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Also included: all the unpublished short stories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