Category: Words

Getting and Spending
Ask the serious men who study joy and bring to bear
the rigor your old profs would praise.
They know what works – It’s not pretty,
but spreadsheets rarely are.

You’ll find a template in the better academic rags:
Daily measurement of function, frequency, lability, and depth.
Careful record kept of enlightenment anticipated
and the extent it gets achieved.

From there, it’s quick enough (as these things go)
to find the measure of your heart’s desire,
show cost-basis, year-to-date, of what you’ve felt,
and chart your benefits and costs.

And when you’ve mapped your course and all that’s left
is living it — seek other counsel, perhaps your own.

This week’s New Yorker has an ad for Range Rover featuring a claim that it has eyes in the front, back, and side of it’s head.

People have been fired for a lot less than a misplaced apostrophe in an expensive ad campaign, particularly one targeted at presumably well-read consumers.

Then again, if you’re going to sink that kind of cash into that kind of clunker, maybe you’re not the sort to quibble about grammar. Or build quality.

I didn’t like the close on that first version. This seems cleaner, but I’m not 100% satisfied.

Barnacles
These are not accomplishments:
Surviving a year, falling in love, making a promise, taking a loan.
Granted well-timed birth, propensity to books and worry,
proper schools, I passed by luck
(and care and wealth, not mine)
through the shoals of idiot youth–
I’ve done precious little on my own.

A man thirtyish, married and mortgaged —
As notable as a barnacle who’s found a hull.
And yet of note: In all the sea we’ve found our place,
latched on, and won’t let go.

Barnacles
These are not accomplishments:
Surviving a year, falling in love, making a promise, taking a loan.
Born in the right place with an inclination to books and worry,
taught in proper schools, passed by luck
(and care and wealth, not mine)
through the shoals of idiot youth,
I’ve done precious little of my own.

A man who’s thirtyish, married and mortgaged
hardly deserves more celebration than a barnacle who’s found a hull.
And yet no less: We’ve found our place, latched on, and won’t let go.

Don’t claim there’s nothing left for the working man
not when two hours off the books at Y-Not
gets you a 30-pack of Keystone for the weekend,
not when Frank and the boys get off work at the house of pizza
and come by with a pie and a dimebag,

and say Pat knows a guy at the garage who can hook you up
with a shady reg sticker and some new used tires.
It’s not much and it’s not easy,
but listen to Tony’s dad some time when he’s drunk
and starts to talk about the old days.
It never was much, never was easy,
but if you’re not too proud to do what needs done
you’ll have a case for the weekend
and bullshit to tell the boys at work on Monday.

On Gratitude
These thank-you cards get more sincere each time –
Not that I know what to do with crystal candlesticks
but that someone moved enough to give them
and their motion moved me in turn
to put my gratitude in ink, affix a stamp and formally thank
my great aunt, my parents, hers,
the barber and tailor, bar-back and busboy
each passer-by in each picture’s background become a celebrant,
each stamp a solemnizer of the gratitude I feel
for gifts, for luck, for making it this far, for promises of more to come.

On Settling Down
It’s our special day, and as days go it’s fine
It’s good enough for me, and I’m good enough for you.
And you’ll do, as you’d have done unto.
And so proceed to winter evenings on the couch,
whiskey with honey and crock-pot weeknight meals,
to takeout and paperbacks, chores divided
and the kettle on to keep us warm,
To the security of tax returns and joint accounts,
my only fear that all the days of my life
outlast the days of yours.
But that bridge I can cross half-way
if I get there alone.

Here’s the latest, continuing in the vein of writing about things and people I see on the way to or from work:

When the voice speaks

How’s a dreadlocked and wrinkled Caribbean woman
wind up outside the subway in Boston
dancing and swaying in cowboy boots with
“Everybody Loves An Irish Girl?” printed on her shirt?

How’d you come three thousand miles to wind up
holding a cup of change and five or eight creased cardboard signs
block-printed small and crammed with text that nobody pauses to read?

I ask what it says and she says, softly
“which one, honey?”
The sign tied to her forehead begins
SEEK ENLIGHTENED GIVER SEND DONATION TO UNIVERSE –
ATTN VIP TAXPAYER BACK BAY BOSTON –
I can’t tell what she means, what she needs
apart from cash and Risperdal.
But I know what she’s telling me: when the voice speaks
you have to listen.

Adequate expectations
The papers had the notice prepped for weeks,
An evergreen for interns since sixty-nine
polished by senior staff this month and last
and the one before.

The old man himself, I’m sure, offered
more than a few suggestions.
His fans, old lovers, enemies –
all readied signs to hold some time last year.

And so, through fervent preparation,
death finally came, and with it the expected rituals
of expected death, and prayers:
let us believe we know what’s next,
let us believe we’ve years yet left to be.

Let’s just say there were only so many radicals
on the lower east side in the 30s,
more than a hundred, fewer than a thousand, and
Let’s just say they got around.

Let’s just say there’s no way of knowing
whose grandmother fucked whose great uncle,
whose children our parents really are.
Let’s just say we’re all descendants of the city.

Let’s just say they all ran together,
visited Mexico City and gladly pissed
on idols at the temple of the sun,
let illegitimate toddlers chase Trotsky’s chickens,
left town for unstated reasons at gunpoint in the middle of the night,
opened delis in Jersey and staffed them with aliens,
waved shaky arms and refused to translate punchlines.
Let’s just say they got around.

(I noodled around about the ending on this one a lot and I’m not 100% sure I like it, but it’s better than the first few drafts. It’s a lot easier to start a poem than it is to finish it.)