I’M STEPPING BACK a moment from stories about life during my early twenties to what might be thought of as origin stories. What events in my early years have perhaps guided the course of my life? This first poem is primarily constructed from terms that Merriam-Webster’s determined to have entered the lexicon in the year of my birth. In some ways, I believe, us baby boomers intentionally took paths that were in opposition to the mundane and passionless Fifties of our parents’ generation. During the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the activist Jack Weinberg was quoted as saying, “Never trust anyone over thirty,” which became a mantra for my generation. I think today’s Gen Z would agree with that: “Okay, boomers, out of the way. It’s our turn.” 

Personal History

I was born in the year of the baby boom

The year of rock ‘n’ roll and videotape

The year of Elvis in Memphis, already turning velvet

I was born in the year of the red scare and the blacklist

I was born in the year of fear and lies (weren’t we all?)

The year of the polygraph and the polygraphist

The year of blockbusting and Brown v. Board of Education

The year of domino theories, air-raid shelters, and UnAmerican Activities

(And I’m not even sure what an American Activity is)

I was born in year of the cash flow escaping to exurbia

The year of the high-rise, the how-to, the soft sell

The year of agribusiness, yellow pages, and teleconferences

I was born in the year of the fish stick

In the year of tie tacks and pasties

I was born in the year of I Like Ike and I Love Lucy

I was born in the year of cha-cha-cha

IN MANY WAYS, my early teen years were defined by a range of rebellious reactions to my father and his opinions about the world. Over time, I’ve come to respect, or at least understand, what made him tick. He was certainly more complicated than this second poem suggests, but it does offer one take on who he was.

Things My Father Used To Say

“Looooorrrrrdy mercy”

His contraction of “Lord, have mercy on me”

A pitiable plea in the face of an unjust world

He would stretch out that first syllable

Injecting equal doses of dismay and disgust

“Oh my aching back” was another of his mottos

The accent anapestic leaning heavily on the third syllable

Although I never knew him to have back problems

Just ten children and a grinding job in sales

That he refused to walk away from

His Kentucky-flavored “Dad gum it”

Dramatic emphasis on the first syllable

The sound-swapping spoonerism made this curse

More acceptable to our uncorrupted ears

Although we knew what he meant

We knew the disappointment and doubt

Expressed in all these slogans

His battle cries strained through gritted teeth

As he engaged aghast in the fight

He had with the world

He was always the younger brother

Trying to prove something to someone

When he’d exclaim “For the love of Christ”

It never felt like love to us

THIS LAST POEM was written to address the theme of and to be performed at one of Drop the Mic shows produced by my friend, the brilliant Akwi Nji. This show’s theme took me back to playing four-square on the grade school playground. I could subtitle it “Confessions of a white cisgender male growing up in northeast Ohio,” as a way of acknowledging or admitting exactly where I’m coming from. Thankfully, this is no longer the only story, or only perspective, that we hear.

Back to Square One

Let me talk a bit about

the cruelty of grade school

lunch recess on the Holy

Family playground

where I was tagged 

with my first nickname

playing four-square

fierce first-grade battle

to become king of the ball

from the name my grandfather

lugged from Austria

from the shores of the Bodensee

from the German or Romansch

or French or Catalan or even Gaelic

the umlaut dumped at Ellis Isle

Dür meaning

hard, harsh, tough, hardy

rigid, stiff, difficult, stubborn

as in durable, duress, dour, like a door

became Du-er and then transformed 

in the scatological minds of my playmates

into Du-Du, a dis or burn which

because I didn't know what else to do

I endured

and learned about the world 

from the playground

liar liar pants on fire

sad tennis shoes dangling 

from a telephone wire

girls on the front parking lot

playing their secret jump rope games

I like coffee I like tea

I like boys and the boys like me

boys like me on the sprawling back lot

monkey business on the monkey bars

in the shadow of the gun-metal grey slide

worn smooth by a billion butts

we each put a foot in the circle

and spoke the magic spell

to decide who was It

eenie meenie miney moe

engine engine number nine 

first through eighth grades

our games were interwoven

and when it snowed

we put on heavy coats and boots

and played smear the queer

and I’d grab that football

and run for dear life

but I endured

the Sisters of Charity

in their grey habits and 

starched white headpieces and

belts of heavy wooden rosary beads

seemed to teach us all but charity

after school I'd clean the blackboard

of our tender-hearted first-grade teacher 

Sister Marie Dolores 

just to get near her joy

but in third grade Sister Augustine

was as cold and unflinching 

as a piece of coal

I endured that too

until I was ten

and working my first job

delivering eighty copies of the news

the Akron Beacon Journal

every afternoon after school

waiting with fellow paperboys

Mike Keller and Bob Greenwald

for our papers to be dropped off

smoking ciggies in the nearby woods

singing Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe”

“no no no it ain’t me, babe”

they rechristened me Du-Babes

they dubbed me Du-Babes

and in the fourth grade Mrs. Voltz

whom none of us liked

neither her nor her mustache

called me out of my name

“I thought you were a doer!”

because I was talking in class I guess

engaged in the task of mastering

the witty aside, the flippant quip

because talking is not doing?

and so she changed the seating chart

surrounding me with girls

my favorite audience

and I avoided the looming presence

of our principal Sister Marie Pierre

and thereby endured

I learned to never wear

white socks with dress shoes

we called them parmas

because only the auto workers

from Parma did that

we wore blue oxfords

with button-down collars

and pencil-thin clip-on ties

and the girls showed us

who they liked by yanking off

the bozo button or fruit loop

on the back of our shirts

and the girls wore blue plaid 

jumpers and white blouses

but when Michelle Micale

came to our school in seventh grade

she did something to that blouse

that made us all think a lot

about the word bosom

and when someone spray-painted 69

on the back wall of the school

we studied and studied that number

until it revealed the mysteries of sex

by then I’d become simply Du 

the syllable affectionately elongated

some element on the periodic table

a noble gas perhaps

some musical note 

an invitation, an affirmation

the buddy you 

and I was finally ready for high school 

because I’d had enough of grade school