Kevin Lane Dearinger

Fünf Gedichte

 

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The Swimming Lesson

 

“Float Like a Jellyfish,”

Roared the grim instructor 

Above the Saturday morning noise 

Regimented in the regulation pool,

But when the boy seized his own knees

And rolled his small back to the lights,

He felt like a loaf of Wonder Bread

Water-logged, and so froglike

He flipped his pale feet to the air, 

Sharpened the narrow of his body,

And shot himself not across or over

The concrete and chlorine,

But down down down

Into an unbound underworld

Where he could see near the silent drain

A glittering nickel, a Jefferson Head,

Face-up on the blue bottom floor,

And shut out the shouted lessons       

He would never want to learn.

 

And there he lingered, cheeks puffed,

Inhaling the seductive solitude,

Determined to watch and wait,

Contented on this tilted plain,

Until the waving stripes of tile

Stretched out lazily into flat lines.

 

Then the boy, mouth and eyes open

As if surprised too late by life,

Floated to the surface

Like a jellyfish. 

 

Chronic Condition

 

A cranky baby

Bangs inside my head

Stabbing a small foot

Hard-heeled

Behind my eyes

Punching pudgy fists

And sharp nailed fingers

Into the temples

Of my unquiet thoughts

Crying and keeping

Me awake with needs

I cannot meet 

For a squalling child

Decidedly unsweet

Still striking out

With fury as dawn

Creeps in the window

Like a drunken nanny

Wielding nothing of comfort

Other than, of course,

The sunrise stare 

Of red-eyed day

The infantilized routine

Of crawling quarantine.

 

Yet even then the tyrant

Turns a spiteful spike 

Within my skull

And will not be pacified.   

 

Dead Predator

“Emotion recalled in tranquility.” 

 

Did they, I wonder

Burn him?

His dishonest mouth slipping

Down his nightmare face

In a House of Wax finale?

Did they crush the waste

Of his duplicitous flesh? 

 

Did they, I wonder,

Incinerate to dust 

Those unkind bones

Re-configuring his cold contagion

Into a choking smoke 

Of molecular shame? 

And with him the memories

(If he remembered.)

Of what he had done

How and to whom?

 

Did they, I wonder,

Think by his demise

To cauterize the wounds

Infected not in but by

Him remorseless

Through an un-thought life?

 

Or did they, I wonder,

Bury him in the dark of the forgotten?

Drop him boxed and pickled

Into an oubliette of his own intolerance

Beneath the weight of careless crimes

His arms crossed smugly 

His thieving fingers twisted

By betrayal and self-deception

His indifference muted 

And choked at last

By the outraged earth?

 

Did they, I wonder?

From an indifferent distance

 

Roadkill: Noon and Evening

 

At noon I saw the groundhog

Heart beating animal-fast

As he hard-raced from sidewalk

To street to voiceless death

Obliterated in flight from isolation

Sacrificed to lives 

That cannot bear to wait in traffic

Or bother to pity love’s hesitancy

 

By sunset you had said

What you had to say

On the instincts of my heart

With its diffident domesticity

And then you moved on

In the artful gore of love

Leaving me to the sideswipe 

Of a too-neat metaphor

 

“And the Greatest of These” 

First Anniversary, COVID

 

Late-life fires tamped

Down to a frowning glower

Familiar spirit sapped

Of elasticity

Gone rigid with petty despair

Borne down by the trifling cry of

Mistrusted

Faith. 

 

Colors streaked untrue

Creation blurred

Into that dishonest hue

Of undone time

And soulless chores

Scoured and soured on

Misplaced

Hope.

 

The long parade

Of played-out days 

Begins to fade

In shades of life

Left behind 

In lock-stepped files 

Of loss and misplaced by

Misbegotten 

Love.

 

Kevin Lane Dearinger is a retired Broadway performer and teacher of English. His poems have appeared in OutWrite, Nine Cloud, Beyond Queer Words, and Accents, and have been honored by the League of Utah Writers. Other publications include three works of theatre history and two memoirs, Bad Sex in Kentucky (2019) and Onstage with Bette Davis (Spring 2022). Plays: Regarding Mrs. Carter and Naked on Request. His work ticks time with his Kentucky heritage, his love of family, his life as an LGBTQ person, and his increasingly erratic pulse. Bienvenue au Danse, Kevin.

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