Sitting sick by the gas log fire again
At three o’clock in the morning
Complete Krav Maga at my elbow
As I contemplate pugilistic instruction of
My son. I can at least still hold a pad.
Keep your hands up
Shoot out your fist like a harpoon
The Jack Dempsey drop step
Gives the hammer blow, prevents flailing
Like Johnny and Declan and myself
Windmilling away at each other,
Punch-in-the-nose played
On the rock pile, under the tropical sun
A long way, a far, far way from Armagh
Where the McKinneys learned
the game along with Build-a-Barricade
And other Troubled childish pursuits.
We came back to the house
Blood streaming down our faces, the
Tears only mine.
My mother didn’t understand
Their mam did and was silent.
Twenty slow miles in a schoolbus
Buffeted and bullied, tormented and tweaked,
Fifth circle of unending hell
For a lonely six-year-old sulking
For the islands, but I got no praise
From my father for slugging
The boss’s pretty daughter.
For pity's sake, I was only six
When I punched the ranch owner’s
Pretty daughter right in the face
When she pulled my hair for the
Hundred-twenty-seventh time in the back of that
Montana school bus. The older Crawfords
Assured me I would never make it home alive
Until the big Peebles kid, one of our natural
Aristocracy, scolded their middle school
Cruelty and told Brooke (long dead in the plane crash)
It served her right,
But even then I wasn’t sure it did.
Donny Asmund (I shit you not)
Minor tormentor, the Crairie kid’s
Lieutenant, didn’t get punched,
But boy he looked surprised and the
Tears came hot and fast when I
Nailed him in the eye with the ice ball
Careful prepared for the occasion.
But the crew cut principal made
No distinction of justice as he gave all
Six of us in the melee our ten whacks.
John Rice picked on my little brother
In a Carolina pine thicket, and
He got the works even though he
Thought his added year of height
An invincible bludgeon.
Brent Skidmore was going to
Kill me dead in front of everyone
For squeaking my plastic platform heels
On the rung of his chair during
Sunday night youth service, and who
Would have missed me at thirteen.
But I missed him with a vicious right
Elbow, as he came to lay on the third
Sophomore varsity football hit
As I tried to walk away, his laughter
Turned to unbelieving pale rage
When my left flashed out and
Caught him solid between nose and mouth
Braces underneath slicing up
his lips, my knuckles.
And he was still screaming that his big-shot
Lawyer dad was going to sell my family into bondage
When who should appear but that very dad
Lowered like Zeus in a basket to haul Brent
Away by the ear.
As the wise man said, I had no more troubles
After that, at least very few, until once more we
Inevitably, inexorably, loaded up the rental truck and moved
House, like some people say in Perth, where I am sure
That I would have further refined my technique if
Dad had gotten us to Blairgowrie, where presumably
They needed the Good News more than folks in
Jamaica, Montana, Carolina, California.
And probably in Perthshire they could have used
Some good news in 1979. We never got there.
California's Washington Junior High School
Dressed like a prison, the reek of sugar beets
Heavy in the air. Plenty of scraps in the yard,
Razor wire topping the eight-foot fence
(To prevent eighth-grade race riots, so we all said,
Among other things I can’t recall).
But I do remember putting fat Mike on the floor
With a straight right to the solar plexus, and again
His misloyal friends assured me I would die until
Big John Grim (who took steroids, so we all said)
Told everyone Mike had it coming for six months'
Name-calling, towel-popping, locker room humiliation.
And even now I’m pretty sure he did.
As the wise man said, after that I had no troubles
At least very few, until a cold grey summer morning
Coming back fifty miles from the shore on a new
Bicycle, run off the road onto the grassy verge of
High school lawn I gave my best Johnny Cash salute
And was appalled when the six of them piled out of the
Big black Explorer to hold me to account for my finger.
They also, across time and space, believed I should
Die for my insolence. I nearly talked me way out
And they were getting bored and drifting back to the
SUV, when the big one screamed “Pussy!” and threw
A big looping right that bounced off the side of my head.
He was surprised when I hit him
One-two-three-four-five-six
the web of my cycling gloves printing his face
and his knees buckled.
Someone smarter slugged me in the
Back of the head and I went down getting
Beejezus kicked out of me until they fled the fierce old
Italian groundskeeper as he came riding up errant
On his lawn mower, brandishing a short-handled hoe.
He didn't give a damn for me he said,
But hated to see six-on-one.
Since then, as the wise man said – no troubles.
My life has flowed peaceably in its course, although
I did give my friend Sean a casually solid shovel
Hook to the head when he insistently fondled
Our friend Becky, now a famous reporter.
I had forgotten about it, likely due to the whisky,
But she reminded me once of my heroic shot,
His glasses flying across the room while he went
Ass over tits behind the couch. A good deed.
Then coming to it late, as I seem to have come
To everything in life but cancer, I studied the science,
By broken ribs and fingers and bruised elbows learned
Contact combat, to punch like a falling star,
Strike like an iron meteor, all of which I am thankful
To have never had the slightest use for.
So why make much of this mundane and ridiculous
Portrait? Six punches in a life, a dozen, a thousand in a
Day? Why this glorification of the extended arm,
This primal club, humanity’s essential weapon, the
Clenched fist of both resistance and oppression, futile
Defense against the gun, absurd rebuttal to a kiss?
Author: Duncan MacNae
Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees.
duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com
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