POEMOGRAPHY | 2025
Poems by R.M. Usatinsky
pōəˈmäɡrəfē, noun: form or process of writing and representing poetry
JANUARY
01JAN25 | DEBORAH
I find it queer though slightly amusing
that you were the first person I dreamed
of in the new year; I was sat with some
woman or another at a table next to the
counter when I saw you across the diner
serving waffles and eggs to a group of
Japanese tourists; I recognized you almost
immediately and our eyes met the moment
you placed the last plate on the table; I
said to my companion I’d just seen an old
acquaintance I knew back in L.A., someone
from long ago, but didn’t name you as a lover
or by the moniker we used to call you back
then; you walked over to me and gave me a
warm hug (just like you always did) and I
kissed your soft cheek to everyone’s surprise
02JAN25 | THE WINDOW
I’ve been spending more and more time
standing in the window, peering out over
the street below, the canal, the trees, the
newly reconstructed street that for months
I watched as workmen toiled with their
hands and hand tools and heavy machinery;
uneducated men who certainly know little
about current affairs and economic matters
but whose brawn and skills and long days
create things that will outlive them; so who
really cares about current affairs, politics and
economics when there streets to be made and
buildings to be built and lives to be lived? yes,
I have indeed been spending too much time
looking out the window waiting for something
monumental to occur right before my very eyes
03JAN25 | ODD MAN OUT
I don’t really mind being the odd man out;
the different one, the one who marches to
the beat of a different drum, who sees the
world through the eyes of a child and who
no one understands (or ever did); and I don’t
mind sleeping in a small room, in a single
bed, having been reduced to an all but
unseen figure whose opinions don’t matter,
whose words go unheard and whose love is
unwanted and left for naught; I’ve overcome
these misfortunes and have learned to get
on with my life, to choke back the tears and
work through the pain; but being invisible
also has its rewards…today, for example, I
ate a strawberry frosted donut for lunch and
took a nap and dreamed I flew to the moon
04JAN25 | THE GODPOWER
We all possess the Godpower; the inborn
ability to manifest, guide and ultimately
rule over destinies, and yours is no different
than anyone else’s though you refuse to use
it, deny its existence and deliberately (so it
seems) and thoroughly ignore its potential
to change all of our lives for the better; so, I
ask myself why? why would you continue to
make me suffer? why would you make the
lives of those you love so negligible? And
why would deny all of us the inalienable right
to be happy and live the best most fulfilling
life possible? perhaps it’s because you’ve
confused the Godpower with control or with
what you feel is total authority, leverage and
ultimate power; it’s none of those, trust me
05JAN25 | SLEEP FACING THE WALL
As I was dozing off in bed last night, I realized
I have spent most of my life sleeping with my
face turned to the left, facing a wall; and not just
facing the wall, but close to the wall, inches from
the wall; until I was six, I shared a room with my
maternal great-grandfather in a two-bedroom
apartment on the third floor of a three-story walk-up;
when my mother re-married in 1970, we moved to
another two-bedroom third floor apartment in another
three-story walk-up, a courtyard building on the corner
of Rosemont and Mozart; until my brother was born two
years later, I occupied the room alone, sleeping in a small
single bed where, when sleeping on my right side as I did
(for most of the night anyway), I faced left to the wall;
and today, more than fifty years later, in a small, single bed,
I once again sleep facing the wall, as I imagine I always will
06JAN25 | THIS MOMENT
I was sitting on the little white kitchen stool
eating some chocolate granola and Greek
yogurt for dinner (because, why not?); then
you came into the kitchen to refill your bowl
with conchiglie and I said (like I always say)
so nice to see you again, looking so young and
vibrant; but you filled your bowl and sat it down
on the counter interrupting the moment by tapping
something or another on your smartphone; then I
said if this was a movie, this would be the moment
where you put your phone down, come over to me,
throw your arms around me and give me a gentle
kiss on my cheek…then adding: but this isn’t a movie,
is it?...you stood there seemingly oblivious to what I
had just said; but these moments occur so frequently I
hardly let them faze me anymore and simply acquiesce
07JAN25 | HEALING
Healing is an ongoing process; one that
I’ve only just now come to realize takes
a lifetime; and it’s much more than a
lifetime of healing, it’s a lifetime of trying
to fully unravel it; a lifetime of looking
inwards without self-blame; a lifetime of
forgiving and forward motion; I’m learning
to feel again, to work through the pain and
look for the deeper meaning in things I’ve
tried to understand but simply couldn’t; it’s
about looking for them in a different light,
searching without the expectation of finding
but of discovering; and I should I have known
all this—and maybe I did but merely ignored
it—so perhaps now is the time to put aside all
I’ve lost and be grateful for all the things I have
08JAN25 | BIRDSONG
I walked upstairs to check in on the cat;
she lay there on the bed that used to be
mine, facing the wall (as she tends to do
of late) and raising her head toward the
skylight window (as she always does)
while listening to the birdsong waiting
for a pigeon to land on the roof and
arouse her hunter’s instinct; I wonder
if she knows she’ll never catch her prey,
not from the bed nor from the railing on
the landing where she often perches herself
upon, her bird’s-eye view, though perfect
and close, won’t ever result in a kill; and
today, like I do on many days, I wondered
if she was happy—if she even had a way
of feeling happiness—so I gave her a treat
09JAN25 | I SMELL THE SUMMERHOUSE
They are more than mere daydreams as I seem to
so often be transported there, to the old millhouse,
the one I loved and hated and dreaded and couldn’t
wait to return to; the one with the lizards and the
old brook that ran under the house that would lull
me to sleep at night once the terror and anxiety
subsided; the house with the pantry where shelves
of preserves were stored, harvest bounties; and in
these dreamlike moments, I can actually smell the
summerhouse, smell it like I’m standing in it, standing
in front of the rustic fireplace or in the kitchen where
the fragrance of peaches and apricots lingered long after
the season; I smell the chimney smoke on my clothes,
I smell the remnants of death, the caretaker’s husband’s
foul drunken breath; and I remember the two of us there,
in love, waking up in an old bed in the cold morning air
10JAN25 | WHO WILL GATHER?
I wonder who will gather when I pass;
It won’t matter to me, of course, but it
will to those who I leave behind; I’ve
always had a desire to die surrounded
by my children, but that doesn’t seem
likely, and truth be told, I haven’t even
made any end-of-life plans, thinking
that they’ll do with me whatever they
want, whatever they can afford; maybe
they’ll send me home, to Chicago, to be
laid to rest with my ancestors; or perhaps
bury me in the new Jewish section of the
municipal cemetery in Valencia; or here
in Holland where my three youngest can
come and visit me, to stay a while and talk
and place a few pebbles on my headstone
11JAN25 | FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES
There are two key fundamental differences
that best define our very dissimilar natures;
they can be defined by how appalled your
acquaintances would be if they observed you
at home, in the environment where you are most
brutish, mean-spirited and apathetic; and me, on
the other hand, I would be observed with pity and
compassion for enduring your berating, belittling
and bullying; but you weren’t always this unkind;
there were more tender moments, blissful days,
days when we’d walk and talk and shop and drink
cups of tea and lose ourselves in each other’s presence;
but all that quickly became a thing of the past and
whatever little love you may have actually harbored
for me was soon supplanted and passed on to our
daughters as I was left with emptiness and disquiet
12JAN25 | LOVE LETTERS
I’ve been going through boxes and drawers
rummaging through old photographs and
miscellaneous documents in my never-ending
effort to whittle away my possessions down to
as few as possible; I came across two love letters:
one is a proper love letter, handwritten on the front
and backsides of an A4 sheet of white paper; the
other, a nine-word note written on the inside of a
small J. Crew gift card that accompanied the hunter
green, wide wale corduroy trousers my ex-wife
bought me in the early 1990s in Chicago that I had
an extra-wide three-inch cuff sewn into; while those
relationships have long ended, the letters remain (as
do the hunter green cords, though they haven’t fit me
in years and the knees are wearing thin); it seems that
corduroy has been far more accommodating than love
13JAN25 | CELCIUS
Cold is cold; I don’t require numbers
to inform me about the temperature; its
effects can easily be seen in my wrinkling
fingertips; observed in my shivers and felt
as I suffer its frigid wrath deep in my core;
I don’t need to see my breath or look out of
the window to the street below where frost
has encrusted itself upon car windshields and
the homely grass that borders the bank of the
canal; but on sunny cold days like today when
the air is clean and the sky a pale blue, I take
comfort from the warmth of the indoors where
I sit bundled up in layers and yes, even with a
fleece beanie atop my head, quietly watching
films, drinking hot tea and losing myself in all
of the splendor of winter and its icy dominion
14JAN25 | UNSURE
I’m unsure whether it’s better to be
unwanted or misunderstood; on the
one hand, being unwanted is a decision
taken by one person to un-want another,
and on the other hand, misunderstanding
someone is akin to indifference and that
person’s often feckless nature; and while
being unwanted hurts (profoundly), being
misunderstood also pains the soul, for
being understood is, in essence, being
loved; then there is the predicament of
being both unwanted and misunderstood,
and what greater torment that bears; if only
we could know beforehand how and when a
person will evolve into their true self, we
would be spared all the misfortune and woe
15JAN25 | MORBID INTROSPECTION
You might say I have an unhealthy preoccupation
with my own mortality, maybe even a pathological
obsession with death and dying; I’m constantly
ruminating on how my end will come; how those
final months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds
will pass and how the pain will be managed, how the
dread will be confronted and who—if anyone—will
stand at my deathbed comforting me, telling me it will
be okay, that I’m going to a better place, that I won’t
suffer anymore; but that’s just one scenario of the many
I have conjured up; I love the idea of being surrounded
by my children and feeling the warmth of their love
(their hate, their indifference); other times I think that
it would be simpler if I just closed my eyes and drifted
away, alone, in my bed while I sleep; but who will find
me and who would they call and what would happen next?
16JAN25 | HAROLD & ART
I’ve been having dreams about my uncle Art
(he’s been my mother’s brother-in-law since
the late 1950s); night before last he caught me
in a lie when he asked to see my new driver’s
license as I was about to drive away on a cross-
country journey; last night, at a family gathering
at my grandparent’s old apartment on Maplewood,
he, and his oldest, dearest friend, Harold Farber,
came up to me as I was trying to tune in the TV
signal by frantically moving the wire coat hanger
antenna back and forth; they both had a go at it then
left it with me to continue trying; as they walked away,
I observed as a folded up piece of paper fell out of
Harold’s back trouser pocket; I walked over and
picked it up, unfolded it, and read a scathing letter
Harold had written to me; I felt jolted and betrayed
17JAN25 | LOVE CHILD
I was the thing that was meant to make
a young man feel virile and proud; and
make her a mother to fulfil her womanly
duty by giving her husband a son; but he
soon left and the love she had for me was
relinquished, transformed into a lifetime
of loathing him and wishing him dead; I
became a remnant of him, residue of what
it meant to not understand what love was;
and it was me who was forced to trudge
through life living in his shadow, wondering
every day if he ever thought of me, dreaming
about what could have been should he have
picked me up from my grandparent’s house
where I waited for him every day dressed in
my little baseball uniform; the endless story
18JAN25 | SELF-AWARENESS
I was telling a therapist the other day
how I thought self-awareness was a
pitfall; that, for example, my astute
perception of my becoming a crotchety
old man was bringing me down, that I
assumed when one became a crotchety
old man, they did so without actually
being aware it was happening in real
time; she pondered what I had said and
looked me in the eye responding, if you’re
aware of what’s happening, what you’re
becoming, why not just not become that?
then it was me doing the pondering, looking
her in the eye then responding, yeah, good
question, why not? so now I’m making a
real time effort to un-be what I’ve become
19JAN25 | PAUL
I’ve been reading Baumgartner these past
few weeks, your last published novel; and
every word I read was read with the astute
awareness that there will likely be no more
words after these; and I couldn’t help but
think how much you may have suffered
during its writing: the obvious suffering
every writer experiences (that goes without
saying) and perhaps in this, what you must
have contemplated, as being the last novel
you would ever write; and there must have
the physical and emotional torment, your
body slowly decomposing, the anger you must
have felt as the disease was taking its toll; it took
me a while, but I think I now understand what you
meant by the final chapter in the saga beginning
20JAN25 | LUNGS
You could say that when it comes to lungs,
I’m overly protective of mine; diagnosed
with asthma at thirty; susceptible to upper-
respiratory infections and shortness of breath
due to the fact that my inwardly-twisted spinal
curvature seems to compress my heart, lungs
and stomach, occasionally causing some minor
inconveniences with these internal organs; and
yes, nearly five years after the start of the great
pandemic, I still wear a mask on public transport
and at the shop (except when I don’t which is the
only time I seem to get sick); last week, for example,
was one such week when I needed a break from my
mask, and low and behold I caught a doozy of a chest
cold; luckily this morning, I had a quick visit with my
G.P. who gave my lungs the all clear; relief and repose
21JAN25 | UNSEEN PLACES
I’ve never been to Hoboken; or Helsinki;
or Wyoming or Wellington, Tokyo or
Trinidad and Tobago; there are so many
unseen places, places I’ve never seen, will
never see and, quite frankly, don’t care if
I do or don’t; and I can’t seem to think of a
single place at this very moment that I’ve
been looking forward to seeing that if I truly
wanted to see I couldn’t; for example, take
Boulder, Colorado; I’ve just minutes ago taken
a virtual drive along Pearl Street, visited the
University of Colorado Boulder and saw a
stunning view of snow-dusted mountains from
Goose Creek Greenway; unseen but seen; and
though my visit being as brief as it was as it was
virtual, it can’t be unseen or any less appealing
22JAN25 | A BLOT ON HISTORY
What will we tell our children? how will
we explain this blot on history? this travesty??
I try to stay clear of politics, have only voted
twice since moving abroad in 1996 (shamefully
or otherwise); and I try my best to avoid—though
it’s nearly impossible nowadays—the headlines
and blather from the 24-hour news cycle; I abstained
from CNN during the first Trump administration and
I haven’t tuned in once since last November sixth
and don’t plan on doing so again until January 2029
(unless war breaks out or some earthshaking event
occurs); it’s depressing and demoralizing seeing how
one man can possess so much hate and ignorance and
blatant disregard for so many of the values that define
decency; but this blot on history, this asterisk of a
moment in time will be forever remembered as folly
23JAN25 | THE MAN IN THE ROOM DOWNSTAIRS
There’s a man in the room downstairs;
everyone knows him but no one speaks
his name; he is aging and often in frail
health but no one cares for him and he
is left to fend for himself; the man in the
room downstairs was once vibrant, alive
and sociable, but he’s since become more
withdrawn, spending hours lost in thought
or staring blankly out the window or sitting
at his desk typing away at this and that; he
reads in bed and watches films, has a warm
bath every Sunday night and tries to be as
engaging with his daughters as possible; he
tries to find common ground, to amuse them
with farts, belches, dry skin, funny stories and
whatever they may find interrupts their boredom
24JAN25 | AMMUNITION
If you give your enemy ammunition and they
use it against you to win the battle, aren’t you
therefore responsible for handing them the
victory? I suppose this is what I am guilty of,
wearing my heart on my sleeve, exposing my
vulnerability, letting people who were supposed
to love me see the most unguarded spots, the soft
underbelly that they poked, prodded, abused and
took advantage of for their own opportunistic
inclinations; and inevitably I let them, I allowed
it, seemingly, without as much as a struggle, not
a bark nor bite, just taking it as it came hoping it
wouldn’t last too long or be too painful; am I not
then the quintessential masochist? or even worse,
a weak, downtrodden and miserable wretch of a
man who deserves every misfortune he has coming
25JAN25 | SUNLIGHT
The sun has been absent lately, the
ever-elusive feature in the dismal
winter’s daytime sky; the clouds are
present as are the raindrops, hailstones
and occasional snowflakes; and while
the actual sun is indeed up there shining
as brightly as it always does, we are denied
the presence of its blinding rays and warming
rushes; but alas! today our star made a brief
appearance and I quickly opened the balcony
door and positioned my face up towards the
bright incandescent light and my thoughts were
at once jettisoned to Spain, where on frigid winter
days I would join the legions of old men who would
gather in the squares and take their places backed
up against walls or trees enjoying the midday sun
26JAN25 | THE BOX SET
I discovered the Cocteau Twins during
my first year at university in 1988, about
five years after they released their first
album and five before releasing their last;
the group’s ethereal songs with their slow,
lilting—almost trance-inducing—melodies
were part of the soundtrack of my college
years, to the nights spent studying alone
in my flat on North Bissell Street, or others
passed sharing my futon (and music) with a
series of non-descript lovers; one day, a few
years later, I came across a box set of their
singles and EPs at Tower Records and took
it home; I had it for years, treasured it, but it
became a victim of my destitution, sold for a
pittance to a pawn shop in Valencia in 2007
27JAN25 | EMAILS
There’s a folder in my email account
named Flagged, that I’ve seen and
always disregarded; today, as I lazily
wiled away the hours on a sunny Sunday
afternoon, I decided to see what the folder
contained; I discovered 1,767 emails, mostly
from 2010 to 2014; it was like going back in
time, seeing my life through the portal of a
time capsule, memories brought back to the
surface of my recollection, people, places,
events that no longer remain a part of my
present but had an impact on those early
years of my time in the Netherlands; and a
nice note from Bernie who wrote to thank
me for the kind words I left tagged to his
father’s obituary; now Bernie too is gone
28JAN25 | GROOM, TEXAS
We’d been driving all night, our plan was to
bed down somewhere near Oklahoma City,
but that was thwarted by the fact that there
was some oil industry shindig going on and
not a motel room was available for 100 miles
in any direction; so we drove, well into the
night, pulling off at every exit on Highway 40;
finally, about 40 miles outside of Amarillo, deep
in the heart of Carson County, we came upon a
small motel in Groom (population 500) with its
flickering vacancy sign and three semitrailers
parked in the lot; we woke up the owner, a thin
and frail Indian (or was he Pakistani?) who rented
us a cockroach-infested room for 17 bucks (as long
as we were out by ten) and managed to shower and
sleep for a few hours before heading back on the road
29JAN25 | AFFLUENCE
I’ve never been what you might call affluent,
therefore, I have never lived an affluent life;
but, for the first time in my life I now own not
one but two winter jackets, so I suppose you
could say affluence is catching up with me; I
don’t recall ever owning two winter jackets at
one time, though I think I did have a duffel
coat and a navy blue wool overcoat during the
years I lived in Spain (where winter coats aren’t
needed as often as they are here in Holland); in
November of 2023, I bought my first new winter
jacket in more than twenty years (the overcoats I’d
been wearing were from secondhand vintage shops
in England); a light grey Levi’s long puffer; and now
I’m awaiting delivery of a black Levi’s short puffer,
both of which were bought on sale at substantial savings
30JAN25 | TONI
I’m never quite sure how or why
people who I haven’t seen or even
thought about in years (decades)
suddenly pop into my head for no
good reason; today it was Toni, a
solitary figure who was a former
student of mine back in Valencia
some twenty-five years ago; he
worked in the hospitality industry,
a waiter or barman in some sad
and lonely joint, a gay bar, maybe,
and Toni was a sad and lonely gay;
I’d run into him often in the streets,
he'd always be alone, running errands
for his elderly mother, with whom he
lived; and his English never improved
31JAN25 | I SIMPLY NO LONGER CARE
With each passing day you fall
farther and farther from my thoughts,
from my heart; the days no longer
bring anguish or sadness or hopes of
reconciliation; truth is, I just stopped
caring, stopped feeling and stopped
thinking about you in the ways I used
to; and if anything about this state of
affairs is sad, it’s that it could have been
easily avoided; even once it was set in
motion others could have easily intervened
and put things right; but now I simply no
longer care; I don’t ponder or worry; I didn’t
even know you was graduating from school
and moving on to the next level (whatever that
may be); shame really, because I truly liked you