2 poems by stephen mead

Headstrong

After cancer took her looks,

Aunt Aggie used dignity to keep whatever was left.

Me too, not-so beautifully intact with bad nerves

& anger in pure resolve.

How certain is consolation?

Is hope for the privileged?

Knowing I was headstrong, a warning given

right from the start, I came to this beach

with one deranged cat, old underwear

& a sun-burned nose.

By evening the cabin’s towels had a sea smell

& dampness leaked through this creaking wood.

Were we swelling just the same?

I could taste the air’s salt & wanted most

just some shore not haunted by fists.

You are too vulnerable, you said, & how

could I disagree, stealing away

from love’s invasion by holding solitude

like a snake, apologizing too much, (sorry, sorry),

& leery of the peace to be discovered,

some calm, a new belonging...

Yes, I gave rage the sack, kissed fingertips & pressed

them to your eyes. Why didn’t the gesture

leave scorch marks, & why, watching surf,

did I find myself opening more

while you packed to leave?

Addiction, It Seems

If only to cure you of your hurt & wind up bent over on elbows & knees

to let you fall on my back, pray for rescue,

that one of us will know salvation.

Can’t go back to that which my key of need fit so well-----

the pity, the pain after I broke like a mirror

& swept the shards of my face into the suicide’s locked wards.

Can’t return except to pack, tearless for what love wanted to go through

for the worse, the better, when it all became a sweater without sleeves,

only buckles, belts, ties...

Am I thinking for myself yet after legions of the well-meaning

bickered in their decisions while moving me out?

I do not know now, living medicated beyond reproach

though your face finds my dreams.

It slips in battered, bruised, swollen, stapled: you nearly killed

while not calling, coming to see the me who was hospitalized,

busy with a drugged-out, picked-up trick instead, another Mr. Wrong.

In hospital, hospital, both of us lost, our apartment, a crime scene

with blood spatters on my art, & where are you now?

Curing myself, keening to the D.T.’s of missing,

the worries of old, that need to help, in guilt to the hilt,

I cannot return, baby, to where we first learned to crawl.

Stephen Mead is a retired Civil Servant, having worked two decades for three state agencies.  Before that his more personally fulfilling career was fifteen years in healthcare.  Throughout all these day jobs he was able to find time for writing poetry/essays, and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum