Innocent until twenty-two,
why did you get involved in that stupid grownup love?
Look at you. You never had those manly looks
to win a woman easily,
but this was the woman you tried to win.
The ones who liked you, you didn’t like.
Is this what life on earth is like?
No one looking at you would think you had manly pride.
Why did you feel you had to be that way inside?
You had to go on stage—
and there, in costume, you were all the rage.
You were divided. But you accepted the flowers.
You would peer at your quasi-handsome face for hours.
This division in yourself—tortured into poetry and acting—
you turned into a good. The fire
you embraced, because Plato said:
the definition of love is desire.
Shakespeare, a secret Catholic,
sprung the path for your acting,
and from him you learned to be bold and subtle:
writing which always seemed to be redacting
even among striking, public claims.
You became known as the boy with no umbrella
who simply runs when it rains.
You were slender and often wore the same white and yellow sweater,
dubbed by a college classmate the “Tom Graves Sweater.”
Stupid youth, why did you sleep with women
randomly, then randomly marry
the first you made pregnant? The child
was loved but did you think how random and wild
you were? The mother and the child now think nothing of you.
Unable to play-act, there’s nothing you can do.
You continue to be on stage—
by writing love poems. Love struck, even as you age.
When you were thirteen, you and Ed, your four-year old brother,
played tackle football in the yard.
You delicately but decisively took him to the ground,
describing the play in a football radio voice.
Leaves fell from the sky. You called him, “Big Ed Brown.”