My Poems, Looked At In Retrospect: The Poet As Outsider, Onlooker, Not In Control Of The Music Poem by Dennis Ryan

Thursday evening, May 21, 2020; Monday afternoon, May 25, 2020; Sunday morning, May 14, 2023 at 8: 56 a.m.

Coming back to the poems,
I sense a certain strangeness:
though I've been here before,
the times are different now.
I am no longer the flesh-and-blood poet
struggling to see, to experience a breakthrough,
to make sure of the words. I am, instead,
this onlooker, this outsider of sorts, out of sorts,
come back to haunt my creations. I am forced
to acknowledge this ghostlier self as sole reader.
Out of sorts at times. Sore. (My feet, knees aching
from all the years of having played so many sports,
running long distances—basketball, baseball, American
football, handball racketball, golf tennis and football/soccer.)
The times are different. I carefully peruse some verses:
yes, the words are the same, in the same order, but...
I no longer feel the same sense of control, the same order—
I need resign myself to the fact. What did I mean here?
And here in fact? Was there once a...? Am I in search
of a beginning, an intention, an origin, an original thought?
The evidence suggests such: the search now begun,
logic spirals downward. I am not in total control. This
"brave ghost" inside of me—calling on my ancestors—
won't let me go, won't allow me to forget what has
happened to my wife, two sons Devin and Shawn, me.
Will I be killed someday—by the police, in what appears
to be an accident, but is not— not allowed to live out
my life to its natural conclusion? I suggested as much
last night, May 13, 2023, to my wife, and she, for her
part told me, "Step carefully, do not go out tonight. It
could happen at any time." Time is all, all, all of us
have. I must make the most of it. (Now is the time
to, yes … the police read these Poem Hunter poems
as I have noted many times in emails to friends, foes.)
Last night I went to a concert in Cary, NC, strings,
percussion, and brass instruments—tears forming in
my eyes at times caused by ethereal string sounds,
laughs from a Russian girl, her mother sitting beside
me—the sounds of kazoos. Contrasts—what doesn't
kill me keeps me alive; what doesn't kill me keeps me
alive, in tow. Character is destiny… How will it end?