The Homeboy in Spite of Himself by John Gorman

From the book Red Pontiac Convertible by John Gorman:

The Homeboy in Spite of Himself  

“The dream was leaving…”

                         ~John Ronan

The edge

of that town I’d lived in

a fenced field of smashed cars,

a shack to sell their parts.

The screen of a drive-in movie

one huge tombstone by daylight,

mingy, post-War houses    scattered

built from kits and already crumbling

ditches and weeds

too much space around everything

a thin life

junk

a jumble.

You’d die driving into it thinking

Now I’ll have to live here.

Leaving, years later, you’d barely look back

but you’d shudder

knowing that just because you’d been here

something that blossomed

in everyone else

would wither in you.

The dream was leaving

the dream was amnesia

then absolute re-creation   a shimmering self

willed solid and potent and deft

from the brilliant void of this horror

this displacement.

All right.

So why do the clover flowers

and goldenrod make

purple-green-golden bouquets

around the crumpled grille

of a ’38 Buick?

Why do the bottles

of off-brand strawberry and lemon-lime pop

gleam, in the stale depths of off-water,

among angel shapes of melting, bacterial ice

  in the zinc cooler

   at the wooden bread store

as if they were Jungian Truths?

Why do I believe it all over again

when the drive-in lights up

in the late summer dusk

full of popcorn and sleazy magic?

Marco Polo, apparently,

wanted to get out of Venice.

Why am I back in Aurora, Illinois

in the heat of this poem?

 

Dr. John Gorman lives in Galveston, TX and teaches literature and creative writing at UH-Clear Lake. His poems, gathered in three chapbooks, have appeared individually in dozens of Texas publications with more nationally and in Canada.  Dr. Gorman remains in demand as a poet and speaker at venues across the region including performances at the Grand Opera House in Galveston, TX and at Discovery Green in downtown Houston as part of the Public Poetry Series. 

         

Dr. Gorman has also been a featured poet at several FPL Poetry Series programs.

More poems by John Gorman: 

An Abundance of Pumpkins

Video poems by John Gorman
Out West 
The Logic of the Drum