This poem was from our creative writing class in the fall of 1994. Our assignment was to write a poem about Autumn. Craig's creativity came up with this classic. It's now one of my all-time favorite poems.
I remember twelve.
It was like an auction block
for lubricants.
"I hear twenty
from hand lotion --
twetny-five from
hair conditioner --
thirty from . . . .
oh, I'm sorry sir
we don't allow petroleum products here."
That last
was like a form of racism --
no, not racism . . . .
a whateverism that encompasses
a twelve year-old's despise
for vaseline
after one sticky experience.
It was the peaceful age
of masturbation and
as if it were the space age
it passed like a season.
Perhaps autumn
followed by the frozen frustration
of a sexual still-birth
long winter
waiting for spring
or an orgasm
whichever came first.
Even so
the autumn was filled
with the wet experiments
of a dry youth.
Once
during a two-month span
when I must have thought I was a monk
there came a dream in the night
like a temptress nun.
It took place in a hospital
white and sterile
with a naked woman
lounging on the floor
as if she could blend in
with the tile.
It happened like a sitcom
at first
she was easy
inviting and dumb
and in the middle
of the best sex ever recorded
in the annals of animal man
I saw that the apparatus
was fake
and connected by a metal framework
to her anatomy.
She looked at me
and with a voice
like vaseline big hair mall chick
ditzdom said
"You're too young."
Then all the harvest of early autumn
came flying at me in a rush
as though in a scene from the exorcist
with pea soup
without the pea.
When I awoke soon after
my chest was covered
with the seed of my religious fervor.
I was tired
so I rolled over.
In the morning
my mother had to peel me from the sheets
like a pancake
stuck too long
in the pan.
(C)1994 Craig Parker
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