorrow that
the real heroes died and he didn’t.
Moving closer, he rasped that courage
might really be what the guys had who,
when the shit went down, 
turned in the wrong or right direction
(it didn't matter, he said)
and were lucky enough to make it out.

For whatever reason, I thought of
the old soldier the other day--his claim
that what people who weren't there
think is courage might just be so much wind.
Right there in front of me, 
a swirling, breeze-blown potato chip bag
chased two squirrels
up a tree.

Illuminati

By Joseph Hesch

Saw you swing through the downspout of
floodlight in the backyard last evening.
I thought you were just another evening bug,
a red buzzer in zig-zag flight.
But you were saturated with radiance
after you zipped from the shower of photons.
I could see the glow of your afterburner
in the dark over by the shed.
Unlike the other bugs, you avoided
the porch’s cone of brightness,
confident out there in the dark.
You appeared to wear the crown
of the incandescent
Anti-moth.


Suddenly, you were joined by a host
of fiery friends, blinking messages
only your kind might comprehend.
I think I understood something
of what you were saying, though,
when I flipped off the switch
and joined you in the night.
I too became illuminated, aware that
when things are at their dimmest,
we must make our own light
to help us find the way,
to have confidence we aren't going
to be alone in the darkness.
Not for too long.

Mistakes Were Made

By Joseph Hesch

I hear the lying hairdos in the suits

with tiny flags on their lapels say it

without a blink or twitch all the time:

“Mistakes were made.”

I tell you, brothers and sisters,

these grammar grifters are sinning

right in your face because that statement

is a lie, a dodge, a bit of verbal

legerdemain and subterfuge,

It’s also passive voice, darn it.

The mistake is an act,

or the result of an act.

It needs an actor (though actors are,

by definition, hoaxers, too,

come to think of it).

“Mistakes were made,” is

the “Check is in the mail,”

the “Dog ate my homework,”

the “Of course I love you, baby,”

of socio-political discourse.

And it’s a sin. A sin against

all that is good and all that is

direct and correct. Most of all,

though, it’s a sin against

the Holy Trinity:

God, Strunk and White.

The Flash

By Joseph Hesch

It always seems to start with a flash,

something soft and sudden that,

nevertheless, catches your attention

with a gentle pull at the corner of your eye.

If you’re lucky, the two of you

are drawn to one another like

shipwreck survivors on a night sea,

fearful, yet hopeful that the light each sees

can be a friend in all this lonely dark.

Once together, you’ll share each other’s

reflected light.  Maybe a flame springs forth
between you as each brings heat,
as well as illumination, to the other.

If you’re not careful, you could start a fire,

which is never a bad thing if you can

keep it under control, you know,

like in a hearth instead of in a dry forest.

Such blazes take constant attention,

and without care even the most roaring
can wane, maybe damping down

into glowing embers. Some even end up
gasping to expire as shallow black ash.

Then the only light you’ll share comes not

from the welcoming flash of youthful ardor,

nor the flame or warm glow of together.

In the empty darkness of two who are none,

it’s the cold angry spark of flint on steel.

I've posted this poem in response to a request by poet Brian Miller at the wonderful One Stop Poetry community site.  Brian and his wife are celebrating their 15th anniversary and it's finally Spring and that's when young (and old) men's hearts turn to thoughts of Love. Brian asked us for a love poem or an un-love poem. I think I split the difference, with maybe (forgive me) a lesson in there, too.

Hiding in Plain Sight

By Joseph Hesch

Living life alone,

even in the midst of a crowd,

a family, a love affair,

is not so different as the life

of a hermit.

I can be as solitary in those circumstances

as any Essene on the lam

in the mountains of the Holy Land.

But instead of hiding and meditating

in a shrub-shrouded cave,

I stare at you from behind

this living amusement park,

a charade of light, noise and motion,

keeping your world entertained,

at bay, by abruptly changing direction

and emotional altitude.

It works, even sometimes sending you

away from the show the worse for the climb,

like a heretic-hunter worn from the search

for my spiritual fore-bear.

My head, this cave of seclusion,

is where I ineveitably

pull back when I can't push away,

crouching in its darkest cutting crevices,

cold, relying on its dim light

for illumination enough to contemplate

why I would want or need to stay

hungry and naked like this.

Even more, I wonder

why you keep trying

to pry me out of here

when you don't really want me

anyway.

Blues for Billy

By Joseph Hesch

Billy was a true Blues man,

the happiest purveyor of the downtrodden

black man's art I ever knew.

He riffed licks by the cotton-picking bagful,

bending strings to pitch-perfect extremes

and bending hearts as if caressed

like the body of that Strat

he hugged to his own.

Growling or shouting,

crooning or oozing a low moan,

his bloodshot angel eyes

glowed beatific no matter where he turned

personal hells into harmonic heavens.

The empties, brown and green,

stacked on the Marshall at his back

stood deep like the fans, white and black

who came for the show and left for the better.

They called him Wild Bill and

the wild truly lived in him,

poking and pulling his gentle soul

over the boundaries of too much and too late

into a darkness soon too awful and too awfully soon.

That night my little brother died,

we all floated down tear tracks

to that place I'm told the Blues was born,

a delta of sadness, memory and 12-bar deliverence.

Thursday would have been my brother Bill's 55th birthday. He was a brilliant self-taught musician, regarded as one of the best Blues guitarists in our neck of the musical woods. The experts tell me he would be regarded as such outside of upstate New York and western New England, too. But here with Julie, Christine and Suzanne was Home. He died suddenly seven years ago and our world is sadder and darker now. Musicians with whom he shared stages still note in their bios they played with "the late Wild Bill Hesch." I played with him too, just not the Blues. This one's for you, Bill. Hope I hit some of the right notes. I'm not used to solos.

Together Alone

By Joseph Hesch

I remember the final scene
of the great western, The Searchers,
when John Wayne, as brave and vile
Ethan, is framed outside the doorway
of the Jorgensens' home,
where what's left of his family had
left him standing in the
dust-blown daylight.
He stands a solitary monolith
in the mid ground of a shot
of Monument Valley.
And then the door slams shut,
abruptly turning the screen black,
leaving us to wonder
about the future of a solitary man.
But what about the people left in the dark?
Don't they each have their own
disappointments, failures
and fears yet to carry?
When the winds of time come to pull
the roof off their dark hiding space and
the sun shines down on each of them
and upon each of us, as well,
do you think we'll realize
that we are like Ethan
and his family?
Alone together?
Together, yet alone?

Delusion

By Joseph Hesch

The delusion left

as swiftly, as completely

as it came.

Of course, it faked its way past others, too.

But how can I expect to become something more

than I’ve always been? 

Filling your world’s space as just

another one of those guys,

the faceless names and nameless faces on the street

you don’t hear and don’t see

every day

as you’re so involved,

checking your reflection

in each pane of glass

you pass. 

There, you did it again.

You’re always looking at who you are,

or think you are. 

I’m looking for who I might be.

We’re both wrong.

Knot-Dreaming

When I tuck in for the night.

I can’t fall into sleep

without my ankles crossed,

feet clenched like field birds:

hidden tense, twitching

under a grass blanket;

ready to burst forth to

anywhere but here.

At the other end of

my twisted rope of spine,

there sits a mind

just as knotted,

just as tense and twitchy,

waiting for something to trigger

its flight into an unknown place:

a hoped-for dream.

That escape never comes.

It's always the same snarled darkness

until the alarm kicks us loose--

flushes us from cover like

a spaniel raising a covey of quail--

into another day of blind flight,

toward another night of

knot-dreaming.

Down at Dawn

By Joseph Hesch

I saw the green-capped marine

by the dusty roadside,

a disheveled pile of khaki

drab on the ground by his side.

He frantically shifted his gaze

down, up,

down, left,

down, right,

down.

In-place he paced, amid

frenzied fight-or-flight indecision.

They never saw their attacker coming,

nor even where he went

in the dawn's dark shadows.

He cannot (can he?)

leave behind the crumpled mass
that was his partner, his comrade.

I'd heard that mallards are like this,

but I, myself, never saw it before.

Comments Enabled on Stories Page

For those visitors who have read the story "Tagged" on the Stories page and would like to drop a comment, I have enabled comments on that page. I appreciate the feedback you give me on my poems, and will also be happy to hear from you about this story and others that I plan to post in the future. So, if you have a thought to share about my short story, feel free to leave a comment on the Stories page.

The Space Between

By Joseph Hesch

The high-pitched metronomic peeping

 of the frogs ceases,

though isn’t yet replaced by

the arias and white-noise cheeping

of the robins, wrens and flickers.

Before the evening performance

curtain of mist falls on the water

and the dawn’s footlights know enough

to glow, there exists

but a mere moment where nature rests.

It’s as if the new day is coiled,

waiting to explode in light, hiss in heat,

holding back its grand entrance

to increase the tension in an audience

of flower, animal, and man.

I often wake during that instant,

my senses empty of the outside and

no longer full of the dark imaginings

of the inside, and I wonder

for that same moment,

have I crossed over?

It's such a hopeful thing, this.

On the Beach

By Joseph Hesch

I’ve spent life with damp big toes
and dry hair; never dove in,
never got those pruney fingers,
just the guilt and jealousy
of watching you happy amphibs
while I itched from sandy shorts.

I’m told it’s an itch that can’t
be scratched, the only relief
would come from standing tall and
striding into the waves: waist deep
would be enough, I should think,
to get that feel of real life.

That’s also deep enough to
drop the shorts and let currents
do the work of pulling sand
and inhibition from places
I hid, not because I feared
getting in, more getting out.

Tagged

By Joseph Hesch

I painted my name on a bridge today.

Tagging, the kids and cops call it.

It’s a young person’s game that

guys of fifty-something years

probably should not do.

And they definitely shouldn’t be caught doing.

Not that the aforementioned cops

wouldn’t have an easy time netting

an old dude gripping the outside of an overpass

and his breath

with one hand and exhaling urban art

out a can of spray paint in the other.

I painted my “Jo-Ho wAs heRe” in red and yellow,

not because they’re my gang colors, but

because black, white and gray are what my life

has become – the stuff of row upon row of

blurry obituary gravestones on a newsprint field.

The Great, Mediocre or Poor American novel

never sprung from my mind and fingers, nor did

anything else of note or semi-permanence.

So I decided to autograph the bridge where

each day for fifteen years I’ve rat-raced past

“Bobby & Lou ’72.”

Thirty-eight years of notoriety seems

like a lifetime -- and an instant -- to a guy

who life tagged in black and white and gray

too long ago. Yeah,

and I willingly held its hand and

slipped it the cans.

Tag, Life, now I’m IT.

The first line of "Tagged" came to me one morning on my commute to Albany. It's the first line of one of my favorite songs by my favorite band, Over the Rhine. The line banged around in my head as a "what-would-it-be-like" idea and I just ran with it, listening to its vacuum sucking up dust and sensation around my brain. (While I should have been doing the straight job, I must confess.)

The poem happened pretty quickly, as most do. I liked it right away, as most don't, and submitted it to Boston Literary Magazine, whose editor, Robin Stratton, selected it for publication in the Spring 2010 issue.

As I said, I liked the concept and that line, so I used them as the first sentence and theme of  a short story. As a writer, I don't waste anything! Wonder of wonders, the story "Tagged" was selected for publication as well, this time by Foliate Oak Magazine.

On May 2, 2011, I came home to find a manila envelope in the mail from Foliate Oak.  Inside was the publication, "The Best of Foliate Oak - 2011." In that publication was the story "Tagged." So, in honor of the little line that could, I give you "Tagged."

Waiting Room

By Joseph Hesch

Each new one shuffles in, poking a

silver-fringed or bald head inside the glass

to murmur or cough a reply to

“Any changes in insurance, dear?”

Around the room, rheumy eyes lift

and drop again, while the latest visitor scans

for an open seat, with no one on either side,

because you can’t be too safe these days.

This room is full of folks poring over

publications they normally wouldn’t pick up

to swat a wasp.  But there’s not much else to do

except sit and fret about their ailments

or to fume over the fact

their appointment was scheduled

for a half-hour ago.

Perhaps they could look around,

trying to determine what one another's

troubles might be.  But it would take

a mighty diagnostician to ascertain their problems

when all one can see are the tops of

forward-leaning heads, and all one can listen to are

quiet coughs or the buzz of even quieter conversation.

Me?  I don’t want to know why they’re here.

I'm waiting for the Over-50 exam, which is

to medicine what the Early Bird Special is to dining.

Besides, I’ve got my own problems.

According to this magazine’s menu of maladies,

I’ll be having a delicious, malicious, pernicious anemia

…with a side order of andropause.