Balanced
I am not symmetrical
my right arm
reaches past the left –
I think more than I take
my left ball
is heavier than my age
scars are not balanced
on skin
or me.
Which brain holds your face?
What can balance
my mole
above one hip?
The thought of you
outweighs my soul
I am always
falling
towards you.
Poetry delights me in surprise, revealing perspectives through associations we bundle with Jungian understanding. I try to make most of my poetry with graspable surfaces for reading aloud. Tell me your insanity and I will tell you mine or maybe yours flipped – pancake bottoms have different bubbles than on top — which is what I am constantly trying to reveal. For me the process of creating a poem (which takes many drafts) brings me to revelations which always exceed my original thoughts. I would be less without.
From early days of delivering newspapers in the snow on a bike in New York, Bruce Bagnell has always been writing and destroying his work until, after Vietnam, fixing cars, cooking, teaching management at a university and retiring from running a car dealer, he has decided to retain some of it. In addition to painting his house, writing poetry and reading it in the Bay Area, Bruce is editing a second draft of a novel which he has not yet decided to throw away.