poem

 Time

Time is counting. Time adds up. Time is ticking down. The best is when it runs away and hides, disappears. You forget about it for a while. Because time too often is too near. Ticking in your ear. Seeping into your bones. Aging your back and ankles. How many breaths do you have left? Heartbeats. Sinus rhythm on the monitor. From there it’s simple math. Times 60. Times 60. Times 24. Times the expected years left. Check the actuarial tables. Minus the two you just used. Then time slips away like a guilty thief. Surreptitious. In cahoots with the big sheriff. You’ll never get your precious back. Time knocks on your door. Asks to come in. Rustles through all your papers. Dusts your shelves. Then leaves with your children. Some people set a timer and wait for it to count down to zero. Others press start and watch the accumulation until it gets to a predetermined number. I know a man who can sit still for an hour. A girl who will speed your heart. A woman who weaves space to seconds.

Time is either big or small. Like the earth spinning in the middle of an infinite universe. An hour that lasts all childhood. A couple of minutes that drag on for the rest of your life. A life that flashes by in seconds. Somewhere a man is sleeping past noon. Everyone else is staring at the ceiling at 3am. Calendars of loss and regret hanging on refrigerators in the dark. Circadian rhythms. Apoptosis. Death by natural causes. When? How long did it last? It’s critical we make a notation. Document time and date. Contributing causes. It used to be easier to wake up than fall asleep but I found ways to make it easier either way. Exhaustion on the front end, fear of death on the other. In the early morning I can find the secret place between now and the next now. That’s where I find you. In the distance I hear a noise that sounds like an alarm. Someone’s time is up. I check my pulse. I wake up.

12/28/25

poem

 Modern Art

But what does it do? 

Someone inevitably asks

Just before it goes to the gentleman

In the back who bids $20 million

For the right to hang it in the arcade 

Wing of his cottage in the Hamptons

To be gazed upon by jealous

Guests while the host mixes

Another round of Sismith martinis  

And regales them with condescending 

Anecdotes about the ruined artist.

That’s what it will do—

Become a transient talking piece, a useful distraction,

A signifier of relative affluence

A tool to drive between 

A rival’s ribs

And then sold for a tidy profit

But by then it’s no longer art

Not like the day it was created

All raw and tender and beautifully useless.

12/27/25

poem

 New Moon

My route to the hospital

Takes me east to west.

Usually daylight is just cresting.

I see it in the rearview mirror gaining—

An angry low wall

Of hard ochre and bloodshot orange

Getting closer and closer each mile

But I give it a little gas

And it never catches up.

Coming home I see the sunset tailing me

But I’m going too fast, I guess,

Distracted, anxious to get home,

The fading light behind me

Dimming smaller and smaller 

Until we’re all engulfed 

In the same darkness

Shared by the new moon.

I work too much

And can’t remember if 

It’s waxing or waning.

12/27/25

poem

 Compared to What?

How do you know if you’re good?

A group of us gets together every week

In the basements of run-down churches

To anonymously discuss this.

We drink coffee and someone always brings donuts

And everyone seems to have a cigarette except me.

The question hangs in front of us

Half shrouded in the plume of gray smoke

That doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

There’s no choice but to try to answer.

I go first—

My name is Jeff P. and this is everything I’ve done 

Good and bad and the things that could go either way

Or are yet to be determined

And it’s all true and unvarnished

Spilling out of me in stream of consciousness

Narrative that doesn't really empty into

A vast ocean of meaning but just sort

Of peters out into a stagnant backyard sinkhole.

Mostly it’s the bad stuff because

That’s all I really remember 

(Who remembers all the good stuff

Anyway? What are you, a narcissist?)

The good stuff I do recall seems so trite and mediocre

Like the one time I remembered 

A janitor’s name, Cyrus, who 

Says hello to me every morning 

Or teaching my kid how to tie his shoes.

A lot of the good stuff is things like that

And I don’t want to bore everyone to death.

Everyone prefers a juicy story of tragedy and self-

Inflicted heartbreak, rampant with pointless plot twists 

That always lead back to the same place 

We all seem to share.

To be fair, statistical analysis would reveal

These tales of woe are probably outliers 

And can be excluded from the main data set.

But that’s not the way it works down here

My standard deviation is just wide enough

To get me exiled to this godforsaken place.

When I finish, someone else begins to speak.

It’s gut punch after gut punch 

You hear some really horrific stories 

Down in the bowels of holy sanctuaries.

None of them make any holistic sense

You keep waiting for denouement 

But suddenly a new character appears 

Halfway through Act IV and now 

We have to find out what happens to her. 

Whenever someone finishes rambling

We’re all supposed to cast a vote

Yes or no written on a folded scrap of paper.

Everyone takes a turn.

At the end of the meeting the chairperson

Goes around and collects our votes

And places them in a plastic Halloween pumpkin.

Then she stands at the front of the room

And reads them one by one:

Yes

No 

Yes

Yes

No

Blank 

No

Yes 

Blank

Blank

Blank

12/27/25

poem

 The Other Side of the Mirror

How many do it—

Look in the mirror, at their life

And say I did that

Kitchen cabinets, stacks of books

A drawer full of bolts and screws

Left over from self assemble furniture kits

Cars in the garage

The kids, the wives

The loss, the broken glass

Swept up long ago 

And scooped in the trash 

Crickets in September

And fireflies speckling the backyard 

As a boy darts through the dusk

Like a silver minnow around your feet

In a shallow river 

All you want to do is stand still

And watch him circling your ankles

As long as you can

Until the current whisks him away

Not just what is owned

But what is made 

And who has the best claim

Even to say the continuity of shared days

Is enough, isn’t quite enough

No longer who you once were

Nor the man once expected,

Someone else,

Clinging to the artifacts 

Of a stranger’s existence.

But you found a loophole,

A way out of the sullen despair—

Look through the mirror

And give everything away

Voila! Happy and ignorant again!

Deeply engrossed again in a project

That will surely produce something 

Of value, strange and new, a piece

A man calling himself you

Insists belongs to him

12/18/25

poem

 Miss Page

I remember reading as a boy

But hardly ever being read to,

Though I’m sure it happened

Most days with mom.

I do remember Miss Page,

Our school librarian, reading 

To us while we sat

Cross-legged on the floor

Of the old school library.

She held the book splayed open

With the pictures and words 

Facing us and the story would spill

From her lips from behind the covers

Like the disembodied voice of a movie narrator.

I didn’t like that very much

Because I knew you had to see

The words to be able to read.

I didn’t care about the pictures

I only wanted to trust 

The things I heard.

Well, it was a lesson I must

Have taken to heart.

To this day I hold up the story 

Of my life for everyone to see

And tell them what’s happening

Before they have a chance 

To read what the words really say

12/18/25

poem

 Self-Care

When he’s sad the doctor goes to the hospital,

His hospital, the one where he works 

Because that’s where he knows what to do

Even if he isn’t on call and no one needs him now.

Slips in through the side door using his keycard

And unlocks the doors to his office.

There’s no one here to talk to about his sorrow

No one to diagnose disease or render treatment.

This is a mangled form of self care

Barely better than alcoholic numbing.

But here there is purpose 

And easily perceived meaning.

He logs on to the computer, opens

His patient list and checks

Labs, xray results, the new names 

Of souls he has been asked to see.

Outside the cars on the highway flash

And pulse like the tracings of an ICU monitor

Telling us the city is still alive.

He watches a while longer,

Longer than anyone else would,

Long enough to forget 

Why he came here 

And then he returns home.

12/18/25

poem

The Opposite of Love

One day you will be asked

To define the opposite of love 

And your answer to that question

Will determine whatever happens next 

If you say hate it means 

You have to hold on

To some of your hatred

To remember what love is

Which is why even jesus

Isn’t allowed to forgive the devil.

If you say nothingness 

It means that love is the impetus

For everything that exists

Which makes a goddess of love 

Who spreads her wings

And demands the universe manifest.

When everything comes from love

All that’s left to claim is an emptiness 

Estranged from even the deepest despair.

Whichever one you choose

Don’t ever forget it because 

Every time love is missed or lost

Or outright rejected

The other side of the ledger

Must be balanced—

Either hate increases

Or the universe shrinks 

To the size of the very first thing.

12/18/25