A Mini Chapbook By Westley Sughrue

"my storyteller knees"

my storyteller knees bend
     like the tales I weave
     from factual events in my life
     I walk with arthritic words
                     every step, might creak and groan
     the anti-inflammatory drugs
                                    don't quite do the trick

my wisdom is in parables made of joints that
     don't quite flex as far
     as childhood thoughts

elusive past:  from use and abuse
           of the truth

           wear and tear upon concepts like
           my birth, and an idealized parental set

my father who could play
                              fretless instruments
I know this only:  because I own his banjo
carved from the many nights
he played bravado

for the five years he lived
during my lifetime
in the footsteps of mountainous shoulders
the shadows
of the plateaus

to which I rise
             the son of the sun
             and the moon in my head
thoughts eclipse the stairs that I have drawn

but these knees don't bend quite so well
as they did when I was young
                 the buried places miles beneath
a tombstone womb

my father's ashes:  living in the sea sand
my initials written in magma
hasn't cooled
         burned the roof of my mouth
on the singular syllable sounds

and my aging taste buds
eroding with the river bed

my tongue can't twist back upon itself
when I try to weave tendons anew
these aged pulley systems
are fraying into something
missing screws

the cabinet doors don't quite hang straight
and the hinges are rusted
around my eyelids
to contemplate

my storyteller knees haven't yet shattered
despite buckling bones
and cartilage starts to harden

the walls of the halls; this wallpaper makes me smile
the paintings are the images
I've destroyed

deployed, my military march
one foot in front of the other
toward the rising sun of summer
I arch.

a lone bridge over the ocean
carved by crashing waves
I am echoing my rumors
through sea caves

all these faces I have claimed my own
    some were latex, and artificial pigment
    eventually I'll replace my bones
with tungsten

unable to move:  the weight will be unbearable
              and all my motivations won't matter
because the lives I haven't lived
will have caught up with me
beneath my sagging skin

I know that gravity never could apologize
but all is never forgiven

in the stories I tell - I am a failing protagonist
but falling stars feel more motion
than my little world of ivory towers

the adventures of my mind
make small these late evening hours
the only thing different between fact
and my truth:

the way colors are interpreted
sounds
these movements

the difference between lies and my mind
is the choice of letters strung together.
my storyteller knees
are my own way of bracing to jump forward
or failing that, I part my lips and smile
onward.


"therapeutic trinity"

1.

catacomb catharsis
placing all sentiment
into the darkness
purge the deep
crude oil
from the mind
and hope
that the hole
is deep enough
inside

2.

you tell stories that seem
a foreign fiction
your eyes
display
no emotion
and with
no shroud of
evidence
your persecution
is imminent

3.

returning back to childhood
through
deep hypnotic suggestion
I discovered
I was color blind
since conception
I forgot the nuance
of names
and retraced my steps
through growing pains

4.

the locked closet door
is shivering and groaning
against the strain
to keep the burden of proof
from public display

5.

you play your harp
like it was a banjo
you whisper to the strings
in drunken rambles
and accidentally
confess
to accusations of murder
but under duress
you might have hurt her

6.

I am running through a thick undergrowth
of acacia trees
they grow like weeds
and provide the backdrop
for an elaborate imagination
between the ages of walking
and abomination

7.

the cellar door is glowing
with incandescent bulbs
or candles
or whatever
brittle barrier
to outshine the moon
and from the keyhole
music seeps out
like afterbirth
from a womb

8.

your hereditary condition
suggestions that
the premature baldness
is a result of too much coffee
and not enough
meditation
but the thick molasses
you pour into the mug
is an accidental
distillation
of love
and procrastination

9.

confronting these pieces
and putting them back together
under my hat
I keep a feather
from the dream in which
I flew ten thousand miles
and the flip side
of our bard's tale
is that we are one person

standing in the rain
bleeding from beneath our sternum
where god committed
this mutilation


"the first kiss"

when I kissed you for the first time
I heard a small groan
somewhere distant
and I
unable to identify the source
of the sound

decided to ignore it
as part of random
variation

then
the stars fell
one by one
and the sky cracked
slivers of obsidian
night
crumbled
into the ocean

causing a tsunami
that rinsed
my memory

and all because our lips
touched
in the light rain
and a single question
I should have asked

took the sky
into decay
all these dying suns
now blown out
by the recoil

of the gun you pressed to my skull
and the bullet bleeding
through my
clockwork oil

the gears in my graffiti
brain graft
splattered on the sidewalk
at an hour half past.

Wesley Sughrue was born in the small mountain town of Felton, and spent his early childhood running through the partially untamed wilderness of the Santa Cruz mountains before his family relocated to the east side of the city of Santa Cruz.  Wesley attended Harbor High School, graduating valedictorian.  He attended UC Santa Cruz and majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, where he conducted undergraduate research with Professor David Deamer.  He went on to continue his studies in pursuit of a PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at UC Davis.  Wesley is currently still working on said doctorate.

Another way to look at this is:  he was born into a world where his vivid imagination kept him safe from the torrential events that surrounded his early childhood.  Like all members of his family, Wesley possesses a natural aptitude for life, inheriting an analytical and artistic mind from both maternal and paternal lineages.  Singing from a very early age, he has been composing poetry in his spare time since before adolescent thoughts stimulated interest in the physical and emotional aspects of romantic interactions.  Rather than working as a poet, Wesley views his artistic expression as a living entity that emerges from within the greater whole of his existence.