How I Greeted The New Year

It’s less than two hours into 2022

I’m playing guitar outside under the public shelter by the beach

and out of the corner of my eye

I see two silhouettes – a man and woman walk out of the night

and I thought to play them a song I thought they might know

Time of Your Life (Good Riddance) by Green Day

I played that song as well as I have ever played it

I saw the man get down on one knee

then I looked away

the same reaction I have to passing car accidents on the highway

I’m no rubbernecker

I have seen marriage proposals go south

but when I was done playing the song the man yelled to me, “She said yes!”

“Congratulations!” I automatically yelled back

and then his silhouette walks across the shelter until it appears in the flesh before me

sitting cold and alone two hours after midnight New Year’s Eve

and I get a look at this kid now under the light

and though he is sporting a moustache

he can’t be more than nineteen years old

and now I feel both flattered and guilty that I could have helped inspire the kid’s

proposal

and I look at the kid’s face

and he is smiling like I can’t remember the last time I smiled like that

and either he knows something I don’t

or he is an idiot

and when I see his baby face in the light thanking me

for playing one of his favorite songs

I wanted to apologize and warn him that he was making a terrible mistake

and he shouldn’t let simple sentimentalities such as New Year’s Eve

and a silly song by Green Day define the rest of his life

then I see the young man’s smile

bright as the last star to cling to the dawning sky

and I suspend disbelief for the sake of romance, New Year’s

and the hope in this young man’s eyes reminds me why I write poetry in the first place.





Life Gets 3 Stars on Amazon

Imagine life was something you bought on Amazon

and you could rate it

would you give life five stars?

we would want to

but on most nights, no

so on those four, three, two and one star nights

we pray to that five star hotel up there

to let us climb this fire-escape from this inferno below

to go from the words of Homer to Thoreau

The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

 

to

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

What if everything we’ve read is a work of fiction?

The Bible, The Inferno, The Bhagavad Gita

all written by mad men novelists

pawning themselves off as memoirists

then who are we praying to?

what are we rating?

nothing and everything is relative to nothing

when everything is nothing

and I rate life three stars-

good show, but I know there must be something more-

meaning I can’t wait for the sequel

Raking Leaves in November (Haiku)

Time flies then falls when

now always migrates to then

these geese this Autumn

Universal Peep Holes

All the science in this universe cannot conquer chaos

and vice versa

like why the sky is blue

until it’s sunset

and colors you’ve never seen streak across the sky

and nothing is completely anything

when even the night sky undresses some naked light

why do these words feel so heavy?

why do I feel I have to say anything at all?

why did the first caveman think to say anything at all to the second caveman?

my guess is that the first word was “no”

because “yes” is implicit

and everything in between isn’t really what you want to say any way

At Least Bad Poetry Can’t Be Quarantined

Being cooped up in your apartment for weeks comes naturally when you’re a writer.
I’ve been practising social distancing since high school.
Back then I was a nerd when I said I couldn’t go out because I had to stay home and write.
Now I sound smart.
Now I am writing and I’m missing my friends and family.
I saw my mom today from the prescribed two meters away. It was the first time in my life that I did not hug or kiss my mom hello or good bye.
What the hell have we come to?
This is the difference between writing and living.
This is the mucosa between wrapped in a dream and a comforter a second after the alarm sounds.
This is the placenta between not knowing you’re drooling in your sleep and rolling over and waking face first in that pool of drool.
This is the distance swimming the lake when it’s ten miles to either side and like newborns, we just keep kicking.

Why We Walked Out of the Sea

When we swim in waves of thoughts that are not our own
when we see our bodies are only on loan
we won’t fear where we’re going
when we don’t fear where we’ve come from
like sticking your ear against a conch shell to hear the ocean
in the middle of the desert

When We Know When

“Why does life have to be bittersweet?”
you ask me between sips of beer.
You’re really asking the wrong guy, but but but this much I did hear:

look at life as a song
you can’t listen to the same note too long
music needs flats and sharps
sometimes horns sometimes harps.

Or taste this life this moveable feast-
alone salt and pepper we’d never eat or paprika,
but when tossed on a sirloin into this same pot… euerka!

We like our drinks cold
our steaks sizzling
our coffee hot
our ice cream and
our Alaska baked.

It’s like seeing the forest in the tree and every inch on which she feeds
supporting this tree at her most beautiful,
wearing this death-mask of Fall only to be stripped naked by Old Man Winter who buries his fallen children in snow.

Here is where we feel the rub of life:
to feel connected to anything, to separate us from androids,
our circuits have to be continually
shocked and stimulated
by an infinite amount of currents connected to an infinite amount of emotions charged positively and negatively
or else we lose our sensitivity
until we can’t feel these elements burning our skin.

The Future Wrapped Up in This Present

Now
will still be Now at the end of this some how
though we don’t know where in the Tao we’re going
how will we know when we get there?

We don’t know where we were before we were born
who knows how long we’ll belong on this side of the sun
how easily we believe anything that makes us see the future as something soothing-
like today is the workout
and tomorrow is the muscle balm.

We’re born innocent only to tumble down into depths too unfathomable to be believed
by any mother holding her infant son the first time
when we finally see our depravity
is it too late to go back and change its gravity
when nothing falls up
though we grow up
it’s like the past and the future pressure the present to give up the ghost
but there’s something in the wind, there’s something in the blood
that pushes back in both directions
so we can get nostalgic about tomorrow
Now

I Think Therefore I am Drunk

I don’t trust antivirus software just like
I don’t trust sun cream
cruelty just has a way of seeping through
so does beauty
and we can do our best by being healthy, wealthy and wise
simply by not smoking
and I wear a seat-belt when driving
I even wear one when falling in love
but that’s another poem
I don’t drive drunk
but I do think drunk
I’m thinking now, therefore I must be drinking
taking pot-shots at poetry
driving there are rules both legal and logical
driving 200 miles an hour through rush hour traffic while smoking crack is
illegal and illogical
poetry is smoking crack while driving over 200 miles per hour turning up the
volume on the radio
why can’t we be
tested to see if we can drive 200 miles per hour
through rush hour traffic while smoking crack
and not killing anybody
then we get the license
and if poetry should demand such a license
I would have my poetic license revoked entering this
love affair between writer and reader
knowing inevitably we will break up
it’s been nice knowing you
I hope you find some other poem to fuck.