poem

 The Big Game

Overheard in the line at the concession stand at halftime of the Big Game:

Man in white t shirt: We structure everything meaningful in our lives around the downtimes, the gaps in between the expected action. Here we are seeking sustenance and hydration and, frankly, human fellowship in the form of conversation only because we find ourselves in this defined interval known as halftime. We can talk about whatever we want here. Not just passing on first down or the wisdom of prevent defenses.

Man in green shirt: I've never liked that term. It’s debasing. 

White: Which? halftime?

Green: Exactly. You go to the theater and there is an “intermission”, sometimes two. It sounds cultured and urbane. There’s no reason why it can’t be the same here. We aren’t animals.  

White: So, we're in an intermission right now?

Green: Second intermission, to be precise.  Between the 1st and 2nd quarters is first intermission. Then a longer, more leisurely 2nd intermission and then finally a third intermission occurring between quarters 3 and 4. 

White: Hockey does that.

Green: They have to. The experience would be too barbaric otherwise. 

White: True. Men are allowed to strike one another. Men have been slashed. Men have bled out on the ice. 

Green: Football is brutal too, but the violence is cleaved into short pulses of duration. Not free flowing carnage like rugby or hockey or even soccer. Between each play is an opportunity to catch our breath. The players mill around, grab quick refreshments. Take their helmets off. Become human again. Look to the sidelines for guidance from the coaches. Time itself stops, occasionally, as when the action ends with the ball carrier getting forced beyond the boundaries of play. And when time stops, there ceases to be a difference between instantaneousness and infinity. While the players huddle, we have a choice. Right now is either eternity or a series of fleeting moments stacked on top of each other, eternally. Six of one, half dozen of the other.  It either lasts forever or gets wasted in a series of lost moments.

White: What if the player is tackled in bounds and the clock keeps running

Green: Well, then, we become slaves to time. Time is all there is. It can’t be stopped. It can only run out. It exerts its control over us by eliciting anxiety. Every attempt to get it to pause or elongate is met with futility. It’s a nothingness we think we can defeat by hoarding.

White: You can always call a time-out

Green. Yeah, but only a few times. And most people waste them too early in the game.

White: True. A good coach is a good clock manager.

(a roar reverberates from the inner bowels of the stadium)

Green. Indeed. It sounds like the teams have returned to the playing field.

White: Our intermission seems to be drawing to a close

Green: Not to be rude, but I could use a little break from this particular intermission

White: As I said, everything occurs in the spaces. There are even gaps between the gaps.  Between the moment I verbalize my order and the first bite of the hot dog. Between the mustard and the ketchup. Between the final horn and the sound of my garage door thudding shut. 

Green: When you think about it, most of all this is just interlude. The defined events barely even register. No wonder entire lives are forgotten.  

White: Atoms are 99.9% empty space.

Green: Everything you say, if you notice, is followed by a pause before a reply

White: Days from now all you’ll remember is how good that Vienna beef dog tasted, though.

Green: I wish you were right here in the silence before I respond. 

White:

Green:

White:

7/27/25

poem

 Sunflower

We attended the charity event for cancer

One weekend on a sweltering Saturday in July

A live band was belting out industrial covers

From the 80’s— Pat Benatar, Poison, Motley Crue

The trees put their faces in the breezes

Like dogs hanging their heads out car windows.

As we were coming in an older couple my wife knew was leaving

It was 19 years ago, to the day,

That they had lost their son to cancer.

We’re going someplace so he can eat and soak up the alcohol, she said.

But I didn't think he looked all that drunk— just sun drenched and sad.

He gave me whatever drink tokens he had left.

7/13/25

poem

 Roundabout

The town transitioned from its inefficient grid

Of four way stops and timed traffic lights

To a flowing amalgam of roundabouts 

Consultant engineers had determined

To be the secret to continuous motion—

Blunt the points, soften the edges, blur the margins

To preserve an earned momentum.

But if you can’t stop

Maybe you never even started

And it’s always been like this,

On and on, a series of glancing blows

That take us in new directions

Avoiding head on collisions. 

We can survive tangential contacts

And passive diversions 

Curved like commas linking clauses

In a winding sentence that goes on forever

The way curlicued shavings on the floor

Are more interesting than the hollow totem

We’ve carved to honor the god

Who tells us when to stop.

7/13/25

poem

 Priceless

I’ve always been overly protective of any knowledge

I’ve acquired, regardless of effort involved

I’m a hoarder of facts, solutions and hermetically sealed arguments. 

They fill my closets my attics and basements

Each one gets a number and assigned space

In the catbird seats of my patchwork personality.

Like all hoarders I’ve reached the point of believing

My hidden cache is all I really have 

And so I guard it with my life.

It represents my entire net worth.

Even to question it undermines my own profitability.

To doubt would be like hiring my own burglar

And who am I to question the methods that grant

Me the ability to afford this comfortable lifestyle.

My wife and children would starve 

I’d have to leave, shamefacedly, in the pre-dawn morning,

Travel across multiple time zones

To the land of my own ignorance

Seeking to borrow someone else’s wisdom

Which never comes for free

7/13/25

poem

 Reading in the Dark

The light reveals itself in objects

Not the other way around

The way you appear to others

Depends on the light you’ve found

Your particular shape teaches

The light how it must bend

All matter is a moon 

Shining after the sun has set

Heaven is the light you see

When you learn to read in the dark

I go to a place devoid of light

When I get like this

You aren’t there 

But my hands are here

Even though I can’t see them

They always find each other in the darkness 

Every existence is a gravity

A fold in the fabric  

First felt as loneliness 

Which soon becomes a heaviness

Spiraling closer and closer

Until our fingers entwine

It isn't necessary to see 

To be surprised by what you find

7/13/25

poem

 Solitary Confinement

I keep them under wraps.

It’s a surveillance state in here

Of long windowless hallways,

Heavy locked doors and keycards

Dangling from lanyards 

Slung around thick necks. 

Get out of line and you

Get a cold arthritic fist

Wrapped around your throat.

Don’t worry, no one dies. 

I always release my grip

And let it breathe—

Anger, joy, jealousy,

  even the melancholy—

For another day longer,

As per the terms of its sentencing.

But then it’s straight to the hole—

Solitary confinement for 30 days

Which hardly seems like sufficient punishment.

You see, I’m not like other people

Buffeted by a stream of feelings 

Free to come and go as they please 

Without the elaborate trappings.

Mine are doing hard time

Just trying to survive

7/13/25

poem

 Analogy

Chuck a rock into a pond

And the moment 

It strikes the surface, it’s gone

For a few minutes waves ripple 

From the point of disappearance

But it never lasts 

Before long the water

Smooths and stills and silences 

Alternatively, you can skip a stone

Across a river, land it safely

In the mud of the opposite bank.

It’s cool to watch

But you’ll never get to that side yourself 

This tortured analogy is brought to you

By an idiot sinking rapidly

In the depths of his own fetid lake

When I get to the bottom

The water clouds with a sediment 

That never quite settles 

You’ll never see me again

7/13/25

poem

 Survival Mode

First, identify someone to hate—

Your lousy dad,

The one who broke your heart,

The one who got away,

The one you convinced to stay

And hate them with all

That’s left of your flayed atrophic heart.

Then sit down on the back patio

And sip your gin and watch the bats

In the backyard tracing blind patterns 

In the low gray insoluble sky.

You start to hear a low hum

That locates you above the fray.

When you close your eyes you know where you are—

The last place on earth

With just enough love

To keep you alive

7/12/25

poem

 Frame of Reference

Modern physics tells us that if you are in an enclosed area without any reference to the outside world, it is impossible to tell whether you are moving at a constant rate through space or standing still. These isolation bubbles are everywhere and nowhere. Shut the door. Draw the curtains. Change the channel. Close your eyes.

Now there are medicines you can take to simulate the feeling of motion— a surge of adrenalin, the dropping, tumbling feeling in your gut, the sense of momentary imbalance, the invisible ether rushing at your face. There’s another pill you can take to slow things down. You can toggle back and forth. You don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to do anything. It doesn’t matter anymore whether you’re actually moving or at rest. You simulate the feeling. Everything that happens is just inside your head. Which is no different than it was before the pharmacologic revolution. 

Most people use them inappropriately. Fully medicated, they jump off a cliff and there’s no sense of falling. It’s like waiting at an intersection for the light to turn green. A doctor's office for the nurse to call your name. I know a guy on high dose therapy who never leaves his bed. But in his mind is a whirling dervish of activity, a workaholic, a doting father and husband, a self made man who gives back to his community who never sits still for even a second.  

What are the references now? Where are the walls? Well, we destroyed them all. How are you doing, someone asks.  And I look at them the way I would stare at a stranger in a dream. How did you get here? I don’t recognize you. You aren’t real, yes, but seem entirely unique. I’ve never seen you before. How is that possible? Is this how the unconscious mind reckons with physical abandonment? The original creation myth. This person can’t hear what I’m saying. They seem to be getting closer and closer while I get farther and farther away. From my perspective this person is like a raindrop rapidly retreating back into a dark cloud high in the sky. From her perspective she is shouting as loud as she can directly in my ear. She is thunder but no one is scared. One of us is moving. One of us is at rest. The Moon revolves around the Earth which revolves around the Sun which revolves around the center of its galaxy which revolves. Somewhere is a still point around which the entire universe spins. At the still point there is a room without windows or doors. If someone is in there, the world doesn’t exist. If it’s empty, it does. 

7/12/25

poem

 Uniforms

They all wear the same uniform so we know which team they’re on

There are no names or numbers to remind us 

To treat them all the same

Every morning the soiled ones get washed

I retired my assigned jersey years ago

Now my white coat hangs in a hall of shame

When I come to work I just take

Whichever random one is hanging 

In the doctor’s room lounge

Today I’m Dr Zanzibar, eminent gerontologist

The coat hangs down to my ankles

And the sleeves hide my hands 

Now I’m on the wrong team

I adopt a weird posture so no one will know who I am

In the pockets are rings of keys and cookie crumbs 

Each key opens a different door in the hospital

I make my rounds, check that every door is locked

One of the keys opens the linen closet

Where all the laundered gowns are stored

They smell so warm and clean

I remove the white coat and put one on

Now I’m nobody

It fits just fine

A nurse ties me up in the back 

And escorts me back to my room

7/12/25