Good Enough

Good Enough
It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us — Robert Haas

Breaks my heart to see that smile
and know it’s not for me.
I know better than to play at make-believe
but I still miss the fantasy
of being more than good enough.

Every day I march past thick bromeliads in the tower’s lobby:
Deep-green and hothouse-reared,
rubbed twice weekly with Shultz’s Leaf-Shine polish
by a man who spends his breaks napping in the service elevator,
wilting slowly in a sterile breeze.

The losing contribution

Recently, a men’s lifestyle blog called The Magnificent Bastard hosted a cocktail contest. Which I didn’t win. (The winners do look pretty amazing, so I’m not actually disappointed to be found wanting.)

Here’s my losing contribution:

Combine the juice of 1/2 grapefruit, 1 lime, and 1/2 lemon. Set aside.

Over Ice:
2oz. gin (Boodles, Greylock, Tanqueray, whatever)
1 oz. mixed citrus juice
1/2 oz. St. Germain
1 tsp Creme de Violette
Dash Bitter Truth Bittermens Grapefruit bitters

Instructions:
Shake, strain, serve up. Garnish with lemon twist.

Parenting and Sacrifice

1. The Epiphyte
Sprouting from the folds
of trunk and branch,
it reaches up to sun and down to soil.
The narrow tendrils twist to gain support.

Once the host is dead, the vines persist upright,
supplant the scaffolding that raised them.

2. The Brood Parasite
Before she killed her stepsisters,
she’d memorized their mother’s plumage
Her brighter mouth the most insistent,
the others starved to weakness,
she pushed them off the ledge.

Laying now herself, she picks the host
who most evokes the nest that she destroyed.

Keep Your Terrible Presidents off My Money

GE is loving on Ronald Reagan like white on rice.

And I can see it from GE’s perspective – Reagan’s signature accomplishment was spending the USSR into the ground, and it worked, and it helped companies like GE and Bechtel and Boeing along the way. (We’d do well to recall this lesson when setting economic policy, but that’s another story).

The important lesson is that Reagan was, essentially, a terrible president, ignorant and reactionary in the George W. Bush vein. Despite his big smiley friendly veneer, he was a monster. Let us remember his attack on Medicare:

Headlines Mislead, Say Experts

So, the CBO estimate of the health care bill is out, and the headlines are all screaming about it. The AP headline, carried on CNBC and elsewhere, reads “CBO: Health bill would cut $138 billion from deficit in 10 years.”

The Wall Street Journal gives a big shocking number: Health Overhaul to Cost $940 Billion Over Decade. In the online version, that’s the page title, but in the print version, it’s the headline, which is then followed by three paragraphs before the article explains that, despite the big number, it’s actually a savings.

Maybe it’s not just a WSJ thing, but it sure seems like it to me.

Questions that keep coming up

What chain of circumstances lead one to open a joint bank account with a spouse, and then set up direct deposit, and then ask whether it’s possible to hide their paycheck amounts? Isn’t asking that question the equivalent of saying “I’m a terrible person?”

What obligations do we have to art that makes us uncomfortable, or is difficult? Are we morally obligated to seek out, say, headache-inducing exhibitions at the ICA, or watch Oscar-nominated dramas, or listen to music that gets good ratings on Pitchfork? If so, how much? I mean, is there a ratio of serious to unserious entertainment that you have to maintain? Do you have to watch one “Precious” for every “Must Love Dogs?” One blog post about third-world poverty for every ten pictures of kittens? If you fall below that ill-defined ratio of highbrow to everything else, what are the consequences? Do you get exiled from the good dinner parties in Cambridge?

Also, what’s with the sudden proliferation of ballet flats that show women’s toe-cracks? A couple years ago it was about showing the toenails, and now it’s the other end of the toe. Is it the foot-fetish version of low-rise jeans?

This one is going to make me seem like a particularly unwholesome human being

Insomnia
Not yet sunrise, and in an upstairs window
a silhouette puts up her hair, leans forward
to set her breasts in place before an early shift.

I’m crosseyed and lonely and
waiting for sleep wakes mute and stupid hopes
so I just lean against the sill and let the focus fade.
In the upstairs window the light goes out;
When dawn begins, my head is hot against the glass.

Bioengineers of Tomorrow

When I see things like a registry of plasmids available by mail-order to help the enterprising young bioengineer assemble a novel life-form, I wonder how I can get in on the action, what my role in the awesome future this portends is going to be. Maybe I could build my own awesome new life-form with a second-hand PCR machine I find on Craigslist – liobam chops, anyone?

Then I remember I can’t even figure out the right way to assemble the toe-kicks on my Ikea kitchen cabinets.

Maybe they need someone to write their marketing brochures.