Odd

I have always been odd,
too easily finding joy,
crying too hard,
but not long enough, able

to love but blind to love’s death,
and never mourning until the corpse
was long turned to dust.
I dance in the kitchen;

write sermons while sipping
a glass filled with ice and bourbon,
neither pure enough for the sacred,
nor profane enough for pagans.

Even mosquitoes keep their distance,
lest the oddness that flows in my blood
infects them.
I like ballet, and boxing.

I fight poorly, and yet, once down
stagger to my feet again and again
not to fight, but to walk away,
whistling love songs to the night

in a rubber legged waltz,
more laughable than romantic.
I hate the sound of my voice,
but sing the blues in the shower,

and hymns while I drive.
I remember science
better than the poems I write.
I pray. Even when no one listens.

I’ve always been odd,
the one that didn’t fit in, and yet
somehow cared less than I should,
made as surely in God’s image

as the others that surround me,
so perfect in their millions of ways,
as uncomfortable in their skin
as I.

About this poem.

Sometimes you hear or read one line, and an idea sprouts and the next thing you know you have a poem or a story or an essay. This poem came from someone on a facebook group created and hosted by a nearby author. One line that was not the main theme of her tale, yet hung in my mind like a tatter of cloth on a barbed wire fence, until I wrote this bit of verse, and set it free.

The picture is me. A long time ago, in front of a car I remember fondly, at my grandparent’s house.

Tom