John W. Gorski ------ three poems

Agoraphobia                                                                                                                                                            1                                                                                                                                                                  

The Baltimore sky hung

automobile exhaust

above Gwynn Oak amusement park

that summer evening.

People approached at angles

in streaming intersections,

as I heard the roar

of the roller coaster

carrying laughter and screams.

Then I saw a boy my age

pass by wearing a dark red

Tyrolean hat with a white feather

making the first crack

that in later years would be filled

by crowded rooms electric

with sinister gazes.

Why that ostentation

agitated me I can’t say

as I look back

at that fog of Ferris wheels

and cotton candy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Identity Loss at the Movies

Down a summer street off Myrtle Avenue

in Brooklyn near the El station,

I watch an Oriental epic

in the charcoal hush of the Ritz Theater

while thinking of the first feature about  Joan of Arc.

Somewhere in the celluloid haze,

I’ve dropped my paper school ID card.

Outside, I fidget through my pockets –

crows circling in my thoughts,

hectoring in Anglicized German:

“How could you be so careless;

why didn’t you use your head?”

Years later, it will be found

in a layer of soot – a smiling fifteen year old

in a button-down head shot revealed

by then as a mask burned away

at the stake of daily life.

On the screen, Chinese porters carry

supplies over the border of a mountain pass

of craggy rock and abyss sky

aflame with the Tibetan sun

whose billion facets I would enter

through  colored tablets I swallowed

in my early twenties.

The ignited kindling at my feet

would rise into my brain

with more knowledge than I could program

and I’d  start to wonder

if my mirror image was real.

But at eighteen, I’d  already begun

to fall out of lockstep

with the other soldiers and sense

their jeers before they spoke  –

trains coming from blocks away,

shaking the upper windows of the neighborhood.

                                                                                                                                                                              3

Polaroid Journey Back

I’m going back to

the polaroid length

of the Delaware river.

Standing by its overcast shore

in Wilmington with my grandmother

who mutters in German,

I am four years old

and less than three feet  tall –

an unwitting replica

of Trudy Montag’s main squeeze.

Tonight, I’m looking through

black and white photographs

of my first ten years,

watching my lack of stature

and downcast face winding back

to its headwaters.

The camera’s droll eye

catches me bow-tied

in white shirt and Sunday school slacks

a few years later –

a living room quarterback 

ready to throw a football

while looking towards the floor:

“hey, go out for a long one,

if you really want to “ –

it seems to say.

Or there I am at the front door

of our Maryland address

in the uniform of a space man –

pointing a ray gun

at the other dime store -

costumed  invaders from down the block.                                                                                                                                                                  

And though I eventually reached

the height of 5’ 6”,

there was a swift current

that ran through me

carrying the same sentiment

of the protagonist in “The Tin Drum”

who never wanted to grow up.