John Homan a Leader in local poetry

There is no reason

To believe that spring will come

Except it does

by Clark Strand

On April 23, 2023, John Homan passed away. He was a good friend, a supporter of others, a leader in local poetry and a great man. John encouraged everyone. He was a frequent contributor to PAN-O-PLY. Whenever I asked John to contribute, he always said, yes. I asked John to have a poetic conversation with me in the summer of 2021. John gave PAN-O-PLY a short story to publish when I really needed one.

 John will be missed. This month I will publish the last four poems John submitted to PAN-O-PLY.

May peace find you in heaven, John.

Amanda

The room was almost completely dark

Save for one window facing east at dusk.

For some reason we didn’t turn the light on,

The same reason she had followed me on

An insignificant chore my youth pastor gave me.

She leaned against a table near me as I moved closer to her.

We both moved closer, slowly positioning our faces for a kiss.

Then it happened. I stopped…six inches from her face,

And pulled away. To this day I still don’t know why.

Amanda was not the most beautiful girl I had ever seen,

She wasn’t the one I was meant to share my life with.

But when I looked at her it was like baby oil on the camera lens.

It would have been my first kiss.

I’ll regret much at the end, not seeing Paris and Ireland,

Time spent on the internet, watching the same TV shows over and over,

Waiting in lines, boring sermons when I fell asleep,

Boring people who think they’re funny and will not stop talking,

Not being able to sucker punch people who deserved it.

All those normal things that wasted our short time here,

But few things sting like being that close to a kiss and pulling away.

January Full Moon

I walked up the sidewalk to my front door. It was dark and cold. My breath steamed freely as patterned clouds flowed over the bright full moon above. Others noticed it too and reacted appropriately; even in the middle of town, the sounds of dogs of all shapes and sizes bayed at the moon. All around were the baritone howls of big dogs, staccato mid-range notes from mutts, and the soprano machine-gun barks of the tiny ones that shouldn't be outside without an ugly sweater.

This primal song combined with the rhythm of the railroad tracks two blocks over as a train rolled through my neighborhood, Everything mixed so clearly with the sounds of a medium-size town at eight-thirty at night made it worth it to put up with the cold just to experience the outside when I'd been inside school all day.

Beside my front door was the plastic storage box we had cut a hole in the front of to make a cat shelter with a bowl of dry food next to it. We insulated the box with industrial padding wrapped around a cardboard box with the shirt I had slept in the night before, hoping and praying my lost cat Henry would find his way home, but the box is still empty after two weeks. It's time to go inside and see the people who love me in spite of my sadness.

Bandage

The auburn-haired girl from Pennsylvania in Wendy's uniform looked at me with one hand on her hip. Her pleasant face seemed irritated, "It's always something with you isn't it?" This would be one of those times in life where the subject of a conversation has no relation to the words spoken. 
            What she was really saying was this: "We have to work together, I don't like you that way. Pretend you aren't miserable. Stop moping around so this doesn’t have to be so awkward." To her credit, she had broken this very fact to me, explaining we could still be friends, but I was still struggling with it and couldn’t flip the “just friends” switch as easily as she would like. 

I had nothing to say, no words expressed how I felt without making things worse. I couldn't pull off sarcasm without my voice cracking from emotion. Breaking into tears as you tell someone off wasn't on my list of appropriate behaviors in front of girls.
             I didn't want to say "I'm sorry”, because I wasn't…not in the least.  I didn't want to stop moping. It was the bandage dulling the pain. Moping covered my broken heart. Sealing it away from air and light.  Moping was my way to deal with rejection. Maybe she would feel guilty when she saw how much pain I was in.

            I imagined she would clearly see the depth of emotion I possessed; that a sensitive soul was in need of a nurturing female influence. The imagination of the passive-aggressive male is a reservoir deep and wide, filled with a potent ignorance of how women actually think.  

            In the end, I simply stood there open-mouthed; dumbfounded for about five seconds. Finally, I turned away without answering and went back to tending the hamburger patties on my grill.
            In those five seconds, a wonderful thing happened: somewhere inside me the person I wanted to be ripped the bandage off of my heart, and told me to suck it up. Before there was this dreamy filter on my vision whenever she walked into the room, she was the prettiest girl I had ever met; a goddess in a blue polyester Wendy’s smock.
            Now the filter fell away-the spell was broken. She wasn’t ugly in my eyes, far from it, but she wasn’t the one and I could accept that now. The comfort from moping became unnecessary; truth and light proved a better salve than denial.

Ripping Open My Chest

There are times, I want to rip my chest open, letting it all spill out on the floor; letting you see those inconsistencies disguised with quirkiness and bow ties. Promoting my preferred image, seeking my best interests, while inside me multiple intentions spin like a maze, values contradicting, beliefs oscillating, truth swimming in a rough storm-tossed sea as that rope of certainty stays just out of reach.  

I'm a social chameleon with fiery red and orange feathered wings. Sailing, leaping, and parkouring through the habitats of liberals and conservatives, leftists and libertarians. Trying to blend with Christians and atheists, at home with snake handlers and professors, rednecks and hipsters, straight and gay, hoping none of you will ever catch on that I can't ever be any of you completely, no matter how similar I appear. 

I am not your archetype; I am not your shining example. I will not choose to be defined as only one thing! I am not a one-dimensional, market researched identity, picking and choosing all of those razor-sharp traits and subtle social symbols transmitting that I'm 100% approved by the group you have given your heart and soul to.

I am a lousy member of whatever club you belong to...and I don't care! You know why? Because I disagree with every group, every label, and every way we have sub-classified all peoples on this spinning ball of confusion. That's because every group on the face of this earth has one glaring fault; every member of every group proudly whispers that secret universal lie, "no one else has it all figured out like our group does."
            No matter your label, no matter the utterly true worldview and logically ordered precepts you espouse, every group has that same power-grabbing spiritus mundi at their core, explaining to all of their wide-eyed believers that "Once the people decide to finally let us run things, we'll remake this dumpster fire into a new heaven and new earth and our enemies will finally see we were right all along."

I'm not faking you out just for kicks. I only want to share what I've got if you'll have me. I want to be seen, heard, and not ignored. Is that so horrible? Yes! It's true! There are times I put my interests above yours! I want to be noble. I want to do no harm. I want to protect you, but I miss the mark. I'm selfish. I'm that mooch who takes the pennies from the tray so I don't have to break my quarter; the guy who forgets how many samples are socially acceptable, pocketing anything extra whether I need it or not. You can't count on me to sacrifice for the greater good. My highest intentions would serve humanity, but in the end, I frequently serve myself.

What will you do with me? Will you throw me away once you've discovered I'm not one of you? Will it all end once you've caught the whiff of unorthodoxy, the stench of imperfection, once you see the greasy smudges on my face? When you gaze at my open chest and what was inside spread on the floor in front of you, will you quickly turn and walk away? Will that default preference to associate only with those who agree with you, with those who keep everything inside, continue on as usual? Or will you gaze deeply into all that doesn't make sense about me, all that contradicts, and reach out to take my hand in friendship?