Han Solo fan art by http://charles-hall.deviantart.com/
G. KAGAN-TRENCHARD
Ode To Han Solo
I don’t know if all the heroes I saw before you
were blonde, but they might as well have been.
You in the cantina, arms spread like a crow’s
wings. From then on, no hokey religion for me.
No white hat would ever fit, and I wouldn’t want it
to. I practiced your part in my own iris black hair.
Said your lines over and over to myself, trying
to get the cool lilt just right. I know.
I wanted a mind like a hot rod,
voice like a pistol blast. Scoundrel
who appears just when you need him the most.
From you I learned posture like a fire escape.
How to turn smoke into a smile.
Ode To Han Solo
I don’t know if all the heroes I saw before you
were blonde, but they might as well have been.
You in the cantina, arms spread like a crow’s
wings. From then on, no hokey religion for me.
No white hat would ever fit, and I wouldn’t want it
to. I practiced your part in my own iris black hair.
Said your lines over and over to myself, trying
to get the cool lilt just right. I know.
I wanted a mind like a hot rod,
voice like a pistol blast. Scoundrel
who appears just when you need him the most.
From you I learned posture like a fire escape.
How to turn smoke into a smile.
It Was All Very Late 90’s
The apocalypse was just around the corner and the Internet was brand new.
I worked for a dot com Disney subsidiary that gave out free home pages.
When most of them became porn sites the company had to show
a modicum of effort to stop inappropriate content. I was sifting
through millions of pages of fluid html. Areola innocently creeping
over the horizon of swimsuit. Arching rope of semen frozen mid air.
Rendering of Bart Simpson in a threesome with his mother and sister.
All of it to be categorized and filed. The user’s site to be deleted and reported
to the authorities, if need be. Grand Turismo in the lobby, 12 dollars
an hour and free Redbull. It was all very San Jose. Eighty-hour weeks. Graveyard
from Thursday to Sunday, midnight till 9. All to afford a room in a house
with an aging Goth Couple, a retired skin head, utilities included.
I had taken to boilermakers made with Rolling Rock and Ten High. After work
morning cocktail mixed on the coffee table next to their menagerie
of free base glass pipes and craft projects. Page and Sean would sit in a cloud
of meth smoke watching bondage videos and painting antique picture frames. Chopping
lines and gnashing teeth like this was just an easy Sunday morning.
It was all very end of the world. Even if you didn’t believe in 2012 or Y2K
who knows when any crazy motherfucker will just decide to blow shit up?
Hell, I knew five sites that showed you how to make C4 and lived
down the hall from a tweaker with a wall full of knives.
The towers hadn’t fallen yet. Social networking was still something people did
in the flesh. Every week I would get a frantically forwarded email from my mother,
in a rage because she heard AOL was going to start charging postage.
The night user 6675-2 uploaded a picture of a five-year-old
holding an almost comically massive cock in her tiny pink nail polished hand,
I was asleep at my desk, eyes open, having a work dream. The screen
looked like a sea of nothing but jelly fish. A ringing in my ears like a fire alarm.
The apocalypse was just around the corner and the Internet was brand new.
I worked for a dot com Disney subsidiary that gave out free home pages.
When most of them became porn sites the company had to show
a modicum of effort to stop inappropriate content. I was sifting
through millions of pages of fluid html. Areola innocently creeping
over the horizon of swimsuit. Arching rope of semen frozen mid air.
Rendering of Bart Simpson in a threesome with his mother and sister.
All of it to be categorized and filed. The user’s site to be deleted and reported
to the authorities, if need be. Grand Turismo in the lobby, 12 dollars
an hour and free Redbull. It was all very San Jose. Eighty-hour weeks. Graveyard
from Thursday to Sunday, midnight till 9. All to afford a room in a house
with an aging Goth Couple, a retired skin head, utilities included.
I had taken to boilermakers made with Rolling Rock and Ten High. After work
morning cocktail mixed on the coffee table next to their menagerie
of free base glass pipes and craft projects. Page and Sean would sit in a cloud
of meth smoke watching bondage videos and painting antique picture frames. Chopping
lines and gnashing teeth like this was just an easy Sunday morning.
It was all very end of the world. Even if you didn’t believe in 2012 or Y2K
who knows when any crazy motherfucker will just decide to blow shit up?
Hell, I knew five sites that showed you how to make C4 and lived
down the hall from a tweaker with a wall full of knives.
The towers hadn’t fallen yet. Social networking was still something people did
in the flesh. Every week I would get a frantically forwarded email from my mother,
in a rage because she heard AOL was going to start charging postage.
The night user 6675-2 uploaded a picture of a five-year-old
holding an almost comically massive cock in her tiny pink nail polished hand,
I was asleep at my desk, eyes open, having a work dream. The screen
looked like a sea of nothing but jelly fish. A ringing in my ears like a fire alarm.
The Summer When I Started Getting High Again
Bryan had a black Trans Am he named after a brand of acid
and Black Sunshine was often parked outside the Almaden Arcade.
All the Asian kids had flat tops and rat tails, us white boys rocked
what we called a Troc Hawk -- long on in the front, but sides shaved
above the eye line. The bong he kept in the car still smelled
like Mountain Dew. The air in the parking lot was so thick,
one street light’s halo almost met the next.
My parents assumed I was still clean, but they were also
very busy getting divorced. My pinball game was fierce.
I could drag fifty cents for 5 balls for an hour easy. If I didn’t
hit a replay it was because I was trying to smoke and drink
at the same time. When Bryan and I walked in that night,
I was so high the neon was sweating. Inside the arcade,
all the theme music from each game was answering the another.
At the Terminator 2 machine there was a free credit waiting for me.
I put my quarter up for luck and hit start. At home,
the room where my mom kept her sewing machine
had a new kind of emptiness. The ever-growing weight
of the glass bottle recycling bin as I took it out each night.
How all the righteous rhetoric I had told to anyone
who would listen didn’t taste half as good
as the raw kick to the back of my throat when I released
the carb on Bryan’s bong. I was still on the first ball and halfway
to the high score. The last girl I kissed told me over the phone
that her neighbor had been fucking her for as long as she could
remember. I stopped calling her after she hung up. Broke up
my day into hour long countdown’s till the next cigarette.
Till the sun would finally drag itself behind the mountain.
Till by dad would pass out on the couch. Rattling snore
in his throat and bib of sun flower seed shells. It was ball two,
and I had two locked. The plastic Arnold head craned his neck.
I decided not to stop to hit the soda or cigarette.
I was almost there.
Bryan had a black Trans Am he named after a brand of acid
and Black Sunshine was often parked outside the Almaden Arcade.
All the Asian kids had flat tops and rat tails, us white boys rocked
what we called a Troc Hawk -- long on in the front, but sides shaved
above the eye line. The bong he kept in the car still smelled
like Mountain Dew. The air in the parking lot was so thick,
one street light’s halo almost met the next.
My parents assumed I was still clean, but they were also
very busy getting divorced. My pinball game was fierce.
I could drag fifty cents for 5 balls for an hour easy. If I didn’t
hit a replay it was because I was trying to smoke and drink
at the same time. When Bryan and I walked in that night,
I was so high the neon was sweating. Inside the arcade,
all the theme music from each game was answering the another.
At the Terminator 2 machine there was a free credit waiting for me.
I put my quarter up for luck and hit start. At home,
the room where my mom kept her sewing machine
had a new kind of emptiness. The ever-growing weight
of the glass bottle recycling bin as I took it out each night.
How all the righteous rhetoric I had told to anyone
who would listen didn’t taste half as good
as the raw kick to the back of my throat when I released
the carb on Bryan’s bong. I was still on the first ball and halfway
to the high score. The last girl I kissed told me over the phone
that her neighbor had been fucking her for as long as she could
remember. I stopped calling her after she hung up. Broke up
my day into hour long countdown’s till the next cigarette.
Till the sun would finally drag itself behind the mountain.
Till by dad would pass out on the couch. Rattling snore
in his throat and bib of sun flower seed shells. It was ball two,
and I had two locked. The plastic Arnold head craned his neck.
I decided not to stop to hit the soda or cigarette.
I was almost there.
G. Kagan Trenchard’s poems have been published in numerous journals including Word Riot, The Nervous Breakdown, The Worcester Review, SOFTBLOW and Pemmican. They have received endowments from the National Performance Network, Dance Theater Workshop, The Zellerbach Family Foundation and the City of Oakland to produce original theatrical work. As a mentor for Urban Word NYC, they taught weekly poetry workshops in the foster care center at Bellevue as well as in Rikers Island with Columbia University’s “Youth Voices on Lockdown” program. They are a recipient of a fellowship from the Riggio Writing and Democracy program at the New School and the first ever louderARTS Writing Fellowship. They have performed poetry on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, at universities throughout the United States, and in theaters internationally as a member of the performance poetry troupe The Suicide Kings. Penmanship Books published their first poetry collection, Murder Stay Murder. This spring they received a Juris Doctorate from the Hofstra University School of Law. They live in Brooklyn and can be found at kagantrenchard.com/geoff.