What if Hades’ waiting room
were a McDonald’s
at 9:30am
on a weekday?
With white collar and working class
having already reported to work,
leaving only retirees
regrouping transients
and the unhurried condemned,
resigned to inevitable fate,
hastened by McGrizzled breakfasts
of dubious origin.
Youthful anachronisms
among innumerable ancient ones
include a young Asian couple
finishing their coffees and mutual flirtations,
as hand in hand, they exit the side-door,
crossing the parking lot towards the river Styx.
An even younger mother
is herding a set of toddler-twins,
awakened earlier than they prefer
as they now crankily demand
identical sausage patties
and cheap toys destined for landfills.
What if life is as
bland and purposeless as the
hashbrown I just ate?
One common element of McHades –
aside from the young lovers – it seems that
none here seems pleased with their present
or eager to embrace their futures;
it is a collective rumination,
a group-think procrastination.
What if none of this matters?
But each of us must face what comes next,
and one by one, we do,
slipping through the side-door,
first the flirting couple,
next the mother of sleepy twins,
with the countless octogenarians
each taking as much time as they wish
in gathering their past achievements
and unspoken unfilled ambitions.
What if it’s all just a game,
and I’ve been chasing the wrong things?
My phone vibrates, warning me
that I must soon return to my role
supporting the white-collar,
working-class worlds.
I finish my Sausage McBluffen with Egg
and exit through the side-door. The river
seems much closer these days, but still
I still have a ways to go.
***
Belle was a humbug. No such character
could ever release a loved one from
his promise with a full heart. It is
unrealistic and takes me out of the story.
Or perhaps I should not have revisited
that tale during dreary mid-January,
with all the cheer
left at a New Year’s Eve party,
where we couldn’t be bothered to pretend
to like each other anymore. A trick
time plays on us makes us mistake three weeks
for ages ago,
and a mostly-empty midnight bus ride – heading
towards total emptiness – lurches forward
into a future free of certainty and old routines.
“End of the line, boss,”
the driver reminds me.
“You good, young blood?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I lie easily
with a smile – cause that’s my thing as
a practiced liar – skipping off
the bus into a freak wind storm.
Yes, I still skip from time to time. What,
you’ve never seen a black man on the
back-end of his twenties skip before?
It happens; get over it.
I soon stopped skipping as I began walking
North with the wind rushing me along
with the rest of the displaced litter,
placing further distance between
where we’d been, and
where ever I was going.
It began to rain that annoying Seattle spittle,
except for the random fistfuls of spite smiting me
in the face as the wind swirled and changed directions
as if it didn’t know what it wanted to be either.
I’m chilled to the bone,
knowing I deserve far worse
than this climate change.
It was only slightly too warm for snow,
but cool enough to keep me moving
through a desolate tree-lined park where
people smarter than I had long abandoned,
and the long, twisted shadows
had longer twisted memories.
“Human garbage,” mocked one of the shadows.
“You wanted her to catch you in the lie,”
sneered another. “You didn’t even have
the guts to end it like a man.”
“Shut up,” I countered. “I tried
to end it. She wouldn’t let me.”
“But now it’s different!” a third shadow joined in.
“She saw your text messages! She knows whereyou’ve been!
Where you’re going! And she still wants you back
like nothing happened! After all you let happen!”
“She knows,” I repeated,
“so we can never go back.
I made my choice.”
The darkness echoes with laughter
as the shadows talk over one another.
“What a safe and terrible answer!”
“You replaced a woman who truly loves you
with an empty vessel! An Idol of newness!”
“You’re not losing a wife;
you’re gaining a side-chick!”
“Side-chick, indeed? Ha!
You mean rebound-chick!”
“I’m sure this side-chick-rebound-upgrade is
going to work out great for you, young man!”
“I hope you are truly happy
with the path you have chosen!”
I cover my ears
and cinch-up my hoodie.
Damn know-it-all shadows.
Leaving the mocking shadows behind, I
arrive at my destination, knocking lightly
on the door, as to not disturb anyone
not expecting me who may be already
asleep. I’m just used to slinking around.
A single light comes on, and soon she
is scrutinizing my soaked face.
“I did it,” I said.
“You did it,” she repeated with a smile.
“To be honest, I didn’t think you had the guts.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She leaned into me, gently kissing my wet lips.
“Things will be different now,” she said.
“Much better than hiding. You’ll see.”
“Yeah, different,” I repeated.
But if there had been no
understanding between us,
would I have sought her out
and tried to win her now?
I knew the answer.
It’s all a big humbug.
***
Written for NaPoWriMo’s day 3 prompt: write a poem that meanders, full of digressions, that takes its time getting wherever it’s going. Since that almost seems exactly what I always do, I really let myself ramble here. Sorry about that. 🙂
Author’s note: It’s only day three and I’m already struggling to stay on the pace! Also, between work, homelife, and writing, I haven’t tended to my reading and comments as well as I should. I’ll try to do better, but thank you all for continuing to drop in on me.
In the beginning,
Genesis
would make for
dull reading,
for I’d never consider myself
the most beautiful
of His angels.
Imagine a Devil
lacking a Devil’s vanity and hubris,
with my mediocre looks,
reddish-brown skin,
kinky, nappy hair,
coke-bottle glasses and
aggressive underbite.
I’d surely be tempted by
fruit from the tree of knowledge, and I
would certainly seduce Eve to partake,
but as I’m quite non-confrontational,
we’d leave Adam out of the equation,
fleeing Eden
for a small hamlet
on the far corner of the world
called Victoria, B.C.
In the beginning,
I guess He would have to take
a second mortgage
on another of Adam’s ribs,
and the world would learn the tale
of Adam and Edna,
eternal servants of the Lord
who never knew age, death, misery,
or anything remotely resembling
knowledge.
Just happily stunted,
blissfully obedient,
eternally dull ignorance.
For Eve and me,
her favorite serpent,
there would be no battle
for the souls of humanity,
only lazy Sunday scrolls
through the town shops,
enjoying the crisp air rolling in
from the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
Frantic calls
about a “final battle”
from Him
and His Favored Son
and also Scam Likely
would go straight to voicemail.
Come to think of it,
after discussing with Eve
about spicing things up,
I find it an injustice
leaving Edna in the dark
about the chill vibe
of the Pacific Northwest.
In the beginning,
perhaps He will need to
take a third rib from Adam.
***
Written for NaPoWriMo’s early-bird prompt: write a poetic self-portrait, portraying yourself in the guise of a historical or mythical figure.
Author’s note: I never meant to offend anyone guided by their faith, though I imagine most of you exercised self-care and stopped reading after the title. Full-disclosure, I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, but I’ve always been agnostic.
I have loved romantically
while being oblivious to its depths,
confined to the surface,
grasping at facades of
who I wanted to be
and who I wanted to
completely consume me,
growing mystified by
its brittleness
and inevitable indigestion.
I have loved, by sticking my head
inside an alligator’s mouth on a dare.
I have loved the greener grass
and the path untraveled
until detours revealed illusory scope
and textures tricking optics
into grasping curves
bent into ripened shapes
by light’s deception; I have loved
but a figment of her living ghost.
I have loved an imagination
and watched it slain by her reality.
I have loved deep
into the core elements of another
swiftly and inexplicably,
with the instant shock
of total immersion into
freezing waters,
slowing until bonds arrest us
in an exquisite insanity,
tricking the brain
into seeing love and attachment
as one and the same,
which renders all into ashes.
I have loved at first sight
and it seared my retinas.
I have loved
despite my best efforts not to love,
which, in essence, means that I have failed
at both loving and not loving
nearly simultaneously.
I believe therefore
we call it “falling in love”,
for no sane person
would willingly choose
this brand of nonsense,
steering directly into it
as one who wishes to be warm
plots a course directly into the sun.
I have loved over time against my will
and it was wonderfully traumatic.
I’ve flipped
the game
on its head
countless times;
each time,
my game piece
lands inside
the gator’s mouth.
I now love, knowing
its tremendous highs and incalculable lows,
the capricious nature of reciprocation
and whimsically fickle access to action
to fully experience and share,
fully aware that I wield little power
over the gambit,
only my position on the board
of an ultimately unsolvable game.
I now love with a full heart, knowing
that though I often experience bliss
and wield love to lift her
to fleeting triumphs with me,
ultimately I can never win,
and even as we run out of moves,
as we retire or surrender to fate
and, inevitably, as we
begin to lose each other,
the game will continue.
I now love,
not as a matter of choice or dare,
not with purpose nor design on winning;
I now love without purpose
because I see little purpose in not loving,
and also, aimless, purposeless love
is just love for love’s sake.
Age makes me forgetful
and fudge-brained, I dread to say
or perhaps, greater advancements
and enchantments are at play
it only just occurred to me
a week into February
that this month highlights my history
cultural, personal,
and other mysteries
and yet I haven’t needed relicts
of my own humanity
as touchstones for skin-tone
I know I’m alive when she arrives
and our tactile forcefields interact
mysteriously melting presently
into history like a scribe’s ink
sinking into paper, as we seep
boring deeply into each other’s
borders and core,
thus is our union recorded,
soaked, and sodden
heartened, I held her tight
with all my heart and might,
firm hand, and soft as cotton
our pleasure’s-way
made the pressure-play
of looming Valentine’s Day
all but forgotten
after that, our anniversary will come
and go with a similar lack of fanfare
casually cast aside like sloppy rhyme
in the middle of middling poetry
she will spend our grand day
in Boston seeing a child’s play
for a weekend excursion with friends
as I continue sketching meaning
within uncommon Seattle snow
as it trends towards commonality
there will be a continent between us
and I cannot recall us ever being closer
nor a moment I have felt apart from her
perhaps age makes me forgetful, or
maybe pre-fossiled brain is less fussy and
savvy enough to cast aside frivolities
as a cicada sheds its shell to prosper
I just know it is unnatural
to fret over what feels elemental
we breathe and laugh freely
like nature casually
coursing through us
***
What a
bizarre perverse
spectacle we must be
to anyone with the gift of
vision.
Contorting our delusions
to fit absurd collective
narrative illusions.
Your happiness is
worthless
to me
and yet
I weigh my worth upon you saying
that you are pleased by my efforts
to bring happiness directly
to your seat with a smile in my voice
fit to claw your eyes out
to minimize eyestrain.
As I strain,
monks go door to door
with empty bowl in hand and
it is filled more often
than not.
If it be a sin
to covet a neighbor’s empty bowl
then I am the foulest
most wretched creature living
if one could subscribe
to the false illusion that
somehow this is life.
But I lie while lying;
it is his heart I covet most.
I would reach into him and
feast right upon it,
right there in his face,
sitting upright, cross-legged
upon the dusty,
nutrient-starved earth, and he
quietly, peacefully
would mourn the fact that
he only had the one
heart to offer,
withholding nothing.
I don’t even count them
as withholds anymore,
for they are nothing to behold;
I place the holy magic beans
inside the divine tabernacle
and watch random gods of diversion
snatch them all away like a
school of piranha
picking clean the bones of my
counterfeit coffers.
Thus, am I served.
It would be cute
to call it being
eaten alive,
but that would play to
the illusion that the beans,
the tabernacle
and my convent with the gods
ever existed and that
somehow,
this is living.
Oh, what a bizarre spectacle I must be
to anyone with the true gift of sight.
But I am ready.
Ready to leave it all behind,
take a leap into the absence of lore,
and see for myself
what this living business is all about.
Perhaps
the best part of
my yet-to-be-told tale
will be when I ended service
and served.
My story begins on the last page.
***
(Video is only loosely related to the poem. I only included it because I really loved the movie, and it makes me feel better about things in my life that kinda suck right now.)
Surely you felt the same
rolling over and seeing
my displeasure at a
brand new day, didn’t you?
Do you have any idea
how many poems
I’ve written about you
only to have to file them away,
snuffing-out their wicked truths
like so many birthed stars
that ate through their fair
share of hydrogen
long before Ra set
the table for you and me
to ignore our own nature?
Can you fathom how every kiss shared
will be compared to the caramel of your lips
nibbling mine in our candlelit shame
of being exactly who we are
exactly where we wanted to be,
exactly beneath the weight of
who we wanted pressed into our flesh
exactly the way we needed?
Do you also wish to shake
the morning gate of heaven
to its foundation for fating us
a taste of what could be,
only to allow our respective free will
to choose to loosen our firm midnight grip
on respective flesh before the black sky
blushed soft purple with promise of new day
separating me from you
as earth from firmament,
forming boundaries everywhere
instead of simply being
happily entangled in
undefined twilight?
On some level, I know
you were just as selfish,
just as grateful for those broad,
quiet charcoal strokes
shared in faint starlight,
silently sucking our
pigment from sundown,
but no matter our
moon-soaked efforts,
morning always comes,
doesn’t it?
***
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 