Another Way to Play

by Michael Lally

  get into for awhile in the ’60s in ways

  I thought were somehow my doing—I mean

  I took myself so seriously I got proprietary

  about almost everything I dug—

  I wasn’t totally out of control,

  I never thought I was responsible for

  athletic events or minor wars or stuff

  I cared about but not that much—

  but almost every hip style since I was a kid,

  I thought at least in part could not have

  evolved if somehow someone hadn’t picked up

  on what I was wearing and doing,

  yeah, all that ego stuff,

  that obvious covering up

  for the insecurity and fear

  that maybe I wasn’t enough—

  but come on now, tell the truth,

  didn’t you feel that way too,

  couldn’t you see how obviously

  inferior the supposedly great leaders

  were, or even the great thinkers,

  when you read Marx and Lenin and Jefferson and

  Neitchze and Kierkegaard and Wittginstein and

  St. Thomas, and Sartre and Hemingway and Stein,

  didn’t you really feel, as I certainly did,

  that the truth was still being hidden away

  as if they really didn’t know what it was

  or were too afraid to say—

  Yeah, like I said, I felt that way,

  until just the other day,

  like sure I coulda been bigger than Elvis

  or Marlon or JFK, only, you know, nobody asked

  me to make a record or star in their movie or

  run for president on their ticket—

  well, actually, I did get asked to

  be on a record with other New York

  poets and performers once, like Laurie

  Anderson who looked like a hippie then,

  but then she got her hair cut and spiked it,

  and dyed it and started wearing makeup

  that accentuated her eyes and more or less

  doing a female version of my style back then

  and you know the rest—and people did

  ask me to star in their movies, like the

  one where I got to be the hero and stick

  a wooden stake into a bald Dracula on

  a farm in South Jersey and when I took

  my son to see the blown up poster of me

  doing just that on 42nd Street, he said

  “gee dad, it looks like you’re

  killing some bum with a broom handle—”

  and I once did run for office, sheriff

  of Johnson County Iowa on the Peace and

  Freedom ticket, Eldridge Cleaver was our

  candidate that year for president—

  though I thought at the time I had a

  better political perspective—

  so yeah, I guess I’ve had my chances,

  especially when I think of all the

  romances I’ve had with the women I

  only dreamt about back then—only, when I

  think about that mission I thought I was on,

  I see that I turned it all into sexuality

  that was all about how I could satisfy me

  even when I did that by satisfying you

  because that made me feel like I was still

  being true to my assignment from God,

  and who knows? maybe I was—

  The truth is, I did all the things

  I once dreamed I would, but either they didn’t

  turn out so good or what I fantasized they’d be

  or it was me who didn’t pull it off,

  not prepared or just not good enough—

  and when I finally accepted that

  not too long ago, instead of feeling bad

  I felt this inner glow of peace and relief,

  like I could finally get to know myself

  without the pressure of being Elvis/Marlon/

  JFK/Beckett/Kerouac/Dylan/Lennon/and the

  rest, I didn’t have to prove to myself

  or anyone else anymore that I was the best

  and just got overlooked somehow, I didn’t

  even have to save the world without your

  help, being love and all that, all I had

  to do was listen to my heart and not my ego

  and tell the truth with whatever language

  is truly mine and be of service in any way

  I can and just go ahead and be the man I am—

  SOMETHING BACK

  I never had a backache before

  I started working out

  now I’m like all those other

  jock Adonises, pretending to be

  the healthiest man you’ve ever

  scanned when it’s all a sham—

  I can’t even stand up straight

  anymore, or pick something

  up off the floor without

  making noises I used to hear

  only the real old geezers make—

  oh for heaven’s sake, my mother

  would say if she could hear me now

  from wherever she went when I

  watched the line go flat for

  the last time, anyway, she’d say

  oh for heaven’s sake don’t make

  yourself out to be so old when

  you’re my baby, the youngest of

  the fold—who never had the chance

  to hold her the way a grown man

  can do, the way I hold my kids or

  friends or other women or you—

  but, that isn’t really true,

  because not too long ago, when

  I was lying on my couch in the

  middle of the afternoon, just

  sort of digging the way the light

  came through the trees and windows

  in ways that spread these rays

  all through the room, dispelling

  any gloom I might have had and

  reminding me of when I was four

  or five and my mother told me

  how each little speck of dust—

  don’t they call them mites?—was

  actually an angel which was enough

  to keep me fascinated for days

  in ways that probably led directly

  to me being the kind of dreamer

  who writes poems and lives on loans

  and spends some afternoons just

  lying on a couch mesmerized by a

  certain slant of light and the way

  it ignites a kind of heat in my

  heart that starts the gratitude

  flowing, when all of a sudden I

  see my mother, kind of glowing

  but very real, and without even

  thinking I open my arms and take

  her in my embrace in just that

  way I never got the chance to,

  like a grown man who knows what

  it means to suffer and to be

  comforted in the strength of

  the arms of someone who loves you—

  no, more than that, it is a thing

  about feeling strong in a way

  that still seems manly today,

  I can’t defend or even describe

  this feeling right, but it was

  there, in me, as I held my mom

  in the afternoon light, so long

  after she had gone for good and

  then I looked and there my father

  stood, weeping, and I knew without

  thinking he was crying because

  he felt left out and misunderstood

  and I opened my arms to him,

  because it was true I never got to

  hold him that way either, with me

  being the parent, the grown up one

  now, with me having been through

  enough to forgive them for whatever

  mistakes
we all make, yeah, I just

  never got to embrace these two

  people whose love and devotion to

  each other was so strong it lasted

  a lifetime long, I remember them

  holding hands on their couch as

  they watched TV like two teenagers

  and they were already old, having

  had me by surprise at the end of

  a brood of seven—what I’m

  trying so hard to say is on that

  day when they appeared to me I

  really did see them standing there

  in the golden air of the afternoon

  light and I felt like I had the

  chance to let them see I turned

  out all right, and I didn’t have

  to cry about what has slipped away,

  because I got something back.

  YOUNG LOVE

  When I was a kid I remember

  going out with this girl

  whose father ran a neighborhood

  bar—he was known for his fits

  of violence—one time when she

  was talking to me on the phone

  he came home and ripped the thing

  out of the wall in the middle of

  our conversation—I thought

  she hung up on me and was kinda

  hurt until she finally reached me

  a few days later after everything

  had quieted down—I remember

  the first time I took her out,

  they lived over the bar on the

  border of Newark in a tough Irish-

  Italian neighborhood that’s now

  a tough African-Puerto Rican one—

  when I walked in she introduced

  me to him, a big overgrown lummox,

  the kind of Irish bully that made

  me know why I wanted to get away

  from that part of Jersey first

  chance I got—and I did—but

  back then I was still a kid with

  nowhere to go that didn’t end up

  with me trying to sleep in the

  snow—so, anyway, as I go

  toward him sitting on the couch

  to shake his hand the way I was

  taught he says “I thought she said

  you played football” and I said

  “I do” and he made some cutting

  remark about how in his day someone

  as thin and light as me woulda been

  used for the football, and I said

  something back about how maybe he’d

  like to fucking try it sometime like

  right now, and he looked like he

  might and then laughed and said I was

  alright but must have changed his mind

  by the time he ripped the phone off

  the wall—actually in that time and

  place this girl was sort of classy

  to even have a phone and a bar they

  maybe didn’t actually own but could

  make at least the upstairs their home—

  lots of girls I dated I had to call

  their neighbors and ask them to run

  next door or up the stairs to pass

  some coded message on to them—

  but this one girl was obviously

  not thrilled to have a phone when

  it came with the father she had—

  but she didn’t know what to do—

  they didn’t have books and seminars

  and TV movies and newspaper stories

  and anonymous meetings or much of

  anything back then to tell a kid

  what to do about fathers who drank

  too much and then got violent—

  we all knew about it, we all lived

  with some version of it, and she

  did what most of the kids I knew

  did, she got cynical and tough—

  so much that when we’d finally find

  some quiet place under the stars

  away from all the bars and the

  anger they fed, we’d be doing some

  heavy body work and then lay back

  to look at the stars and I could

  never stop myself from going off

  into them with my dreams of another

  way—I’d start to sketch with

  words the house we’d live in with

  a fireplace we could lay in

  front of like in movies I had seen

  and in the morning we would walk

  to the ocean nearby to say good

  morning and watch the boats glide

  by—this is true, I can see her

  next to me on the ground as I let

  my words take me away from all that

  was around us, surrounded us, and

  I can see her turn to me and shatter

  everything I’d shared—she was just

  trying to get me to see how all of

  what I said was pure fantasy—I swear

  I can still hear her saying “Michael,

  you’re such a dreamer, we’re only

  fifteen, we probably won’t even know

  each other in two years”—and I remember

  my reply—“You’re probably right but

  so what? It makes it better, it

  makes me want to kiss you even more

  and hold you even tighter and feel

  so fucking in love and happy I want

  to cry, or fly away to those stars

  up there forever, now what the fuck

  is wrong with that? if it makes us

  feel better and happier and more in

  love?” But she wasn’t going for it,

  she had her own agenda and it didn’t

  include those kind of dreams, and it

  seems she was right, because it wasn’t

  even two months before we were strangers

  again, but in a way I was too, because

  I live in that house with the fireplace

  and the beach I say good morning to—

  and if you’re gonna lay down with me

  in this quiet place I’ve finally found

  and watch the fire with me and get up

  in the morning to greet the nearby sea,

  I want you to be as crazy about the

  romantic possibilities as me—

  ISN’T IT ROMANTIC?

  She smiled when I passed her saying

  “I love your poetry”

  so naturally

  I figured she

  was just being polite

  or thought that’s what you’re supposed to say

  at these things or

  was slightly high and caught my eye

  and thought I expected a compliment

  or didn’t know what she was saying—

  anything but just plain meaning it—

  How could she mean it—

  I hadn’t even read yet

  and she was the most beautiful woman in the place,

  her face could sell me anything,

  except my own worth,

  for now—

  that’s how I felt about it—

  and then I read—

  and they wouldn’t shut up—

  not even when I told them

  I was going to talk about their

  pussys and assholes and cocks—

  I could tell a few heard me and stopped talking

  long enough to see if I meant it—

  but pretty soon, they were filling the room

  with their own chatter and it didn’t seem to matter

  what I read or said or—

  so when I got down and walked across the floor

  I wasn’t expecting more compliments from anybody—

  let alone her—

  but there she was—still beautiful—

  no, more so—her eyes still aglow with

  what I still thought was fake or mock adm
iration—

  so I just threw myself into dancing—

  first with friends and then when they

  disappeared, with myself—

  through the crowd I could see her

  dancing with her girlfriend

  and when they whispered to each other and

  looked over at me

  I looked around to see what else

  it might be—and sure enough, standing behind me was

  a young dude who obviously

  thought he was hot stuff

  like everyone else in the place in fact—

  a room full of competing egos in black—

  and when I turned back,

  she was gone, so I closed my eyes

  and disappeared into the music until

  I had to open them or fall—

  and when I did she was all I saw,

  dancing now right there before me—

  her girlfriend had moved over to my spot too—

  and I thought for a minute, hey

  maybe she does have some interest in me—

  but then I see them both provoke

  the hot stuff dude into giving up his pose

  to join them on the dance floor where I

  can check him out up close—

  he’s not so hot—sure he’s got a lot of

  hair and none of it’s gray and it seems

  to stay the way he planned it to, but hey,

  when I was his age I looked more authentic

  than that—hell, I still do—so does she—

  maybe that’s what she sees in me—and maybe

  this hot stuff guy is just shy and doesn’t want to

  show it—or blow it, the way I so often have—

  and it makes him awkward in a kind of endearing way—

  and suddenly hey, I can see that he’s not anything more

  than a friend—and he isn’t dancing with her anyway—

  because no matter how I try to misinterpret it,

  she’s obviously dancing with me, on purpose—

  so I take the risk and smile at her,

  and she smiles back—

  and I can see I was wrong—

  she isn’t just beautiful, stunning, marvelous and

  incredibly naturally the girl of my oldest dream—

  she doesn’t seem crazy or needy or self-conscious or

  aloof and full of hype like those model slash actress types—

  she looks alright—and she’s looking at me—

  until I can’t help but bite my tongue

  to stop myself from screaming MARRY ME!!

  what was I thinking? sure this was some cute kid

  and maybe the dim lights hid my age

  but when she sees me in the light—

  might as well enjoy it—and I did—

  and she made me forget all the rest—

  especially when she leaned over and whispered in my ear

  “What are you laughing at—is the dancing too much?”

  “No,” I shout back, afraid to get too near