Thursday, January 30, 2025

poem

 Cutbacks

The hospital was cutting back

We had to do more with less

Instead of a knife there was broken glass

Old shoe laces to sling a shoulder

Used floss to ligate a bleeder 

We rediscovered the cleansing powers of fire

Bags of ice and a stick to chew on

Wounds marsupialized rather than closed

Because everything here heals by secondary intention.  

Some of the things we do are pure theater

Like the dry season rain dances of apostolic shamans

Here’s a pill

Here’s a number for a therapist

Here’s a light dose of arrogance 

Here’s your bill


1/30/25

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

poem

 Playing House

We didn’t play house as children

Because that was the grown up’s game

And we didn’t like the way of the grown ups

Which was always the same old game.

Like theirs, our games ended with a mom and a dad 

Screaming at each other while the rest of us

Stood around wide eyed and dumbfounded

Until one or the other stormed out of the shaded grove

And slammed a pretend door behind them 


We played a game called anything goes

First there was dancing and singing

Stomping and breaking

Shouting and clanging

Poisons and antidotes

Bows and arrows

Cities and hovels 

We were angels on days when God was away


Then everyone took five minutes of self time

Spaced equidistantly throughout the prickle tree grove

And concentrated on what they most wanted to do

Or to be or to sing or to share 

And then it would happen—

We’d all be doing exactly what each of us wanted 

Which was to be doing it all together.


Then we would take turns

Playing indeterminate bit roles 

In every one else’s private game. 

The more you knew the person

The easier it was to go with the flow.

Sometimes you ended up with a major part

You never knew you played in someone else’s life. 


But it was never meant for us.

That wouldn’t have been enough.

We would have grown bored

After just a few afternoons playing.


Once the final scene from the last game 

Involving all of us had played out 

We’d vote on which one was the “best” and which the “most fun”

You would think that would be the same 

But it never was.

We’d then return to the regular world 

And re-enact our “best” game

In front of the first group of people we crossed.

If no one noticed, other than to shoo us 

Out of the way, then we had lost.

But if someone stopped to watch 

It was a win. 

Twice a man clapped

And once, an old lady wept.


The “most fun” game we kept

To ourselves 

But never played again

And soon forgot 


When we grew up 

We started to remember  

But only the least important parts,

The ones we thought were real.


1/14/25

poem

 Impossible Diagnosis

All vital signs stable. Strength and sensation intact. Regular rate and rhythm. Clear to auscultation. Reflexes brisk and normal. The astute clinician cuts through the crust of apparent normalcy. All that should be a given. Waste of his time. The kind of guy who prefers a final Scrabble rack with, say, z-k-q-v-u-c-i-u over your standard s-t-r-l-n-e-a-i. Make something out of nothing. Find the hidden triple word score. Zero in on the impossible diagnosis. This is when he’s at his best. Calm, cool, comfortably avuncular in his well-worn green leather chair, dangling a pipe.  Tell me about Massillon when you were a boy, he says. Do you remember the rashes? On your elbows? After your parents would fight? And then divorce? You thought it was divorce? It was envy, wasn't it? That drove you to do most of what you did? To have what everyone else had and keep what was yours? Now he grasps the wrist and takes the pulse. Marks the heart rate getting faster and faster.

1/14/25

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

poem

 Occupational Safety

In the silver light just before dawn

Trees clutch from the ground

Like old arthritic hands 

Gnarled into permanent rictus 

After so many years

Clawing to the surface

Through a thick crust of rock

And the remains of the dead.

Oh, the traumas they’ve endured!


If nothing else

We are here to witness

The bitter deformity

Of collective suffering—


Bones smashed in the grinding gears

Of rock and time.


1/8/25

poem

The Unbearable Weight of Being

If I go back and forth from the front

Door to the mailbox at the end of the drive

I make a path with the sheer weight of being


Crushing the fluff of snow

Beneath my boots 

One step at a time


Little old ladies follow and slip

On the uneven glaze

Breaking their hips 


So I land heavier and heavier 

Back and forth

Back and forth 


Until the spring thaw

Melts the driveway back 

And I float away 


1/8/25



poem

 Pain Scale

What is your pain on a scale of one

To the square root of the Russian 

Word for twenty-three?


On the spectrum from frowny face

To slitty-eyed, wet-cheeked

Pissed your pants ecstasy?


How many drinks does it usually take 

To comfortably wash down a bowl of tuna 

Casserole glazed with brown sand?


If you had to tell me who

You really are, would you 

Do it with fruits or fractals?


Can you feel this?

What about here?

Sharp or dull? Tickled or just annoyed?


Tell me when you can read this row of letters….

When the bell begins to sound like birdsong….

When the whiff of adolescence fades from this patch of denim


I’m going to say three unrelated words

Then a set of randomly generated numbers

Tomorrow, under the full moon, you will 


Tell the stars how many we are

And how we prefer to be called


1/8/25













poem

 Turing Test for a Poem 

We need a Turing test for any new poem.

The poem will have to sit in a humid dark room

And patiently answer a series of questions

That only a real poem written by a real

Person will be able to understand.

In the real poem the metaphor will be a window

Everyone else mistakes for a mirror.

In the fake poem the metaphor is a door

Drawn on a white sheet of paper 

With the word “door” written over the peep hole. 

The real poem will try to toss the dead leaves against the wind

While the fake one calibrates all your neatly raked piles. 

The fake one answers every question on the test.

The real poem is the Grand Inquisitor,

Hooded, on the other side of the heavy table, 

Who never asked a single question.


1/8/25

Thursday, January 2, 2025

poem

 The Complete Works of Jeffrey Parks

First, a listing of inarguable facts

That nobody sane could ever dispute.

Dates and ages— with whom, how many, how often. 

Then a long section briefly detailing

Sundry mundane acts of the author in non-chronological order.

If it isn't in there it never happened.

Yes, there will be a chapter for the poems

Typed out in ludicrous fonts.

Then, endless compendiums of petty jealousies

So petty just reading them implicates you in the blame. 

Afterwards, a short treatise on the nature of love

Told from the jaded perspective of everyone

Who found his affections particularly lacking 

Using only a codex of broken candy hearts. 

Then a section that’s all charts and graphs 

Depicting correlations between him

And everyone who ever crossed his path. 

The last one is a Venn diagram 

That is just a perfect circle of infinite radius

With the author wandering from center to center. 

Here’s a collage of photographs of him half smiling,

Perfectly capturing the way he had of catching himself 

In the act of being happy before he got too happy.   

Also included: all the unpublished short stories

Followed by a fusillade of half-heartedly started, subsequently aborted,

Beginnings to planned long novels that never go beyond three chapters.

The stories are grueling sentimental— variations on

Themes of the same lonely boy abandoned by older versions

Of his jaded grown up self. 

Then there’s a chapter with all the words erased  

To give everyone a much needed break.

We resume with a compendium of abstract aphorisms

Succinctly summarizing nightmarish visions seen

From the edge of a perfectly acceptable life.

Halfway through is a pull out section of crude, freehanded drawings

Sketched anytime he came anywhere near the achievable apex of human happiness.

Upon first glance they look like Rorschach blotches

Used by psychiatrists to differentiate the sane from the mad

But a sustained gaze reveals something much more sinister—

That joy is the only sane response to all of this madness.

The appendix will be an monotonous series 

Of handwritten apologies to everyone who deserves it and never received it

Along with the imagined replies to such letters

Written in the arch style of a Victorian nihilist.

Even the unmentionables will merit a mention in the marginalia 

Etched in an unreadable microscript. 

A piece de resistance will be found 

Tucked in the epilogue, only available

In special edition versions for a limited time only

For a very reasonable fee to select buyers.

In the acknowledgements he will thank 

Whoever tried to make him believe 

He was actually someone, a real live person

With a name, peculiarities, and great potential*.

The asterisk will direct the reader to a footnote

That roundly curses everyone heretofore thanked, 

Warning them of pending litigation. 

The bulk of the selections, unfortunately, fall under the category of errata

Vast depictions of ennui and boredom,

Long reveries on wasted afternoons, missed chances, ill chosen words.

Entire chapters where nothing happens, the characters say the same things over and over.

Good morning. Good bye. Are you hungry? A quick shower. See you later. Are those your keys?

On and on it goes. Interminably. Alas it ends.

Then the meat of the book begins—

Hundreds of fresh blank pages

Hot off the press, waiting for words 

That never really came.

Each page perfectly white like Caribbean sands 

Bearing witness to the lived absence

Of all the things he meant to say or do.

Thousands of pages of the real jeffrey parks

That you have to patiently rip out 

One by one until it’s just bones

Emptied of all its living marrow.

This is his hand-carved magnum opus 

The Great American Epic 

The lovechild of Ronald Reagan and the Sunday school teacher’s daughter, 

Weaving together tales of robber barons trifling with the heretics of the Second Great Awakening.

It’s Beowulf’s son vs. Grendel’s mistress

A Gilgamesh of cinnamon toast.

The last page of the tome is instructions

To burn everything you’ve touched.

Then it’s just two hard covers—my stupid name on front—

Collapsed on all the love I’ve left.  


1/2/25

poem

 New Year's Day

I never really liked New Year’s Day

and not because of the hangovers,

the fake bonhomie, the frivolous optimism.

Certainly not for the pork and lactic cabbages

or the barrage of pointless college football games.

No, it’s the old childhood sensitivities resurfacing—

New Year’s Day meant winter break was winding down,

school would be resuming soon,

and that 5 page paper still needed to be written.

It also meant my dad was leaving

once again, back to his desert oasis

2000 miles away with a brand new family.

This day never brought me anything new,

nothing fresh to celebrate. 

The only clean slate was the somber gray

of the cold midwestern winter sky.

I’ve never really liked New Year’s Day.


1/2/25