Lisa Fusch Krause

Shout

Lisa Fusch Krause

I came here to write, but not to write to you and you and you who I don’t half know. I came here to write to myself and to the world beyond me if they choose to listen. Only if they choose.

I arrived and straight away put in earplugs because Johnny Cash was caterwauling on the overhead. I sat at the very back, next to no one, because I wanted [semi-]quiet time, writing time, time to think.

My damn thoughts scatter like mercury across the bathroom floor.

And then of course, they walk in. They stalk me; they plague me. Different people each time and yet cookie-cutter humanity. They aren’t the ones you might expect; it’s not the barely past 21-year-olds wanting to get drunk and pass time (and, concurrently, deny the passage of it). They are always middle aged, shouting at each other across a narrow wooden table. I’d love to believe it’s vivacity that drives them, but they are long past that. They are oblivious, uncaring…or perhaps they are in denial about their loss of hearing.

So I move to another table. I always move. They always disregard me. They always keep shouting.

Earlier, I stood in my bedroom, the unexpected Northwest sun pouring through leaded glass windows. I thought to myself I need out of here. I thought that I’d write perhaps a fantastical poem to send to the journal that seeks Those Sort of Pieces. But on the way, as I stopped by the gas station (why is the gas tank always empty when I head out somewhere, anywhere, and don’t want added hassle?), I thought that perhaps instead I’d write about my teenage daughter and how I need to support her in spreading her wings when all that I want, on a level of myself that I can’t respect, is to clip feathers and keep her close.

I write about neither. I check eBay, hoping that I can find the one item of clothing that will make me beautiful.

I want my writing to make me beautiful, or at least worthy. Worthy of what, I wonder? Of approval? Who exactly do I need to “approve” of me? Who or what would be “enough”? And what might “enough” feel like, anyway?

I seek approval from those long dead.

I seek approval wherever I can find it. I shopped the mall yesterday and found four nicer T-shirts that might have met Cliff and Stacy’s rules. When I tried them on in our living room, my daughter gave me the thumbs up on two and then got bored and went upstairs. (I hope that the other two pass muster.)

The Powers That Be never told the Boomers that “over 50” equaled obsolescence. Or perhaps they said as much, and we simply weren’t listening. We owned the world, or at least our music did.

If I sit here, quietly, typing – am I somehow less pathetic than the middle agers who shout among themselves because, without the added volume, they don’t know that they’re alive?

Lisa Fusch Krause is a full-time poet and writer who holds a day job as a professional editor. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, teenage daughter, and three semi-Siamese cats. Lisa wrote her first poem as a third grader; she had some of her poetry published as a teen and started writing again in earnest few years back. She’s now seeking a wider audience for her more recent work, much of it written while observing folks at her local pub.