Sideview

Sideview
Originally uploaded by Poetboyomaha.

This is me with the best side-burns I have ever grown. I struggle daily with trying to look well-groomed, and wish I could just stick the damn things on like a magnet. Wouldn't that be a gay man's (or anyone who really tries to look good, but cannot "get it together" unless he has major help 24/7) dream?

A Letter to my Brother Darrin

Dear Darrin: This year, Winter might be a bit quiet
and I wish you could be here. I bet you do too.
You are on another side of the world again, lost
in a war only the history books will judge. Years
after the blood has seeped into the earth and decades
past the clearing of rubble school kids will stress
over dates, places and names but now I feel my world
skip two beats every time I watch network news.

So much has changed between wars, Darrin. You and I
have gained and shed pounds, friends and lovers, watched
our hair turn into that family mish-mash of gray and silver
as we moved from one downtown apartment to another,
and saw the world shudder as four small planes did their best
four horsemen impersonation one September morning as we
casually sipped a third cup of coffee. I bled fear that day.

I wonder what you have seen, and if death really does look
the same, from all alone in some bombed-out street
thousands of miles away, to an antiseptic hospice bed
with family and friends all around to catch that final breath.
I think about the years we shared a bedroom, and the battles
little bothers have with a bunk bed as a backdrop and now
I see that nothing we did back then could have prepared us
for these parallel lives and thrust-on roles we now play.

November has become a string of cold rainy days
with a morning fog that crawls over Omaha
as if Nature doesn’t know what to do while she waits
for the pounding snows and the life-taking wind chills.
My dog lives for her afternoon walks, and the air
has a slight taste of smoke from scattered fireplaces
finally getting some use. I wish you could see this.

Almost three times a week, I am slapped out of bed shaking
with night sweats and the chest-tightening scare that this could be
the sleep I don’t wake up from, and then I wonder what you
are afraid of right now, and the shame tears up and out of me.
I still have days where thirty-five pills and fourteen different meds
are too much, so my body screams “NO MORE,” and I never leave
the bathroom. I know you think that kind of thing is funny.

I hope that you are safe right now, and I pray you get home soon.
I know Mom misses you as these holidays creep closer to today,
as if some magic spell needs all the children gathered at the tree
to make the new year safe and complete. I wonder what she thinks
of this world, and how it has changed her sons as they each had
their battles from school year fist fights and backyard bullies,
to cutting edge drugs and two foreign wars. We all miss you.
Be careful. Love, Brian.

I wonder if anyone is reading this. . .

As I sit here depressed over yet another lonley Sunday morning, I wonder if anyone reads these thoughts I tap out as New Order's "Power, Corruption, and Lies" plays in the background. . . I wonder.

Another poem

HIV MEDITATIONS

I: Waiting to Get the Results

I let the first bus pass me while I smoked,
like the passage of nicotine outweighed my next
destination. I watch the people around me, as
the Omaha skyline accepts another sunset; a
small furry man with crumpled army fatigues
wanders from person to person, reciting his
soliloquy for quarters. He smells like the coffee
plant down by the bank of the Missouri.

I mumble a half-assed apology when it's my turn,
and watch three kids, with torn shirts and shaved heads,
attempt skateboard tricks on the curb. I start to feel
the afternoon press on my shirt in waves of nervous
sweat. Two hours, two more hours until some
volunteer gives me one of the biggest "yes" or "no"
answers of my life. I try to change the subject
by studying the derelict passed out on the next block.

A later bus comes; I scramble to make a positive face,
create a little dress-rehearsal as I drop three quarters,
a dime and a nickel down the metal chute. I thought,
it shouldn't hurt this bad, and sat in the side seats,
saved for the old and weak. I watch spring struggle
to be seen in those pieces of lawn between the sidewalk
and the curb; my eyes close in silent prayer.
I follow an old woman who struggles off the bus.



II: Looking Through the Closet


I have spent days deciding which pair of pants
are past the point of hiding the weight loss, like
reaping the wheat in October's late harvesting.
Only three years ago, I would brag about this
quest to friends at the bar, now I see this as
another mark on my checklist of acceptance.

In the mornings, before anyone is awake,
I watch my medication melt in a glass filled
with lukewarm water. My body does not
want this, and tells me with each spasm
as I take another sip, and watch the dawn.

I watch each sniffle and sneeze like it is
the climax of a movie and the detective
has decided to share his secrets and clues
with the innocent bystanders before the credits
roll up the screen. I marvel at my fear now.

I remember the busride, and on those days
when I feel my muscles betray me, I wonder
if the answer would have been different
if I smoked one less cigarette. I wonder
if my pants would still fit, if my mornings would be quiet.


- Brian E. Bengtson

So, how does someone get any feedback from this thing? I am just a bit curious.

Recently I joined a wonderful online writing group, Fanstory.com (www.fanstory.com), where I have received such wonderful help with my writing, and some "warm fuzzies" that have really made my day. It is hard to be a writer sometimes, even harder when your passion is poetry. Like I have told many guys I tried to meet online,"I am a freelance (which really means 'I am not getting paid right now') writer and poet. . . Because the job title 'poet' has not been a paying position since the Middle Ages, I have a few 'side jobs' to take care of the bills. . ."

So what do I do for cash? I clean. Thanks to my mother being very very anal retentive (and I think as a defense mechanism when she realized that she was trapped in the house all day with three young boys), I am a great maid. I like to call it "playing Hazel for pay." The bad part is that I get so tired of cleaning, that I do not want to even touch my own home. But when you have a cat and a dog who live to shed, you learn to vacuum whenever/wherever you can. . . .

Current Shot

Brian smiling
Originally uploaded by Poetboyomaha.

And this is me now!

Brian

Brian
Originally uploaded by Poetboyomaha.

this is the best I think I have ever looked.

Okay. . . here is a poem

Spots of Brown


Fall didn’t get its chance
this year;
trees only have spots

of passive brown
as if a wind of fire
only brushed past them.

Maybe the season
just slapped them in the face
before it went away.

- Brian E. Bengtson

Okay I am going to start this. . .

Okay, well, I think I have this thing figured out, and I am going to really make an attempt at doing this with some sort of regularity.

Well, this is what you see about me if you put my name in a search engine. First you have to go to the Nebraska Center for Writers website and click on my name, and you would get this:

Actor, playwright, and poet BRIAN E BENGTSON is a native of Omaha but has been to enough different places to be content in calling this city his home. In 1986, he started working with the Omaha Magic Theatre and has appeared in eight touring and in-house productions, such as Sleazing Towards Athens, Kegger, and Sea of Forms. His one-act play, Fags in the Mall, was first produced by The Crawlspace Theater in New Orleans in 1991. For four years, he served as Poetry Editor for The New voice of Nebraska, the state's oldest gay and lesbian magazine, until it folded in 1998. His poetry has appeared in magazines such as Poetry Motel, Hurãkan, Bay Windows, and David's Place. His first chapbook, entitled Gay. ... Some Assembly Required, was published by Lone Willow Press in 1995. His next collection of poems, First Chill, will be published through PublishAmerica (www.publishamerica.com) in 2005.

So that's me. . I have also been HIV positive for over 13 years, which is a big part of my life in so many ways. Kinda hard to forget something that has changed, is changing, and some would say eroding my life for over a decade.

But enough about me for now.

Love, and all that stuff,

Brian