Ode to White Cop

plus "Ode to Bipolar Disorder" & "Ode to Hotel Room Guest Robe”

Dear Paid Subscribers,

Thank you so much for your support. This is a post only for you. For the last three years, I’ve been doing Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help me manage my bipolar disorder. As part of that process, I began writing poems that embrace certain aspects of DBT, especially the willingness to embrace the dialectic—to see that two opposing things can be true at the same time. These odes take things a little farther. They not only accept the dialectic. They celebrate it.

Thanks again,

Sherman

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Photo by Efe Yağız Soysal on Unsplash

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Ode to Hotel Room Guest Robe

Should I guess

At how many guests

Have dressed and undressed

In this robe?

The excess number

Would distress

All of us, I bet.

I always refuse

To don that trodden

Cotton garment

Because I assume

That it’s no cleaner

Than the carpet.

But, today,

I’ll let my shoulders

Fit into the same

Space as the dozens

Or hundreds of other

Travelers who’ve worn

This rented vestment.

Let this be a ceremony.

Berobed, let me pretend

That I’m guided

By the visionaries and prophets

As I bend beneath the faucet

And drink the water

That is holy precisely

Because it’s common.

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Ode to Bipolar Disorder

The tiger stalks

My brain. I fear the tiger.

The spider cocoons

My brain. I fear the spider.

The tightrope walker transverses

My brain. I fear the highwire.

The glacial deathsong fractures

My brain. I fear the choir.

But this poem finds joy

In the desiccated dirt.

And this poem finds grace

In the abandoned church.

And this poem finds beauty

In the broken-feather bird.

And this poem praises

Everything that heals and hurts.

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Ode to White Cop

This happened during a summer

when I was home

from my third college and visited

friends from my first

College, including a woman

who was studious,

Ambitious, sarcastic, and hilarious.

Back then, I would’ve

Said I loved her. Today, I know

that I was only infatuated.

Too shy to talk with her,

I hovered

on the periphery of the party

And got drunk.

I was so alcoholic and ill

that I could drink alone

in a room filled with people.

After a few hours,

I felt like a stuntman of love,

so I Iet go of the ledge

and asked her if she would go

to coffee

With me. I suggested coffee

because it was

Casual. Because a date

was too serious.

She said yes. Yes!

I was happy.

But I didn’t want to crowd her

at that party,

So I left. And soon realized

that I was too drunk

To drive. So I pocketed my keys

and started

My inebriated walk back

to my sisters’

Apartment five miles away.

I remember this

In fragments. I was a drunk

Indian slouching

Through the white city of Spokane.

I would’ve been perceived

As possibly dangerous but

I was also an Indian

Who was possibly endangered.

I don’t know

How long it took me to make

my way onto

the Monroe Street Bridge.

But I was there,

On that bridge, when the cop car,

with lights flashing,

Pulled up next to me. Afraid,

I stopped and put

My hands up. A brown kid’s

reflexive reaction

To a badge. The white cop stepped

out of his cruiser

And spoke to me with a cop’s

voice of authority.

I don’t remember exactly what

he said. But I know

He wanted me to explain myself,

so I told him

That I was too drunk to drive

and was walking

To my sisters’ apartment

on the Lower South Hill.

I assumed the white cop

was going to arrest me

For public drunkenness. I’d often

seen my father

Arrested for the same offense.

I’d never been arrested.

I was the good kid. The Indian boy

who had his shit

Together. That was an illusion.

I’ve always been a logjam

Holding back a volcanic lahar—

that flood of broken

Trees, mud, cars, boulders,

and houses

Torn from their foundations.

I asked that white cop

If he was going to arrest me

and he told me

To get in the car. I think

I began to cry

Or wanted to cry. I walked

toward the back

Of the cop car. But the white cop

said to get

In the front seat. Shocked

all the way,

I sat in the passenger seat

as that white cop

Drove me toward my sisters’ place.

He asked me if

I’d been at a party. I said yes,

at the college

Where I used to go, with friends

I missed.

But then again, I always

miss everybody.

And he asked if I was a drop-out

and I said, no,

But that I was on the seven-year

plan for graduating.

And he laughed and said

he dropped out

Of college to become a cop.

But that he was

Thinking about taking classes

when he had the time.

He’d be more likely to be promoted

and make more

Money if he earned a college degree.

You should do it, I said.

And I told him that I’d asked a woman

to coffee—a woman

I liked—and she said yes. And the cop

congratulated me

And said his biggest regret—his

biggest failure—

Was his divorce. No kids, he said.

Though he still

Wanted to be a father. But he wondered

if a cop should be

A father. He shrugged. He said

he asked himself

A lot of questions. And I said

I asked myself

A lot of questions, too.

And then he asked me

What I was majoring in, what

did I want to be.

And I said I was a poet.

And he asked me if

That meant I wanted to write

birthday and anniversary cards.

And I said only if the birthday

and anniversary cards

Were sad as hell. The cop laughed.

Then he got serious

And said that if I wanted to be

a poet or if

I wanted to be good at anything else,

then I should sober up.

He said he’d seen too many drunk

Indians and I said

I’d also seen too many. And then

the white cop

Pulled up in front of my sisters’

apartment building,

I thanked him for the ride.

I thanked him

For not arresting me. And he

laughed again

And told me to be safe. He told me

again to sober up.

He wished me luck on my

coffee date,

A date that never happened

because I was too afraid.

The white cop idled at the curb

as I staggered

up the stairs, knocked

on my sisters’ door,

And said hello as one sister opened

the door

And the other sister cussed at me

for waking her.

I don’t remember anything else,

but I woke

Facedown on the living room couch.

I spent most

Of the next two days facedown

on that couch,

So hungover that my ancestors

had headaches.

I couldn’t eat so I drank water.

And after

I vomited that water, I would

drink more water.

Thirty years later, I am sober.

I’m a husband,

Father, and poet. My life

has been exceptional

And horrendous and everything

in between.

Which is what we should expect

of life.

And, sometimes, I think

of that white cop—

That good cop—when I see in the news

that a bad cop

Or a racist cop or a scared cop

or an incompetent cop

Or even a good cop has shot

and killed a black man

Or brown man. A man like me.

It’s so easy for any

Of us to hate another. All of us

feel hate and anger

At moments in our lives.

And some of us,

Loved and unloved, cop

and not cop,

Guilty and not guilty, free

and not free,

Innocent and not innocent,

pull the trigger


And kill. And some of us

are struck

By bullets and die. So many,

so many,

So many in our gun-drunk

country.

There is no poem that can

understand

The daily tragedies. But

I can write

One poem about goodness.

I can write

About a lonely drunk Indian

who was rescued

By a lonely white cop. I can

write an ode

To that brief moment when

two fragile humans

Traveled peacefully through

the dark.

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