12

July 9th, 2016

This is a poem that I wrote when I was 18. For some reason I was thinking about it last night and again this morning.

Stricken

And by then I heard the knock

on my door.

He walked into my house stricken with something

some fear, some trepidation

I am, of course, shocked by his appearance

you should see the other guy

he tells me scratching the side of his face.

Like when I practiced shading with

charcoal pencils in middle school

his left eye is not the same as his right

it has been stricken with something.

All that I can think of is the sickness

the mental illness we both have

As if it was his choice to be knocked out

walking home from the museum

in the afternoon.

He has taken the corn from

my freezer — I’m not much of a cook –

and he holds it to his face

But its two-thousand ten and we have a

black president —

and we are still studying Shakespeare

so some things will never change

and some men are stricken

and some women are stricken.

I wish I could tell you why.

So we go onto the roof

and it smells like escape

I will open a new book

not now but later

and it will feel like the season is changing.

I look over at my friend and laugh

He is holding the corn up to his face

he isn’t crying

I am not crying

And the sunset looks just like it did

Fifty years ago

Millions of years ago

Magnificent.