Great Joy Collective

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This is a booklet zine. Acrobat can print it correctly using the “Booklet” printing layout.

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Out of Office

I am smiling while I’m dialing and,
you can’t see this so let me tell you,
I am grinning at the prospect of
salt caking around my eyes,
sweat staining my sleeves,
air whistling through my unkempt hair.

If you need immediate assistance,
look to the sun and ask:
“Are you the referee?
Do you keep the score?
Is this all a game?”
I don’t expect it will answer,
but it’s about as good as you’ll get from me.

Thanks for calling.
Don’t say hey if you see me
out there.

Meet me at the park

You busy this coming Monday?
It looks like the weather will be fair
and it’s about time we sat down together.

Some conversations get delayed
and when it’s been this long,
the best place to start is on that bench:
the one right in front of where we are.

I’ve always known you
but have I ever let you know?
You’ve always seen me shine
but has it ever been too bright?
We’ve danced around many things
but did we try to learn the proper steps?

Toss off our shoes,
let the August night dim around us,
leave the inferences back in the car
and be here
for each other
right now
as the bats fly above
and the fireflies start to come out.

The Menagerie

You’ve been struggling lately, you’re loath to admit,
but I can tell your jacket seems heavier,
your hat a bit lower,
your shoes a bit squeakier.
Loneliness is an unkind roommate
who never cleans the algae blooming dishes in the sink.
It is most difficult when heart-eye emoji couples
block every seat on the bus or crowd every corner.
The world favors pairs
and you hate yourself for feeling so neggy about it all.

It feels hopeless to say, but your time in favor will come,
my friend.
I am certain that you will find ways to love this self
that pleads for contentment.
It’s a tired cliche but I find it to be true:
it has to come from inside.
The menagerie must be one of your own curation.

You must walk the halls of your self
and dust off the beautiful things
so they are ready for new visitors.

And soon enough,
a sunny Saturday will reveal
a new wonder to add to the collection.
Maybe a quote in the pages of a well-loved library book,
proving others have tread this path and come out anew.
Continue the search for new things
and try to imagine just how vast the display will be.

And when the someone you invite in sees it,
know that you made it not for them,
but for you.

And they are going to be so grateful you did.

A father

You’ve always liked to sit up,
waiting for your high to die before dragging yrself to bed.
Are these moments of solitude something you’ll miss?

But you’ve changed of late!
You’ve unlocked patience through practice,
a calmness that invites confidence.
You are now the sturdy hemlock,
cracks of maturity on your trunks,
each fissure a lesson to pass on.

I doubt you’ll miss these nights fighting off sleep for sport.
You’ll soon have a young sapling to introduce to the grove.

Seventeen years

amounts to many things:

Knowing the exact setup that will lob out of my mouth
and catching it to drain the alley-oop for biggest laughs.

The allusions to long matriculated high school heroes/villains
and assuring everyone “yes, it did actually happen that way.”

Seeing the parallels in behaviors
but appreciating the fine tuning for new angles.

But mostly it is patience,
it is reveling in age-old jokes,
and it is the comfort in loyalty.

Fans

I am wading through kelly seas,
floating through these mean green streets
with the rest of the rabble out for some rousing.
We all know how to spell the namesake bird,
we are hitting em low and and we are hitting em high,
and we are counting to three before pinching ourselves
to make sure we’re not dreaming.

The officers don’t want us crowding Main Street.
We’re here to celebrate and there are hundreds of us;
these sidewalks were never big enough.

Eyes seem to open to an injustice here
that pales compared to the injustices experienced daily
by folks who don’t seem to live in this neighborhood.

As the uniforms start their lights and sound their alarms,
many of us start booing them
like we did the red team’s boy wonder ball flinger earlier.

Someone who’d describe themselves as “a local” near me says,
“Hey, we don’t need to-“
only to be interrupted by louder booing.

They look down,
consider for a second,
radicalize themselves,
and rise up louder than the rest.

I wonder if they’ll remember this
in a booth in some future November
(if there are booths in future Novembers).

I wonder if they’ll remember themselves
floating in the kelly sea,
pushing for a bit of extra space for their joy,
seeing that the right thing is the will of the people
who just want to see their infinite love fly
like an eagle.

Who’d have guessed

I’d find myself
out in the sparkling woods
writing poems
in slices of sunshine?

When’s the last time you wrote a poem?

Maybe it was in high school when “they” were kissing “them” outside the C Wing bathroom and someone told someone else who told you and after somehowsomeway keeping yr cool all day, you got home and realized that love is gasoline and betrayal is a lit match.

Maybe it was a fourth grade assignment where every last word had to rhyme with every other last word and you couldn’t understand how so many of these adults seemed to find every last word that rhymed with every other last word and it made your brain go SKEEErrrrRRrrchhhhhh to a horrible halt.

Maybe you’re the nature type, Oliverian walks through dense woods where the next set of hidden words will surely be waiting for you to pluck from the brush just past that tree there.

Maybe the last time you’ll ever write a poem is right now because the evil, nasty, gnarled, ugly, tempestuous things that hide somewhere behind the collective unconscious will take you the moment you put pen to paper.

But the glory of writing a poem, especially when you haven’t done it in a while, and even more so when you’re scared, is finding out which things will spill out of you.

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