Golden
To celebrate our 50th anniversary
We’ll go skydiving
Without parachutes
When we land
Everyone assumes we’re dead
But halfway down
We changed our minds
I shouldn't have let you go first
We should have jumped together
And now it’s too late
The plane banks into a cloud
A massive quilt awaits our arrival
Our luck we probably land
On a hill of soft pillows
Somewhere in Ohio
Breaking our fall
So it only hurts a little
Unlikely you say?
More likely than what’s
Happened so far
The Egotist
Yes I can seem uncaring
Distant
Emotionally unavailable
But look at the bright side
I’m undiscovered country,
A clearing in a boreal forest
Where you can finally see the stars
Sure, the starlight is old and coming
From very very far way
And most of them are actually dead
By the time a single twinkle gets here
But, my god, what a scene!
All you have to do is look up
Is this enough light now?
Will you be able to find your way home?
Just kidding, the canopy is thick
And darkness surrounds us
All you can see are flashes of wolf eyes
Circling closer and closer.
If you don’t want to get lost
Stay right here and I’ll show you a trick—
When morning comes
The sun doesn’t rise
Safe Room
Here I’m safe.
Nothing can hurt me
Anymore. All you can see
Are these lines. Even the empty
Spaces are mine.
I can wait as long as I like
For the next word to arrive
I can do sentimental nostalgic
Then veer into something more cryptic.
I can end it
Whenever I want
An Idea of Order
Some poems are very straight forward
I have an idea in mind and via a series
Of conjured thrusts I’m able to express it
Either clearly or necessarily abstruse
For example, the kind of poem
Where you almost get the sense
I’m trying to tell you
I love you but when you read it again
The words aren’t there
Another kind of poem pries
At the essence of love
Pre-configuring the existence
Of us. Do plants love
When turned toward the sun?
Is it neurotransmitters alone?
Would it count if you could
Take it as a pill?
Would you really want to?
The deepest kind of poem
Gets lost in its own darkness.
Down here defines "absence of light"
Nothing you write will ever be seen
And no one is allowed to speak.
In this place the love is so heavy
It sinks straight to the bottom.
What rises to the surface
Is what’s left of the poem
Ugly
No, the poem doesn't define me.
Don’t be silly. You don’t know me.
Yes, everything in it is true
But only momentarily
Here’s a picture of me
With braces and acne and a horrible mullet,
Insecurity oozing through the polaroid
Like hospice wing sweat
Look at me now
Still ugly
In the same way
Poems are beautiful
The Loser
Too often I’ve found myself on the short
End of the stick. Wrong side of the
Scoreline. Bone side of the meat.
All that losing makes you better!
Is what I told myself
That’s how you get stronger.
I had no interest in easy wins
So I kept picking opponents who
Got harder and harder.
Loss after loss after loss
I began to lose track of what I was even doing
I’d look out the window and see all these people celebrating—
Fireworks and horns honking and minivans on fire
Does it really feel that good?
It didn’t affect me at all
I was already looking for the next match.
Many misinterpreted this dispassionate equipoise
As the hallmark of the enlightened loser
Who had somehow learned to transcend the dead
End of strictly outcomes-based valuations
And has found the pure realm of endless competition
In a game that no one was ever meant to win
And maybe there’s some truth there but more than that,
I found the biggest adrenaline rush came from
Giving everything I had just to keep it close,
To make them have to earn it.
For instance, put me in the middle of the ocean
And watch how long I can tread water—
I’ll show you the archetype of the noble
Martyr who eventually
Sinks in the middle of nowhere
And is never seen again.
People respect you for that.
Walk away with your chin held high.
Next time, they won’t underestimate you.
The problem with winning is it makes
Losing seem especially bad.
You start to want to win all the time
And that only leads to corruption.
You start looking for rigged games,
Games you’ve learned how to manipulate—
Your arms scaly with aces
Slid up your sleeves,
Up all night reading the answers
On the back of all the trivia cards,
A pair of dice in your pocket
Weighted with your most closely guarded secret.
Every time you try to chuck it against the wall
Its number always seems to come up.
Nowadays those games are called
Suburbia and Tenure and Made Partner
No one plays Meritocracy anymore, it’s gauche.
I’ve considered playing the one called
Professional Degree II: Economic Security
In these games, once you get in, you’re safe
You never lose
Win after win after win
Or at least that’s how it appears to those watching.
But the longer you play something shifts
You start to figure things out
Learn to rely on old familiar patterns
Like paths in the woods behind
Your childhood home.
Every time you play, it’s always the same game
Ending the same way— back at your house
With the wasp nests and tuna casserole
Again for dinner, rabbits
In the unruly hedges
Mourning the dry September grass.
It’s all so predictable
Which is the moment when it stops
Being fun.
You begin to think of it as your Life
Which is why this all feels so
Deadening.
If we were smart we’d make everything a game
But never keep score
There would be no way of knowing
If what was happening
Would soon be ending
Or was only just beginning.
What are the odds of that?
A.I Obits
Hands steady on the helm of the family vessel christened Massie, the recently deceased captain we knew as Gerald or Jerry or Dad or PoePa guided us all to the brink of his own demise. Whether working in the garden pulling flowers or tending to his official Post Office duties before retirement after 30 deliverable years he was always a smiling face in the mean face of storms and adversity. Sometimes when we look at the sky the sun is so bright it inflames your eyes. And sometimes it’s just tears that he is gone. Please note the hearing in probate court has been announced if you are interested in finding out who receives the collection of laminated Marvel comic books. See also the county website for times and directions to free parking. But his greatest legacy will be the chicken marsala recipe he forgot to write down but was watched enough times to remember.
Although death is the final frontier, Conrad always enjoyed a good cruise, especially the all-inclusive ones that disembarked from Fort Lauderdale, state of Florida in 1988, pictures of which can still be seen on the mantle of the house in Lodi where his late wife still clings to the last branches of her tree of life. Those pictures are in a box now and if you want to see them in lieu of sending flowers please send a donation to Meandering Lanes Memory Care Unit where his widowed wife will soon be going. To this day she still enjoys a good practical joke. The crinkling at the corners of her rheumy eyes. She won't believe that he’s gone until he drops the punch line and laughter can also be a robust source of tears.
Survived by wife (Jeanne) survived by (son) Steve. Survived by Manny (trusted handyman) Preceded in death by the vast majority of all living beings. Survived by pets (Corsair and Coriolanus) Survived by everything he’s left behind (polo shirts, poems, concert ticket stubs). Survived by what he should have taken with him (Sheila’s resentment, Bob’s jealousy, his Topps baseball card collection). Survived by his three most redeeming characteristics, as per the calling hours sign-in survey (he was silly when the situation seemed most dire and dead serious about making you laugh, to let you know he loved you he sent love letters written in the style of unsentient robots, he cried in any movie where a little boy missed his dad) Survived by the three people who will remember him last (grand niece Mira, second cousin in Michigan Carlton who helped him find his car while leaving in the dark, granddaughter baby who unfortunately has not been born yet but will tomorrow). Survived by (god) by (love) by (time) by ( ).
Anyone who ever knew a how come kind of woman like Marge will delaminate the skin of their reflections as they peel back the vague images of repression of fathers who used to never come home or weren’t welcome there anyway and see for real the absolute necessity of keeping your head down and staying out of trouble, being a good girl and finishing top three in every race. Marge never complained not even once when the first pangs of Braxton-Hicks sent her scuffling for the valium hidden in the bottle labeled “vitamins” in the deep recesses of the medicine cabinet behind the mirror where every morning she used to croon Joy Division about love will tear us apart and now bringing us all back together again to celebrate a vastly underrated life.
Although her physical presence will no longer be permissible, Irene’s non-physicality will live on in the form of various hazy memories and flashes of recognition currently held by her living loved ones, until they too pass on from this earth. Then it’s over. Utterly. Words written in water, as Keats said, who was her favorite poet who ever carved his transience into stone. But truly that wasn’t the measure of her. Teacher, educator, pants-enhancer. Oral historian of the lives of various backyard birds. She was one of a kind, as all aspire to be. When it ends we hope someone has saved some pictures, not the one where she looks frumpy and disheveled in her apron in the kitchen after Thanksgiving. Even if it’s something as silly as every time you eat meatloaf it reminds you of her. Or lima beans. Or a glazed ham wrapped in cellophane in the fridge. These too can be savored.
Gamble
The thrill of gambling for some
Isn’t just the winning or losing
It’s believing you know what’s coming.
They say the quants have taken all the fun
Out of the games but that isn’t true.
There remains a pleasure in solving a puzzle
Everyone else leaves to chance.
Don’t underestimate that euphoric rush
Mushroom clouding inside you
When the dealer flips over the card
You absolutely knew was coming next.
It isn’t luck. It’s calculated.
I don’t mean scripted,
Only that there are sometimes patterns
That get repeated, leading to outcomes
Reliably predicted.
Then there are the mystics bad at maths
They get a feeling in their gut
And lose themselves in a moment
Time seems to slow, lurch forward, stop again before it reverses
An image appears. A color. A number.
The name of the girl they should have texted
They begin to remember the future.
I don't bet on anything
Because nothing is known
And everything that happens
Only happens once.
Until this very moment
I suppose it’s true I’ve never been
Anything more than a probability.
Only in retrospect was there ever any doubt.
These are the stakes I’m used to
Even to believe in uncertainty
Is enough of a gamble.
Gratitude
God must have thought
It would be obvious
To us,
To be grateful
For this— all this
That we would accept it as a gift
Even though it isn’t.
A gift is supposed to make you happy
Even if it’s just another pair of socks—
Someone has gone to the trouble
Of picking the silliest ones,
Eggs over easy polka dotting
A groovy purple background,
Wrapped them up neatly and is now
Watching you tear it open
With a rapturous shine in her eyes.
When we lifted the lid of our lives
It would have been nice
To see the laugh lines of God
Crinkled in the ribbons
Before we ever saw
What was inside.
