Like the Rest of Us
Sometimes I get mad
when people stop
being beautiful,
even if it's mostly
not their fault.
You can only go on
for so long, I know,
no matter how tough
you think you are,
what with time and death
and the general sorrow
and madness of a life
chewing at you night and day.
Some folks have a good run,
sure, but still I am sad
when they eventually falter
and fail and become
like the rest of us.
I want the aging rock star
to bust out with one more
brilliant record,
the old novelist to find his way
through one more book
that burns and wails and tells
the terrible truth of things.
I want the poet on his deathbed
to scrawl one last line
that will save me
in the way I can't
save myself.
But for Now
What the world asks of us is absurd.
I sit at a window drinking wine
watching traffic gently flow up
and down Franklin St.
The Christmas tree still blinks
and shines even though we're a week
into January.
Maybe tomorrow I'll take it down
but I like the lights.
Few could tell you what holds things
together anymore, or why.
You can all but hear the center giving way.
I play sad records on the turntable
as whatever's left of things
sighs and sways to the rhythm
of the first broken heart.
The moon holds a final secret
as a woman's voice drifts
beneath it like a fading song.
I am glad for these few
hours of peace, this soft
and unremarkable poem.
I'll stay up too late as if
it might save me somehow.
Tomorrow a hangover,
half-assed regret
and a wondering of what
it is I've made of my life.
But for now
these lights,
this music.
A Pretty Girl Reading a Volume of Poems by Charles Bukowski
Tonight on the train
on the way home
from work
a pretty girl was reading
a volume of poems by
Charles Bukowski.
I thought it was nice
that pretty girls still occasionally
read the works of dead poets
while riding on trains
and I thought of how
I should sit down and work
at my own poems
even if I'm tired
so that I might collect
them into books
so that someday when I'm gone
pretty girls on trains
might read them
and someone might see
and think it's nice.
Notes from the Hospital Cafe
My partner is having major surgery and I am in the hospital
cafe drinking coffee,
reading a book and waiting.
Other writers might use the opportunity
to compose a poignant piece about the experience -.
profound and heartfelt musings on love,
death, a bit of regret perhaps, but ultimately
some combination of resignation and hope.
I tried, don't get me wrong, but it's just not in me.
I know only how to write about this cafe
and how it's nice to be allowed to sit inside it
and drink my coffee at a leisurely pace.
A few years back I had heart surgery
and I was in the ICU for a week and there was
a brief period in which I truly thought I might die.
When I didn't, I figured at I'd at least
get some good writing out of it.
But it just fell flat, stillborn,
my busted heart just wasn't interested.
I just wanted to get the hell out of there
and not think about it anymore.
My partner will be in surgery for at least
another 3 hours. I love them very much
and I hope it's going to be okay.
I'm going to find a bathroom now
and then walk to the comic book shop
and hope they have something good.
Some faces you will carry for the rest of your days
some things the bones cannot unlearn
her memory another cross
to ferry through the fire
there's a point where sorrow
becomes something beyond itself
bigger than god and outside
our ability to define
but I tell you there is another realm
in which love is a stone
that my weakness breaks upon
like rotten wood
where beauty survives the dawn
and we walk entwined
beneath the sun
laughing at the wonder of it.
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