Paul D. McGlynn: Two Poems

My Life in Movies | Painting It All

My Life in Movies

I was a skinny hand,
Wanted a hand to hold me.
Wandered instead the low electric days,
Looking for a movie.
I was a voice,
Tough guy. Listen baby, get this straight.
The gun. The whisky. Swallow, ahh.
Don’t be a sap.
Quick cut to my eyes. Got that, sweetheart?
I was a suit. Fedora brim.
Then a lover, standing on a dock.
Sunset, violins. Dreaming of Mary Jean.
So I became important,
Hot voltage in my afternoons.
Eight years old. Won the war all by myself.

Painting It All

No need to long for grandeur,
A forest, let’s say, engraved in winter,
Lines of snow on every branch,
White geese like harbingers above.

Time will paint you everything you need:
Faces bright with brandy, glad guffaws,
Jazz with steel notes and gin.
Splendor too, if you prefer—
Precipice, waters dropping to the sea,
Mountains looming over mountains.

It will sketch a willow by your mother’s grave,
Stir perfume like a ghost, a lover’s whisper.
(Her rippled back, her smile. Her cigarette.)
It colors shadows in the street red with neon,
And traces Apache tears below the stars,
Below the cries of wolves.

Poet's Biography:

A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Paul D. McGlynn is a retired professor of literature and creative writing. His Chapbook, Magical Regression, was published by AlphaBeat Press. The greatest influences on his work are William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, Wallace Stevens, art, travel, and love (not necessarily in that order), plus growing up in Detroit.