Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the first of several I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home
(Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
Standing above me in Smith's room
Awkwardly looking down through a clipped hesitancy
Our lives came together.
TURNER
With all the ambiguity that last name usage implies
Was what she called me.
Mannerisms of ingenuousness and a tendency toward the atypical
Bespoke your ambiance
(Ineffably I wanted Her)
That voice -
Falsetto
Laced in bursts of Peter's guffaws
Seemed contrived with a dreamed-of authenticity.
(Your mouth, my love,the
thistle in the kiss?)
From within mutually cancelling
Vignettes of naturalness and gender-cliche'
She kissed through closed lips of
Pristine openness.
Innocently I loved.
Through summer notes of vulnerability
Together we embraced an entangled growth of uncertainty
(Our fictions were tempered in
a painful and inward time)
Desperate needs equivocated against ordained directions and
Dead-end holdings of night-bakery-work.
Even then yours wasn't other-directed but
A need to keep the Self-absorption of your Ann Arbor soul on a
Pedastal of conforming difference.
Eliptically we lived in the interstices
Between an illusion of
Fulfillment and letters etched with
"Know what?"
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