Tone
Saturday, March 25, 2023
poem
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
poem
Triage
This one has already died
This one won’t survive the night
This one needs a blanket
This one is just sad
This one is fine
This one will live
This one looks ok
But is torn to shreds inside
This one could use a breath mint
A change of clothes
This one needs a long hot shower
Someone to bring him an extra pillow
This one it’s probably too late
This one lost me when I tried to look into her eyes
This one tries to drown you in her eyes
This one needs an IV
This one just needs held
This one could use a calculus refresher
This one just needs the right book at the right time
This one needs a mirror
That one is the reflection
Get this one to the OR
That one to a nunnery
This one to the dispensary
That one to the train station
One way tickets to the other
Side of the world
This one was supposed to be me
This one is actually me
As for the rest
I just don’t know
Let someone else decide
poem
The 12th Draft
Sunday, March 19, 2023
poem
Lifelong Friend
We spend the bulk of our lives
Alone with the person
No one else really knows
The one who sits with you
As the March snow falls in feathery ash
On the other side of smudged bedroom windows
Over time the distinction between
Yourself and this person blurs into one
But it's only an act of self preservation
To ease the pain of always
Having to say goodbye
To your oldest, truest friend
Every moment is a secret little death
But he always comes back to life
Before there’s any time for lamentation
Such private farewells are best deferred
Until the final days when it’s obvious
We've both come to the very end
And even then it’s easy to run out of time
Bidding adieu to the glowing embers of a world
We both have loved
What does one say then?
Who breaks the silence?
Who gets hugged?
Sunday, March 12, 2023
poem
From Darkness
A photon experiences no time
Trillions of years traveling
The vastness of the universe
But instantaneous.
Light of my life
Tiny eternal flame
Time belongs to darkness
Surreptitious moon like a shy boy
Watching you shine from the other room
Timeless radiance
poem
The Funeral Disruptor
The funeral disruptor was at it again. Driving his car through the All Saints Cemetery Saturday morning with the windows down, blasting Gangster’s Paradise. The small groups of people in black gathered around rectangular holes were collectively aghast. He stopped his car at the biggest gathering. He put his sunglasses on and leapt into the grave. Laertes come hither! he shouts, brandishing a broken off broomstick. No one finds it amusing. Hearse rhymes with curse, he shouts. He zig zags evasive maneuvers around a couple of beefy pall bearers and makes his way to his bass thumping car. He does this every weekend. He claps his hands, he speaks out of turn. He slams the heavy old doors of cathedrals. Why do you do this, an exhausted priest once asked. The funeral disruptor just smiles. He leans in and whispers something in the priest’s ear. The priest’s face lights up in sudden recognition. From then on they become partners. They go in halfsies on a souped up hearse with tinted windows and high end stereo woofers. Half the time it’s Gangster’s Paradise blasting from the speakers, the other half Mozart’s Requiem. Sometimes the priest is Hamlet, sometimes Laertes. They take turns.
Sunday, March 5, 2023
poem
Scene III
poem
Op Note XXXVII
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
poem
Every mother deserves a song
Written for her by a son
It’s the least we can do
After all they’ve given up
And all they’ve been through
Better now than after she’s gone
Kathy was always my biggest fan
Shrieking go! jeff go! as she
Raced up and down the touchline
Of the soccer pitch when I was seven
That first game was my actual christening,
When I heard my given name for the first time
And realized I needed to become that….
Couple of clarifying points:
We called it a “field” back then and “sideline”
Not “pitch” or “touchline”
We were basic
We ate leftovers
Did Saturday morning chores
I wore polyester sweats under my green shorts
With white stripes down the sides
Orange slices at halftime
Once, mom brought Shasta
As the post game drink
Even though the coach
Was a regional sales rep for Coca-Cola
It was a lot cheaper
And we didn’t have shit.
No one would have noticed
If not for the Steven, the coach’s prick son
Nothing since has changed
She’s still rooting
For me to be my best
Just not so screechingly.
I haven’t exactly had the world’s
Biggest cheering section throughout my life
(to be perfectly honest)
And when she’s gone the bleachers
Will be even quieter;
An empty seat looming
Down in the front row
With the game still on
And me out on the field,
Improbably still playing
Because what else
Am I supposed to do?
I don’t see her as often as I should
And when I do we don’t talk much,
At least not too meaningfully
The best I can do is hold a seashell
To her eyes and try to describe what I hear
Most of what I say to her
Loses half its meaning on the way
Even this poem is only half written
I’ve spent half my life pretending
I didn't notice her expectant gaze—
Playing the part of the very busy good boy
With important things to do.
But I've spent the other half
Slipping out emergency exits
Of once desired places
I didn’t want to be in anymore,
Running down dark haunted alleys
Gathering enough discarded fragments
Of unexpressed love to put in her poem.
This is the half I’m still writing
poem
Sleepwalk
Lately I have been having
Extremely busy dreams
There is so much to do
I wake up completely exhausted
As if I hadn’t slept at all
Then the day starts and off I go
This place and then that
A series of endless tasks
I get nothing accomplished at all
Sleepwalk in and out
Of shadows hiding from the sun
Saving my energy for all the work
The daytime moon has left undone
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
poem
February
Cold dreary February day
The sky a gray ocean above
With a perforated floor
The rain falls in heavy dollops
Walloping my face and forearms
Somehow it's too warm for snow
But my blood has slowed to a slush
I used to see myself
As a roiling cumulonimbus
Gathering strength to someday unleash
Upon the ramparts
Of the remaining world left unscorned
But it all just leaks out in pieces
I meant to be the deluge that drowns
A lifeless parched earth
But instead it’s just death
By a million heavy drops
As we say in surgery:
All bleeding eventually stops
Sunday, February 26, 2023
poem
Rounds
When I’m on rounds I barge into your roomGet up close and personalInvade your spaceAsk you a bunch of intimate questionsLift up your gownPalpate and prodDoes it hurt hereHow about thisHave you shit yetDoes it burn when you peeWhat’s that on your legHas it always been thereHas it changedWhat about your faceThis mark hereThis subtle asymmetryWho’s that in the pictureDid a child draw this dinosaur thing with a human head on this cardDid you take your medicineAre you happy with my careWhat do you fear the mostDo you believe this all gets betterDo you hear the tiptoes of deathDid I do a good jobDid I let you downI’m entitled to it all, for your own well being of courseWhen rounds are over I take off my white coat and go back to how it usually is:Warily circling everyone I see like a wounded wolfKeeping my distance but always watching with ragged ravenous vigilanceWondering about that shirtWhy you’ve chosen that hatWhich book you have in your toteWhy you look so sadWhy you’re half smilingThe source of that subtle limpGathering reams of dataSpiraling closer and closer to an answer.
poem
Gambit
After demonstrating a few basic openings
I asked my son: what's your gambit going to be?
What will you give up up now
To gain an advantage later?
He said he’d give up the King
Because he was pretty much done
Hanging out with dad and ready for some
Scheduled online gaming with friends
Of course this meant I was the King
Who succumbs to an early regicide
On the other hand it meant that I was his King
Such is the timeless quandary of our dynamic
After he left I sat for a while with the board
Realizing I ought to answer my own question
For it's never too late to take a few chances
I’ll let you have the King’s knight
The one always hovering over my left shoulder
In dreams, whispering useless advice
You can have either bishop
Or both.
Burn the cassock and the crozier
I lost faith long ago
I’d give up a pawn
But I recently lost the last one
The only pieces I have left
Are all worth too much
I’ll have to give up love instead
In order to be
The elegant Queen Sacrifice
That leads to a mate
Friday, February 24, 2023
poem
Op Note XXXVI
I didn’t have a choice. One of those stem to stern incisions. All of her spilled right out. The assistant ballasted escaping guts while I suctioned out all the blood. Had to inspect every square inch. The things we saw that day. Whoo boy. At least I’ve never seen anything like that. Not kidding. Shredded from the inside like a scythe. Couple cans of spilled paint candy caning together in spiraling maroon/purple swirls. Had to patch every hole. Cut out the unsalvageable. Held pressure on all the rest. The next day she was somehow doing better. Extubated. But in a bad way. Basically just a head pinned to the top of a swollen stitched up body that didn’t seem to belong to her. Seemed in good spirits though. Was smiling almost. Like an animatronic Mona Lisa. Nodded her head at me. Waved me over with a lavender hand of bones. I was going there anyway. I’m the doctor right? I don’t need stage directions. I checked her belly and it seemed to retract as if it were afraid of my touch. The wound looked good at least. Not my fault it hurt. I noticed she was beckoning me closer. So I leaned in and she was whispering. What did you say? Her IV was alarming again. My ear was now a quarter centimeter from her dry lips. What happened? What did you do? she said. I didn’t have time for this. Thirty-three patients on my list. She wouldn’t understand any of it anyway. If she did, she would never have gotten into this predicament in the first place. I fake laughed at my own joke here. Anyway, it was time to tell her what I did. I leaned over, my lips now a little too close to a stranger’s left earlobe, and told her everything. Everything I had ever done. The banal, the porno, the hero, the humiliating. I told her about the one thing I had been so ashamed of, for so long. This one stupid thing that impacted pretty much every plot line of how my life subsequently played out, in the sense that I always reached a crossroads with a person I liked or a situation I really dug where I had to either decide to tell them about my hidden shame or continue to keep it a secret. If I chose to keep it a secret it meant I would retreat deeper into myself. I have always chosen not to tell. Like, my very life as lived is a direct function of this one thing I had never told a single person before. Until this moment. That’s fucked! I apologize. I shouldn’t use that kind of language in sacred places like the ICU. Tattooed nurses instead of bishops. Spouses and moms sleeping all night on bedside chairs instead of Christ. She was trying to tell me something again. I couldn’t make out a word. The damn fire alarm. They were always false, though. No one ever had to go outside. We all silently endured and ignored them. I never saw any smoke. I leaned in close to her again. Say it again, I said. How long do I need to keep this damn tube in my nose? she said.
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
poem
The Mystery of Suffering
The old lady wasn’t any better in the morning. She’d need to go to surgery. I gave her the straight dope; rationale, risks and benefits, alternatives etc. She received the news with fender bender equanimity. Folded her glasses in her lap. Smiled pleasantly. I trust what you say, doctor. Resigned to her fate. On her nightstand was a religious pamphlet opened up to a page entitled “The Mystery of Suffering”. Pain isn’t a mystery. We know how that works. C fibers and spinothalamic tracts and things of that nature. Straight biology. Teleologically we also know why: so old Kronk, the paleolithic dolt didn’t keep trying to touch that flickering flame or tease the copperhead again. Natural selection. It’s dangerous to feel nothing, to be impervious to physical pain. Suffering is different. It’s more psychological with a dash of ethics. How is this fair, you ask. Why me amongst all us billions? Shake a fist at the sky. Losing what you once had. Knowing you’ll never get what you really want. Knowing in the end everything gets lost. Wanting something so badly despite knowing you’ll have it only briefly. From the quantum perspective, suffering is the antimatter of love. Not its opposite. Opposites are different. Just as every electron is balanced by an oppositely charged proton, every great love is balanced in space by an equal hate. But love and hate are only linguistic opposites. It’s all just love, either sufficiently or insufficiently expressed depending on circumstances. Just as every elementary particle can be reduced further, into something even more elementary, etc etc, ad infinitum until everything is exactly the same One. Therefore every great love that arises casts a shadow of suffering. Even this is too poetic. A positron, on the other hand, is not the opposite of an electron, rather its necessary annihilatory antithesis always lurking while the electrons and protons swirl around. As suffering undergirds the battles of love and hate above. No love arises without it. Not every love requires a concomitant hatred but it does necessitate the existence of the very void to which it must return. The absence of a loving feeling can be described as the human experience of love’s antimatter. The best that can happen is when suffering brushes against love, even if just briefly. Both are instantaneously annihilated, leaving behind a “perfect energy”. For lack of a better term. A worse term would be: “the fundamental principle of the universe”. The second best thing that can happen is the moment just before they touch. In that nanosecond love senses the cosmic presence of its own suffering. Love is injured. Which is the last thing it feels before obliteration.. Let’s get this show on the road, doctor. The old lady was grinning broadly. This fancy grand dame has got things to DO. She was winking at me. I wanted to bring her something. A warm blanket. A cup of hot tea. A Sudoku. A soft cat to pet. I’m counting on you to take care of this pain I got, young man. I told her I wasn’t really a young man anymore and that my main goal was to ease her suffering. Oh don’t you worry about that, boy. I’ll take care of that old thing. She winked again. You just do what you do best .The spot right behind my left eyebrow began to throb. It radiated down into my heart. Why this always happens remains a mystery.
Monday, February 20, 2023
poem
Poem #45
Sunday, February 19, 2023
poem
Courage is a Dead Currency
In this country courage is a dead currency
No longer a legal tender
Accepted in any reputable stores
Its coins and banknotes are counterfeit
Try slipping a Canadian quarter
In the vending machine
And nothing happens. No guttural rumble
No churning of inner gears
Nothing falls. The slot remains empty
No matter how hard you pound the red façade
There’s nothing we can do to stop it
So many of us have exhausted ourselves
Suffering the years to accumulate
Now worthless little mounds of green bills
Little nest eggs to draw on
When the time came to be brave
Some hold on to it, hoping it comes back into fashion
Or accrues an inexplicable nostalgic value
In the new mediums of exchange
Like a mint condition Honus Wagner card
Probably best to just burn it
Or get what you can for it
Pennies on the dollar
The wealthiest of us are all cowards
Have cornered the market
On the only kind of currency that counts
If they want a little courage
Just to round off a collection
They can always go buy some
Like a forgotten Pissarro landscape
From a high end gallery
Hang it on a white wall in a long dining room
For everyone to see.
A man with the yellowest streak
Will attest to its authenticity
It gains value by the hour
Just hanging there, doing nothing at all
For bankrupts like us it endures
As a work of priceless wonder
But for them it’s only an object of power