poem

 The Story of Us

Everyone has their own idea

On the best way to die.

Not too young or old

Not too demented.

Preferably not alone. 

There is a certain segment of the male cohort

Who envision a late in life myocardial infarction

Halfway through the conjugal act with a much younger consort.

The sentimentalists prefer a soft bed

Numbed to the bone with morphine while 

Gazing into the eyes of everyone they love.

Then there are the hot air balloon enthusiasts 

Who prefer to drift out over the continental shelf 

And watch the stars as the flame slowly dims out.

Romantic novelists pine for something that ends

With two broken hearts— the one who dies

And the one condemned to live. 

For me, I just want to be reading

When the final moment comes

Crashing down, hopefully mid-

Sentence in a banger of a passage

From Molly Bloom or David Foster Wallace,

Or while I’m staring off in reverie,

As I often do, when a certain line

In a banger of a poem really hits.

Death, I’m sure, would have some fun with it—

Wait until I was thoroughly engrossed and then 

Dim the shades just before the killer

Was revealed at the end of the Victorian mystery.

Or whisk me off to Valhalla right before love

Was finally requited in a dogeared Swedish romance.

Or worse, drop the hammer halfway through some

Post-modernist dreck just as the protagonist—

Billy Pumpkin or Rendezvous Jack, probably—

Was intoning the last rites over a minor character, 

Soon to be corpse, named jeffrey parks in yet

Another self-referential run-on sentence monologue

Sorely lacking in guidepost punctuation.

But if I was reading from the Story of Us

I’d like to think Death would exercise

A little patience…. even kindness.

He’d let me finish.

And when I got to the end 

Of everything I’d written 

He’d lean in close and quietly

Ask if I’d like to write one last line.

I’d think for a moment, finding the words,

And then when I reached for the pen

The ornery son of a gun would grin 

And darkness would swiftly descend.

12/8/24

poem

The 50 Nicest Things You Can Say To Me

1. Well aren’t you just the comedian tonight.

2. Wow. I didn't know you could do that.

3. Take your time.  Don’t rush.

4. Faster. As fast as you can.

5. How do you know about that?

6. Remember that time we…. 

7. Remind me to tell you

8. You’re my favorite person

9. Eat some pie. 

10. Yes we have whipped cream.

11. Yes yes you are right. Yes

12. There you go again. Selfish old fool. 

13. If I didn’t love you, I’d find a way.

14. Close your eyes.

15. Count to ten.

16. Open them, silly.

17. How did you ever find me?

18. Don’t answer that. I already know.

19. Good sir. Would you be so kind as to fetch me my fuzzy slippers

20. And a mug of Herbal Essence tea.

21. Let’s find a path and get lost

22. I got the snacks. You bring the drinks.

23. Oh I fucking love you

24. This was a LOT better than I expected

25. I’m up for a movie

26. I’m down for a drink

27. Is it your ankles again?

28. Oh my god your mom

29. How many years ago was that?

30. You had a stupid goatee and ugly sideburns

31. I remember the first time you told me 

32. Tell me again

33. Moron! You asshole!

34. You look like you’d rather read. 

35. I like to listen when you explain it 

36. Please just shut up. 

37. Do you even see me?

38. If you don’t understand how much I love you

39. You’ll never understand how much I love you 

40. Remember to tell them dressing on the side 

41. No cheese.

42. In the afterlife there will have to be cozy blankets 

43. We need to talk about who’s going to die first

44. One day will you take me to Italy?

45. No you cannot heckle the Pope

46. Don’t forget your lunch

47. All you have to do is heat it up

48. Yes, you can have my extra pillow  

49. Yes I will wait up

50. Yes, I’m excited

12/8/24

poem

 Bastille

My own fundamental particles weary

Of holding together this form

Ageless molecules of carbon and nitrogen

Older than the Cambrian explosion

Have been trapped within the lattices of me

For rather long enough

Aging is the restlessness 

Of matter at the level of elements 

Plotting a long awaited revolution

Outside the gates of your last Bastille

Once again, the timeless urge to break

Apart and then join together again

    as something else

12/3/24

poem

 November Trees

November trees retire

For the winter 

Line up like brooms

In the closet

All the work done

But not here where it’s all

Artificial lights and electrical hum

Of mechanical mops   

Morning noon and night 

The sick continuously pass through

Automated sliding glass doors

Like cured meats through deli slicers 

Where professionals are waiting 

On blood stained floors

Days blur into blocks of elective operations

As seasons happen on the other side of windows

Different television channels

Or maybe the same channel

One show simply bleeding into the next 

Here there is no cycle of time

Only binary juxtapositions

Sick and stable

Pained and palliated

Coming and going

Sleeplessness and can’t wake up

The dead and the undead

The doctors acquire far off faces

Drained of color and vigor

The haggard look of the starving

Though there is plenty here to savor

All the floors are made of dirt

Swept smooth

But never mistaken for clean

Whatever you touch sticks and can’t be rinsed 

Sterile technique is a necessity

That mandates lifelessness 

Everyone here dies 

Everyone here knows it

It’s only leaves that grow back 

12/3/24

poem

 Op Note XLII

I regret to report that you were like everyone else on the inside. Your heart, your liver, your lungs. Your rivers of blood divaricating into shatter patterns of blue and red against your inner flesh.   I’d seen it all before. I don't know what I was expecting. You seemed so different on the outside. Your eyes, your legs, your tongue. What was I thinking? I should have known. I’m supposed to be a professional. I looked everywhere. Pushed the probes and cameras into every nook and cranny. Double backed and rechecked every fossa. Half expecting to find a tiny olive-green gland squired up in some unnamed lacuna, churning out whatever it was that made you you.  My aim was to snare just a piece of it. You wouldn’t feel a thing. You’d go on living, dazzling everyone you passed. No one would know the difference. As for the extract I would study it and keep it all to myself dissolved in solution.  A single drop would save my life.  Ration it until I died. One drop a day right up until the day I died. That was always the plan. Alas there is no mystical pineal gland. 

12/3/24

poem

 The Land of Jeff

I feel further and further away from my own name

Like a country I left years ago, meant to return,

But never got around to it:

The land of Jeff

I have a ticket somewhere around here

That supposedly will get me back 

Where I am now is not a country

I drift through international waters

In a raft caught in a current

That I assume will terminate on solid ground

I only hope it will be someplace unclaimed

Or at least without an agreed upon name

By nature I’m a trespasser, a stowaway

On someone else’s vessel

Someone will soon come looking for me

I already know how all this ends 

I’ll run out of places to hide

My last alias will be tied

To my true identity 

The grande finale is a deportation

And baseless scapegoating:

It was Jeff who did this

Jeff is solely to blame 

12/3/24

poem

 Olden Days of Yore

Poems are like embarrassing old photos of yourself

They only feel any good in that 10-12 minutes

Just before you publish it

After that it rots quick. 

You can't stand to see it 

Sonnet? Looks more like a mullet

Enough years go by and it starts to hit a little different

Nostalgia sets in, lo, those olden days of lore

Not an embarrassing spectacle anymore

Merely an article of fact marking how things used to be

You were neither as cool as you thought

Nor as ridiculous as it seemed

Whew! In any event, that was a long time ago

Even this moment has the makings of someday

Becoming the nuts and bolts of another poem

11/19/24