The Writing of Rich Grzesiak

Rich Grzesiak

418

It never changes

Ground meat burns the same way everytime

We live stories of gray invention

Our impressions appear as shadows

of the past cast over the future

You exist immobile

a small acorn shaded by a brown oak tree

I am a memory

When I die my epitaph will be

Will this night Blend to the day

An image beckons

I nod in recognition

Ten months ago I sat listening

Tonight I drown in a sea of words

THOUGHTS ON POETRY

Why do men write poetry?

Oh, I'm sure the libraries of the Ivy League are filled with all sorts of marbled prose on The Art of Poetry.

THE ART OF MANLINESS website — courtesy of Google — gives me the following answer:

"Good poets can make their words immediate and profound and can make a man think about how he sees the world and what’s in it. They can pack the truth about the human experience into just a few lines, and make a man reconsider how he thought about life or nature."

That website claims its goal is to help men "Get action" (a line from Theodore Roosevelt) (and not the type of 'action' you're probably rolling your eyeballs about right now), and to "live a life of eudaimonia — skill, flourishing, excellence, and virtue."

Those thoughts were very far from my mind when I wrote this poem in 1977.

I was 25. I was writhing in a lot of pain from tremendous homophobia. I was out of the closet, and, perversely, working for the U.S. Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, largely because they paid well (and my Mother thought it was a good idea for a good Polish Catholic boy like me).

I wrote this at 418AM one pain-filled morning because I was fearful of what my future offered.

It was a very different America then.

This was, simply, a cry of pain and anguish.

I found it while decluttering.

It originally appeared in a poetry journal called MOUTH OF THE DRAGON, in June of 1977.

Tonight, as I re-read this, I don't want my epitaph to be the one you find in this poem.

I want it to be something like this:

—

I WAS THERE

I DID SEE YOU

I REMEMBER IT ALL

—

I want my remaining years to be filled with clarity, compassion, courage, service, and honesty.

"God, grant me the serenity…"