poetry.

last night, my phone rang with "momdad" on the caller id. when i answered the phone, my dad's voice boomed over the phone - his telephone voice conjures up the image of a man who is at least partly convinced that he has to provide some of the power to get his voice to carry through to the person on the other end. i am stunned into silence and find myself trying to think of the last time my dad called me, and i can't, which makes me a bit nervous. so, some chatter about how my parents are doing on vacation in nashville, listening to johnny cash's sister, seeing the sights. then, "well, i hate to have to tell you this, but your grandpa's not doing so well".

my grandpa is in his eighties, but i realized last night that he's stayed the same age for me for as long as i can remember. just because something doesn't really come as a huge surprise doesn't mean that hearing something like this can't knock the wind out of your lungs for a good minute. and then some more.

i must have been about 10 years old when i wrote a poem about him, before i became self-conscious about who i was and who i could be and who i wanted to be, around the same time i thought i'd be a pediatrician, this having already established my dislike of needles and my propensity for finding myself bleeding for one reckless thing after another. truth is, maybe i was just enjoying myself so much that i thought that being a pediatrician would allow me to hang out with my buddies all the time while i was at work - the possibility of growing up was beyond me.

in any case, i wrote this poem, which is cute and perhaps notable at 10 in a small town in a family where people are too busy with their lives to really be concerned about trying to create art on purpose, not really noticing that it happens anyway, but exceedingly embarrassing at 24, particularly when it has become a bit of family lore, and i am reminded of it whenever i am around relatives. my grandpa does not often fail to remark that he thinks of me often - especially when he's on the pot. the poem is hanging on the wall facing the toilet in their bathroom. so while i might wish to be associated with grander things, there it is.

i called him today to see how he was doing, but that's really a lie because i knew how he was doing. i guess i called him because it was the right thing to do, but really, i guess i called him because it's so easy to convince yourself that nothing's wrong over the phone. still the same bad jokes. still the slightly hoarse, jolly voice emanating from the other end. still my grandpa who asks me how his girlfriend is doing. still not much to say beyond i love you's and i've been thinking of you's.

and i think that maybe the conversation will end with me relatively unscathed (because let's admit it, i'm selfish enough to think this is about me), even given the brief intro by my grandma who has a certain love for the macabre, but that is dismissed easily enough with me mentally shaking my head thinking how she does love melodrama, with a certain obessession with illness. but then grandpa says something of how proud he is of me, how i've accomplished more than he ever thought i would, even when i was little sporting pigtails, how he knows i'll be successful in whatever i want. so i laugh a little and joke that i'm still trying to figure out what i want, and he says, well, that's okay.

suddenly my chest is caving in on my lungs, squeezing the air out, my throat is aching, and i am fighting with everything i have to not cry. not now, not while i'm on the phone with him, while we are laughing at his corny humor, and my corny humor (hey grandpa - i hear that your doctors told you that you can do anything and eat anything you want, so i was wondering if you were out partying), not while i'm standing in between the two sets of doors leading out and leading in of my office building. not like this. because he is too young for this.

and the thing is, this poem i wrote at 10 kind of led people to believe that i am something of a poet, when really, every time i'm in my grandparents' bathroom, i try not to look up. it's not that the rhyming couplets are no longer true, but that as i grew up, i learned to disdain things like that. i write now with the words of academics, theorists, critics, self-involved persons seeking self-actualization, and have little time for rhyming.

it has been insinuated, more than once, that perhaps i have little time for the rural america i grew up in, and by extension, this thing we call family. i suppose that there have been varying degrees of truth to this, just like i will never again feel affinity with poems that rhyme. but if i get offended, maybe it's because i marvel at how you don't see that when i got old enough and honest enough to know that poetry was not inside me after many failed attempts of putting alleged insightfulness and metaphor and angst into stanzas, i never gave up on being a poet someday, even though i gave up writing poems.

and more i love you's and i'm thinking of you's and i'll talk to you soon's, and he is back to reclining in his lazyboy chair, ostensibly watching tv, mostly sleeping, and i walk briskly to the elevators, back to my desk, letting my ipod take me everywhere but here, ignoring my wounds for the moment. letting myself smile at the memory of being 10, writing about one of my favorite pals, and this man for whom i will always be a poet. my first published poem had a very small circulation, but a very ardent fanbase.