Even those who know me from brief acquaintance know that I am fond of speaking in epigrams. Years ago, I declaimed "Self control will make you a bad poet. If you are not one already."
The apple tree behind my mother's house fell a short time ago, in a storm not of my making. I was going to take the axe made holy by your hands and mutter to myself "How proud! How like the sun!" as I looped the dull steel overhead to devour the fallen tree in flat-toothed bites, dragging the corpse to the nearby burnpile— but more gentle rains came and the season was spring, and so blossoms white as angels or the hair of infant children sprung from the branches even as the trunk lay broken on the grass, and my mother said to me "We will not cut it up yet. Maybe it will be able to grow apples this year. We will see."
Today is May 1st, a day that I bear a special fondness toward. Men and women around the world celebrate May Day each year in commemoration of the Haymarket affair, but more than that is invoked for our consideration. May Day is a day to remember the sacrifices that came before our mothers brought us crying into this world. Good people who loved their lives and their families were beaten and slain for standing up for their rights and their hopes. Businesses and the government colluded to imprison, assault, and murder labor organizers for offenses as benign as negotiating for shorter hours or safer workplace conditions.
The point I'm making with self control is, I haven't had a drink in one hundred and fifty one days. I remember the last drink I had as clearly as I remember all the things I know: It was a frosty-cold Diamond Bear Imperial IPA. My woman had broken things off with me before the bell tolled for midnight and I had just finished a cold Diamond Bear Irish Red and I had four more beers in the fridge and I was going to drink all of them and then see what else I could find to drink and I was going to drink all of that and then I looked at the clock and it was December 1st and I laughed softly to myself as my shoulders heaved in sobs and I took a drink of the IPA and I was crying and the hair on my arms stood up like I had seen a ghost or your face and I swallowed the beer and afterward I tasted ash thick and gritty on my tongue and I started singing, with my voice rumbling as deep as my lungs would allow—
"Come join the youth and beauty brigade
Come join the youth and beauty brigade
Come join the youth and beauty brigade
Nothing will stand in our way."
And inexplicably I was grinning like I'd just got Marquez's autograph and the tears fell in slow cascades down my jawline and I took a deep breath and I said to myself and to the walls and to my books and to the woman (no longer mine) who was in a nearby room and probably could not hear: "Her Majesty, the Decemberists” and I said it because it seemed like the proper thing to say although the song I sang was not from that album. I wiped my eyes and I went to the bathroom and poured the beer out because somehow with my life in shambles around me and December the first glaring sun-red at me from a clock, I remembered or learned that you loved me once not because I was a monster but because I was not always monstrous and I drowned that old devil my heart beneath the frigid water from the bathroom sink and for some reason on this day five months later I sit with a pen trembling in my hand and I twirl it around my fingers until appropriate words can be found.
I do not know why I write to you these words and I am well aware of my perverse habit of adding dollops of sugar to the truth. I believe that I send this disjointed message to you, in vain hope that it may reach you on this or any other ocean, because I am a dreamer and I am my mother’s son.
The apple tree behind my mother's house fell a short time ago, in a storm not of my making. I was going to take the axe made holy by your hands and mutter to myself "How proud! How like the sun!" as I looped the dull steel overhead to devour the fallen tree in flat-toothed bites, dragging the corpse to the nearby burnpile— but more gentle rains came and the season was spring, and so blossoms white as angels or the hair of infant children sprung from the branches even as the trunk lay broken on the grass, and my mother said to me "We will not cut it up yet. Maybe it will be able to grow apples this year. We will see."
Today is May 1st, a day that I bear a special fondness toward. Men and women around the world celebrate May Day each year in commemoration of the Haymarket affair, but more than that is invoked for our consideration. May Day is a day to remember the sacrifices that came before our mothers brought us crying into this world. Good people who loved their lives and their families were beaten and slain for standing up for their rights and their hopes. Businesses and the government colluded to imprison, assault, and murder labor organizers for offenses as benign as negotiating for shorter hours or safer workplace conditions.
The point I'm making with self control is, I haven't had a drink in one hundred and fifty one days. I remember the last drink I had as clearly as I remember all the things I know: It was a frosty-cold Diamond Bear Imperial IPA. My woman had broken things off with me before the bell tolled for midnight and I had just finished a cold Diamond Bear Irish Red and I had four more beers in the fridge and I was going to drink all of them and then see what else I could find to drink and I was going to drink all of that and then I looked at the clock and it was December 1st and I laughed softly to myself as my shoulders heaved in sobs and I took a drink of the IPA and I was crying and the hair on my arms stood up like I had seen a ghost or your face and I swallowed the beer and afterward I tasted ash thick and gritty on my tongue and I started singing, with my voice rumbling as deep as my lungs would allow—
"Come join the youth and beauty brigade
Come join the youth and beauty brigade
Come join the youth and beauty brigade
Nothing will stand in our way."
And inexplicably I was grinning like I'd just got Marquez's autograph and the tears fell in slow cascades down my jawline and I took a deep breath and I said to myself and to the walls and to my books and to the woman (no longer mine) who was in a nearby room and probably could not hear: "Her Majesty, the Decemberists” and I said it because it seemed like the proper thing to say although the song I sang was not from that album. I wiped my eyes and I went to the bathroom and poured the beer out because somehow with my life in shambles around me and December the first glaring sun-red at me from a clock, I remembered or learned that you loved me once not because I was a monster but because I was not always monstrous and I drowned that old devil my heart beneath the frigid water from the bathroom sink and for some reason on this day five months later I sit with a pen trembling in my hand and I twirl it around my fingers until appropriate words can be found.
I do not know why I write to you these words and I am well aware of my perverse habit of adding dollops of sugar to the truth. I believe that I send this disjointed message to you, in vain hope that it may reach you on this or any other ocean, because I am a dreamer and I am my mother’s son.
