Dillon by Proxy (in the Coffee Shop) prose poem by @EvryManJac

Posted on March 8, 2020 by jaurquhart

For my son, Dillon (March 8, 1979–August 2, 2013)

©2020 by Jack A. Urquhart 

Yesterday in a coffee shop,
in an incidence of unabashed affection,
I saw a man lean to plant a kiss
atop his preteen son’s head.
The kid was a sturdy chap,
mop topped, sporting baggy shorts.
He made me think of you at twelve,
and how flush-faced in your reaction
to public displays of parental ardor,
you stirred physically away,
moved by simultaneous outbreaks
of adolescent embarrassment,
(lest, God forbid, a peer had witnessed
the parental faux pas)
and a flickering, begrudging gratitude
in your ambivalent smile. Continue reading →

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Steel, a prose poem by @EvryManJac

Posted on December 11, 2019 by jaurquhart

©2019 by Jack A. Urquhart

Stainless steel was the medium he favored,
forever hard and utilitarian—
the price my father paid
to make his way in the world.
And sometimes, small in his shadow,
I would watch from a distance,
as he slipped on his helmet,
as he brought fire to bear on metal,
his white-hot will cutting, bending,
shaping till a thing was forged in his image—
made to bear the weight
of heavy things.
“Don’t look at the arc flash!”
my father would admonish
when he noticed me watching.
“It will destroy your vision,” he said,
handing me thick, dark goggles
fashioned after his own.
Perhaps he thought I’d be protected
hidden behind impenetrable glass,
safe from the showering sparks
that burn and blind.
Then, turning once again,
He would take up the task,
hard, flexed, beautiful in the heat,
never noticing when, overcome by the sight,
I would sneak an unprotected glance,
too awed by his  brilliance
to resist the light.

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Returns of the Day, a prose poem by @EvryManJac

Posted on March 8, 2019 by jaurquhart

 

 

 

 

 

©2019 by Jack A. Urquhart
(for Dillon from Dad)

Today is your birthday.
You would’ve been forty years old.
Forty!  Imagine that.

Sometimes I do.

I imagine what you might’ve become,
And how you could’ve been healed,
the role I should’ve played.
I conjure the special person
whom you might’ve found,
and the life you could’ve shared,
the lives you might’ve sown.

I know there is no good in this.
And yet the mind will run wild.

It will try to imagine
what’s become of you now,
where you might be,
that fabled afterlife
of prophecy and pulpits,
tales told in tongues of men and angels.
All become as sounding brass,
now that you’ve gone beyond the noise;
now that you’ve vanished—poof!
into the great unknowable.

Only your ashes kept close bring comfort.

I am not ready to let the least of you go;
not ready to relinquish the unreal conditional You:
all the birthdays that might’ve been,
the “should haves” and “could haves”
that mark the returns of the day.

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Dillon, In No Particular Order, a prose poem by @EvryManJac

Posted on August 2, 2018 by jaurquhart

 

 

 

 

 

©2018 by Jack A. Urquhart

Here you come ‘round again
it’s five years now
since you took your leave
and still these parceled posts
arrive in the present tense
mementos of you come home again
in no particular order: Continue reading →

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Red Dwarf Trope, prose poem by @EvryManJac

Posted on June 5, 2018 by jaurquhart

©2018 by Jack A. Urquhart

I don’t know much about red dwarfs,
no expert of celestial bodies here;
not an astronomer, not even an astrologer
casting about for friendly signs and symbols,
a star-lit chart to some heavenly happiness.
I only know that there are a lot of them,
and that red dwarfs are unfathomably slow,
interminably ancient, depleting their resources,
nevertheless, after a universally self-destructive pattern.

Also (not surprisingly), they lack luster.

Like most beings accelerating in space,
red dwarfs never achieve full-fledged stardom;
rather, they collapse slowly on themselves
becoming smaller and immaterial over time
(as well as exponentially more dense).
All the intimacies that fuel a friendly fusion,
are consumed in a dimly read conflagration,
until there is only a gravity-bound center—
no more at the heart of the matter than stillness,
a desolate mass in an expanse of space.
Just another black hole in the billions of us,
invisible to the naked human eye.

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Hobo’s Dream, prose poem by @EvryManJac

Posted on April 23, 2018 by jaurquhart

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hobo’s Dream
© 2018 by Jack A. Urquhart

In a hometown dream,
I tramp familiar streets,
gnarly stick thrown o’er my shoulder
wags a hobo’s satchel banner,
its colors bandana red, white, paisley.
Worn shoes flap loose soles
like extra maws at my feet.
With each step, they mouth off at me:
floppa-floppa, floppa-floppa,
a duet in ragged-ass reproach.
What does it mean, I wonder,
this dream of down-and-out dereliction?
Only that I’ve grown old, perhaps?
Is that too much to hope?
Only that I’ve grown frightfully old?

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Two Poems, @EvryManJac: There is a Bell; Little Wonder

Posted on March 8, 2018 by jaurquhart

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Bell
©2018 by Jack A. Urquhart
(for Dillon)

There is a bell
pendulous and rusting
heavy in the tower
of my still-beating heart
Amidst the calmest hour
I can hear its faintest
steely shimmering
It calls me back
Back home to you Continue reading →

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I Haven’t Forgotten, prose poem by @evrymanJac

Posted on August 2, 2017 by jaurquhart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2017 by Jack A. Urquhart

In case you’re wondering,
I haven’t forgotten,
‘though it is many years.
I haven’t forgotten
the way you came howling
into the world,
red faced and wrinkled,
your tiny hands
already curled into fists. Continue reading →

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Penitence, a prose poem by @EvryManJac

Posted on June 12, 2017 by jaurquhart

©2017 by Jack A. Urquhart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just so you know:
I have my regrets.
Doesn’t everybody?
And yes, I am sorry—
sorry for the grief I’ve caused.

That, in a nutshell,
is the story of my life. Continue reading →

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Breach of Trust, prose poem by Jack A. Urquhart @EvryManJac

Posted on April 30, 2017 by jaurquhart


 

 

 

 

 

© 2017 by Jack A. Urquhart

It seemed like nothing at the time
all those many years ago,
no more than an instant’s frustration
when I stooped to let you go—
just the fruit of a sleepless night,
the strain of overwrought paternity set loose.

It seemed all your fault back then,
the toddling source of cacophonous discord,
and that you deserved to take that spill.
No big deal to fall from knee-height,
and surely no harm done, I thought;
nary a bruise on your fat little bum.

Yet the moment you keened,
I knew it to be something more,
and that I’d failed again, again
the limitless tests of love,
and that the damage was done:
a first fracture in the bones of trust.

 

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