Encore Presentation

 Laurie Byro 

 

 

 Laurie Byro  

Confessions

By Laurie Byro

I just started writing poetry again after suffering writer’s block for two years.

At the age of 30, I started writing creative nonfiction and I’ve reverted back to that as you can see from these new pieces I am sharing.

For many of my books, "Gertrude Stein's Salon" and the "Bloomsberries" (the Isadora and Van Gogh as well and Zeus) I would read and research those characters for months, then try to impersonate, inhabit the people I was writing about, and those who awarded me prizes and read the poems thought I had done so.

I have to tell you, the Bloomsbury Group were not easy, not likeable, I felt like an actress that after I did that series I was depressed. So I do use prompts in some ways, I was told by professors I was like Sylvia Plath with a piece of wood, if I couldn't make a table, I'd make a toy. I don't like to waste work and if the poem is failed, I may reuse it and edit it for some other purpose.  

Shawn Nacona who I am mentoring was upset with me for not writing (after 9 books I said give me a break) so after a few of our conversations he tasked me with "Address Book" and the friend who had ghosted me.  He has a few more assignments and he is very young and very smart, but I will say it reminds me of Rumi when he says to his audience "I am just churning these out for YOU, my poems seem to amuse my friends" and so…..

.
Here's a poem I wrote years ago before I saw myself as a poet.

A 

 

Confession
 
     Lord, I love ginger.
     The dark currents of a man's body.
     Also, mead wine, olive with pimento,
     lemon-chicken, wet earth and peonies.
     I’m not a poet, I’m not.
     And yet, these voices,
     the rhythm in which they whisper
     unsettle me.
                   
     Others, French-braided and pearled,
     court philosopher-sages, while I
     in the heat of August, read Li Po
     sighing—
     cold beer bottle against my breast.
     Lord, what if I’m found out?
     Aware of my character, yet wanting
     me brainy, you have made me thus:
     
     Aware of what I’m not.
     And what if I admit that
     I like that rascal Henry Miller

 

Painting of Laurie Byro by Alex Nodopaka

Here’s poems I wrote after my writer’s block lifted.
                            
Address Book

For Shawn who insisted

Pre-Smartphone generation, we had what was called “an address book,”
impossible to find in a store now, everyone has gone digital. I use the old
method. You can pencil in dates of last conversations even the “mood” of your
friend or relative: I have found the words, snotty, combative, manic.  
I scribble in a new grandchild or new wife or husband’s name. It’s my system.

With some people I find ex’s and steps, imagine after a long life, how many holes
in these pages? Dates of deaths, some friends moved 3 or 4 or even more times—
so many lines crossing off different stages of people lives. Almost journals,
I am loathe to throw them away. Which brings me to 2024.
After Covid I decided to update and eliminate 3 old books. I would be ruthless.

It was painful, hacking off arms or legs of people’s lives. I had phantom pain.
I was calling #’s that no longer existed, I was looking up names
followed by the word obituary on the internet. Some contacts were over a decade old.
These Lost In Touch with, I felt deserved my respect in detective work, so I labored on.
The numbers that still seemed viable, I would leave a message “It’s Laurie Byro.”
Followed by “It’s been an age, If you want to call me back, feel free.” I got a few

call backs but sadly not all. The people I found were alive and doing well made up
for the rest. A confession? My handwriting and notes meander into extra pages.
Was this a NEW cell phone number? I had arrows and cross offs and penciled in and
lots of question marks. Which was how I called Geller rather than Gruswitz.
It was unfortunate. The phone rang, the voice that answered was a simmering

cauldron of rage boiling over. Mitchell had been a friend I truly loved, but like that
Blake tree had become poison, the death of our friendship didn’t go gentle
into that good night. I explained what I had been doing, how I had called him
by mistake and the response Eliminate me, don’t call here again with a sharp bang.

Have I?
I can eliminate him from my book, but I can’t eliminate him from my heart.

Maybe going electric is the way to go, it worked for Dylan and I am now Tangled
Up in Blue. How comforting to know with a press of a button, all history deleted.


Valentines Never Sent

1

Branches of pines and hemlocks are dizzy
with cold stars—
Falling, I can’t catch one to wish upon,
wonder where the dead have gone.

2

A red bird bleeds into the snow with its chambers
of regrets. It cocks his head as if to remind me—
you are in flight, each breath that slips away brings you
closer to aqua blue skies, into eyes of the vanquished.

3

You summon a tangled blue sky to cast your line into.
Clouds form a wink, a jaunty mouth of teeth.
Fish are like Gods you’d tell me. Inscrutable, hiding out—
Not so obvious, but there beneath the surface, like our hunger.

4  

Your eyelids flutter and I watch you turn into a wise man,
A buddha talking to spirits, a priest hearing a last confession.
I confess I should have sent you more valentines.
I confess the space between us will only fill with love.

B

Busted Ghosts

While tearing off a game of golf, I may make a play for the caddy. But when I do, I don't follow through 'Cause my heart belongs to daddy. Cole Porter

I was being ignored, discarded, thrown away and ghosted. I had spoken to a psychic, a therapist, a priest and the ghosts who I walk with, the dead who talk with me as I deliver eulogies for spirits of friendships past. What was my crime, Daddy?  Again, I memorized “A Poison Tree” by Blake.

We had been close friends for two decades. Originally, I was her supervisor, but my former career was in travel.  I had spent hours planning their aborted vacations. Although they had repeatedly cancelled, the European trip they made (they had planned to go with us, but she feared being seasick, not seasick, seasick)—instead, they went by land. Their new plans went off without a hitch, with hotels I had recommended. The consolation was they were going to go on a River cruise with us and I planned it right down to hotels, car, trains and sight-seeing. We seemed compatible.  Six months into this, another couple wiggle wagoned on the same cruise, they insisted on a suite, she was a rabid martini drinker and golfer. We were in 12-step programs. Let the dreads begin.

The cruise was cancelled multiple times due to Covid. I had spent hours on the phone, during
a snowstorm, our friends wouldn’t make a move without Suite Lizzy Golfer’s approval. Every reservation that had been cancelled would entail playing musical cabins; inventory was changing hourly. I spent 8 hours on the phone one day and 4 the next, my husband handing me a sandwich, phone in the other hand,

later a dinner plate replaced sandwich. I was trying to accommodate everyone, but suddenly the exact date the following year no longer suited them. I was told it wasn’t warm enough in the South of France and while I have MS and can’t be subjected to heat, that was the only time they were willing to go. Suite Jackie Nicklas and her husband with the Steve Bannon complexion held court, I split off our reservations. Now they were on the phone rebooking their own reservations. I got chastised for messing up their ideal time frame in the past, now they were free to go when they wanted. We had escaped the SS Cirrhosis of the Liver and were no longer traveling with them.

The trip was glorious. One of the best, 60-degree temperatures, the sidewalks felt like they were air-conditioned. We couldn’t have had better weather. As for them? She said, it was a good trip, but so brutally hot, they mostly stayed in their cabins after being out in the morning. Which suited Suitey down to the ground. As for us?  We had gotten 5 nights free in Nice for the time we went. My friend said “no hard feelings” that our friendship was intact, and it had worked out the best for all, given the circumstances. A few months went by, suddenly, there was a shift. She said she wasn’t putting me off, they were busy. I didn’t much think about it as when under stress, she’d gone silent before. She had lost her adult son to alcoholism. They had moved and we were busy travelling.

We each had horrible moms. We had comforted each other about how it was them and not us.
It seemed like her mom suffered from mental illness. My mom was a raging alcoholic. I had told her that the most upsetting thing my mom had done was not speak to me for weeks. Declare I was to be punished with her silent treatment. That’s how it felt now. Until I dared. Until my writing buddy said to write it out, be confessional, be brutal.  I read that Tina Turner was asked once “what have you stood up for in your life” and her response was “I stood up for me.” I confess, that is what I will tell my ghosts on my walk today.


Why I’m Not a Monk

I like to talk. I contemplate while I talk and people say
I sleep-talk. I like the appealing collar, the lace around
the sleeve. I love epaulets. I like the little details. Once,
while I was about to climax (in the wrong place, a closet,
don’t ask) I stood among the shoe horns, the winter
coats and bit my shirt to stop myself from crying out.
I worried (not that we’d be discovered) but that I would
ruin a lovely Nehru collar with drool. How is this possible,
I asked myself, knowing I was not a contortionist and
impressed with such detached determination. I covet sound.
I repeat the phrase inside my head; I love the taste of words
rolling around among my molars. Listen: persimmon, catalyst,
katydid, polliwog, drool. I love bargains and paying pennies
for cool shoes. I have stood inside a closet, my boots filling up
with blood. I have thought about this. Face it, I have more
than thought, I have spoken this out loud. Can a wind chime
equal a sacrament? Can a butterfly be worth the same
as a seashell? How do we measure thrift against desire,
passion against compassion, lie against thievery, incest against
adultery? Can a temple bell fill the air with language or is it only
noise? How many orchids does it take to topple a wall?
If it were up to me to build a bridge, I would ask a stranger
to pass me a stone. Once in New York City I begged a cop
to help me parallel park. Instead, he issued me a summons.
Take my advice, know what you do and cannot do but
do it out loud. Set the world on fire with wooden matches.
Listen: cinnamon, wolverine, clementines, audacious,
anemone, puck. A man huddles on the sidewalk and I am
unable to give him more than a nod and a compassionate five.
Here, take my words. Rub together my sticks of love.

Read more about Laurie Byro:

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2023/04/storyteller-of-week-laurie-byro-laurie.html