Happy Birthday

As the years accumulate at an alarming rate,

I find myself staring thirty in the face.

Not that I doubt the math,

it's not the number of years that've passed,

so much as what they contain.

I thought there would be a You,

an as of yet imaginary You,

amongst other things

that I used to think.

No point in fretting,

time passes exponentially

perhaps to help us cope with

the spent year's regrets.

Solace in the multiple of bygones gone by,

knowing they ebb and flow quicker now,

time accumulating like credit card debt

wiping out misfortune by virtue of its vastness.

6 September 2012

2353

Company for One

                "How could we not
                 have become friends,
                 or the kind of enemies
                 who must talk into the night,
                 just one mistake away from love?"
                -Stephen Dunn, 'On the Way to Work'

It's just the turn of phrase
that my solitude enjoys.
It contains the perfect drop of sarcasm,
a dew of gentle depression,
an aroma of hope.
The poet shores up romanticism,
brewed over a careful cup of coffee
and perhaps a smoldering cigarette.
Brushing ashes off my page,
I imagine I know him
as his words seep into my consciousness,
coloring my thoughts with peaceful melancholy.
I pay my night in tithe to
our pitiful pact of hearts.

1 September 2012
2301

Dust to Dust

I recently had the fortune of hearing Pete Goss speak about his life and experiences on the high seas. If you've never heard of him, and I hadn't prior to that lecture, you should youtube him. His tale is pretty amazing.

He's a very unassuming sort of fellow; he got up on stage in front of a room full of up-and-coming fellows admixed with huge names in minimally invasive surgery, and began winding his engrossing tale that was meant to embody leadership. It did that, but walking away I was left more with a sense of the underwhelming nature of my own accomplishments in my very ordinary life.

He described his decision to build a ship and enter the Vendée Globe solo around the world yacht race; there is absolutely no way I can recreate the mesmerizing quality of his narration but the harrowing account involves a two day, hurricane accosted rescue mission of a fellow competitor who was, by doctor's accounts, hours from death. The frenchman he rescued was clinging to a life raft, having just jumped from his doomed vessel, clutching a bottle of champagne that floated up from the bowels of the ship as its last parting gift. Septic and starved, he came aboard stiff like rigor mortis had already set in though he hadn't yet succumbed. It also involved a desperate auto-surgery on a septic elbow aboard the high seas via a jerry-rigged setup of semi-sterile instruments, a mirror balanced upon a knee, a headlight, and a mainland orthopedic surgeon directing him via fax machine.

After this, he asked us if we'd like to hear his next story. The one he reckoned was the more interesting one. Dumbfounded, the audience as a whole mutely nodded our assent.

He's met the Queen of England, he's logged over 250,000 nautical miles, and in the end he shook his head staring out into the audience made up of surgeons and quietly said, "What you all do is truly extraordinary. I have such respect for the work you do."

Needless to say, most of us internally scoffed in amazement. Nothing I have accomplished seems particularly extraordinary or unattainable by my standards. In my mind, accurate or not, I don't really consider that I have excelled at anything thus far. Especially when performing a quick year-in-review, nothing about this collection of months strikes me as evidence to the contrary. It's had it's ups, but mostly it's been full of lows that have been lower than I've previously dealt with.

So anyway. Pete Goss somehow managed to make me realize that my life is ordinary, mundane. I will never meet the Queen of England, never sail around the world by myself, never be a name that anyone cares about, or a speaker anyone pays money to hear. And while that is mildly depressing, it is also humbling. None of my worries or concerns are really significant at all. Because my life hardly is. So 2012: The Year of Colossal Disasters will go down in no one's memory. Because I am forgettable. And so are my accomplishments, and failures.

Taken in that light, I might as well give up stressing. And spend more time reading about and experiencing the awe-inspiring world around me.

Cash For Pretense

Thank god I'm free.

It wasn't really one final failure,

so much as a series of trip-ups

of pigeon steps,

a stack of traceable

sequentially numbered moments.

Thank god it's over.

A few qwerty keystrokes

and history is rewritten:

it never happened;

'these aren't the Droids you're after'.

Thank god for pills and Paint.

We said let's not but 

shhh

we really did.

10 July 2012

2213

Last Call

Being as it's the Last One Ever 

it should be triumphant, finally final.

The great culmination of nineteen

thousand, two hundred plus hours;

I spend it dozing to Fratellis radio

and study materials with too lengthy answers;

then trauma in the witching hours,

stab wound to the neck finds me

pilfering textbooks at three am.

Her stoic lips tell no stories, so 

we settle for the men in blue.

The ghosts are close pre-dawn,

another face, eyes heavy with PCP-

lack of oxygen but somehow lucid.

If I sit up and open my eyes,

I can stare out the window into yours-

of a distant past reality, of course.

The skyline has subtly changed

but the sunsets are always the same.

We began the countdown

only to to find ourselves surprised

to arrive at zero.

16 June 2012

1803

YOLO

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Rainier Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet


#YouOnlyLiveOnce

Countdown

A blurred number down, only two to go.
We forget these endless days floating by,
nothing if not creatures of habit.
Time carries us forward, lullabied on its gentle waves,
placid on calm waters until
faced with change the sea breaks.
Picking up the past to ruminate
like smooth stones rolled in the palm,
we discover them innumerable and
smaller than life.
Faced with the options,
we find the only thing for it
is forward motion,
full steam ahead carried by momentum
pushing towards the infinitely finite.

21 Monday 2012
2251

John Steinbeck, On Love

New York
November 10, 1958


Dear Thom:


We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will answer it from hers.

First - if you are in love - that's a good thing - that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is in an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply - of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it - and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone - there is not possible harm in saying so - only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness in consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another - but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing it. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.


Love,

Fa

Here's History

Biopics have a way of making its subject larger than life.

It makes me wonder how much of the reality matches

the misty montages and sepia screen shots.

The chronicles of the beloved TV personality

somehow lull the mind into forgiveness of the

vices mentioned therein; whatever the poison might've been.

Married and divorced, and again, and again,

with infidelities and alcoholism casually tossed in.

Sons neglected, friends abandoned, and interviewees

continue to chime in- the late, the great, the entertainer,

the deep loss felt by a nation's brethren as one kin.

Larger than life, and alone at the end- the audience feels 

pity but you know this story, less the soundtrack and money;

we know the house stands of cards of our own making.

Aspiring to greatness, and even achieving that lofty reign

doesn't forgive the betrayals and choices, each decision

down a path that led to your solitude, self imposed, exiled in fame.

14 May 2012 

2210

Disconnected

Suddenly there is nothing,
just fuzzy radio silence.
A few clicks of the dial
and things fall out of sync.

White noise across the airwaves
something familiar and oddly correct,
jet engine humming on the wind.

Not that I wish it different anymore
but who knew even in this late hour
a chink remained in the armor,
an arrow in the quiver finds its mark again.

13 May 2012
2351

Type B

It's a crap shoot,
what humanity the trauma bay
will deliver during call.

It ends up being four
Type Bs,
their arrival proclaimed with the same letter,
not quite as acute as the As
but sometimes scarier for the enigma.

It can be anything,
these trauma activations.
College boys full of bravado
and nearly a fifth of Smirnhoff,
brought in by ambulance:
in this corner the contender,
man vs escalator.

Or next, glimpses into shadows,
underworlds of poverty and scandal,
rape and rival gangs,
sobering the spirit as
cops quietly ask questions,
waiting answers from bloody mouths.

Commonly, it's a motor vehicle collision-
not an accident
none of those in the trauma world.

Fender benders, T-bones, prolonged extrications,
a macabre box of chocolates.
When Lincoln Navigators meet aging Escorts,
the human body responds in incredible ways.
Lucky to be alive, we'll tell the parents,
even as the ventilator breaths for her,
as her broken bones lay in traction,
as her shattered kidney fights for salvation,
pelvis restored and bladder sutured,
knowing her teenage life is forever altered.
The best the scalpel repairs, the scars remain eternal.

9 April 2012
2203

Nothing More

It is a hard thing,

to turn around and walk away,

to continue forward motion

as my mind's eye watches things crumble.

It is especially hard

because I have known the stories

behind every brick, plank, and stone.

These are my pathways, our home.

The tide has turned

and I am told it is time to go.

Despite my hesitation, still

I am certain, I can do no more.

To this journey I have withheld nothing,

with patient hands my heart invested.

If this labor of mine cannot hold the future

then alas, my sorry steps have surely tried.

18 March 2012

2325

You People

'Homeless yet hopeful'
I like your style.
But I don't give you people dough-
A smile, sure.
We're all in it together.
You return the gesture,
and this time I think
you're a genuinely nice guy.
It's the first time I've felt
empathy for you people in a while.
Nobody's got it figured out.
So who knows,
hobo with the nice smile,
maybe you do.

29 February 2012
1712

Untitled

It's not like the missing-you-ache of any other relationship-
it's not a co-dependent, dysfunctional, deficient ache.
I am a whole person with you, unto myself.
It's not a consumed, infatuated, barren ache.
I am in love with you like grass grows green.
It's a subtle hint of you, a familiar ache.
I miss you in quiet Sunday nights
of TV and pasta for one, with room
for two on the couch, in the serving size of my soul.
I miss you in perusing the Arts section,
catching up on movies to see together
which we instead watch separately in cities apart.

19 September 2010
2153

Firefly

I think I would've done it, too.
He was doing all the right things.
and I was being
impulsive.
I closed my eyes
to focus.

Can you will yourself to hum?

Like most things visceral,
the harder you try the farther it fades.
I wasn't confused before,
I had made myself clear.
but the best laid plans.

Because there it was,
your voice not so much in my head
as in my conscience.
More than that
the memory of utter relief
that I could honestly answer no
when you asked
"was it anyone I know?"

20 February 2012
2320

Muir Woods After a Friday in the City

Better than coffee,
or hair of the dog.
Better than a slap in the face,
or greasy bar food.

My tonic?
A sturdy pair of shoes
and a long hike
through Middle Earth come alive,
with companions for exploration
         of trails and vistas,
         of evolution and adaptation.

My tonic?
A cup of good clean Earth.

20 February 2012
2333

Secret Garden

For girls,
the less you do it
the less you want it.
For me anyway.

Perhaps practice makes perfect
but it seems the longer I wait
the more it builds, the better.

Course lacking a partner
with which to practice
leaves it to fall by the wayside,
to rear up in unexpected explosions,
an untended garden
randomly bursting into fiery blooms.

3 February 2012
1933

Musings in Coach

In seat 14A
aboard United flight 2285
your life is distilled
to the confines of
your seat.

In the succinct 2x2x2
feet of space
I carefully arrange
foot, iPad, drink.

Airplane etiquette
is bizarre and dynamic
depending on your seatmate-
we can't all fly First.

Two strangers can
connect,
exchanging more than
incipient pleasantries.

Or,
stuck next to an oaf,
so physically unaware,
spreading mayo and crumbs
on your chair.

More likely to be
polite & normal.
"My reading light is broken,
may I borrow your's?"

Compact interactions,
humanity distilled to a drop,
a neighbor for 1400 miles
forgotten at the tarmac.

29 January 2012
1815

Thanks Alot

You know no one can say the phrase
"hill of beans"
without recalling classic Bogart.
Thanks to the silver screen it's unusable.

Shouldn't there be some kind of
language equivalent to anti-trust laws?
Some protection for the everyday poet
against blockbusters, indie flicks, and
young-adult best-selling trilogies?

How many idioms and phrases
must we see ruined before
something will be done?
Authors have rights, too.

Like the Oxford comma,
pregnant pauses, and speech fillers,
the valiant must champion the cause.
Grammar warriors, we unite to defend

the irrefutable rights of speech;
in a world of likes, umms, and txting,
someone must stand firm against the onslaught
of theirs, they'res, and theres.
#grammarsnob

29 January 2012
1647

Time on the Proverbial Couch

It is so much easier to write about things like

my encounter at the tanning salon,

where everyone thinks I'm there

for the same reason I assume they are.

Which is funny because I'm not white.

At the same time, it's nice to feel Normal

like I Fit In, even as I'm indignant 

because I hate the smell of roasting flesh.

I'm there because winter makes my skin worse.

My mind goes into withdrawal 

and my body follows suit,

longing for dregs of Vitamin D.

As opposed to my afternoon in the OR,

excising breast cancer with Dr. K.

Dr. K chats as he supervises me working,

ensuring no errant artery or nerve is led asunder.

We stumble upon the topic of my parents

and suddenly there's too much to say,

a paucity of words with which to say it,

and too many ancillary ears waiting to hear.

We're past the point in the case requiring concentration,

now it's rote muscle memory, closing in layers,

bringing the tissues back together minus the tumor.

Dr. K knows I'm struggling- he always knows, 

whether it's with the case or the conversation-

and he leaves it be.

"Good job, doctor" and he shakes my hand

over the sterile field like he is sometimes wont to do,

but this time he gives me an extra pat.

19 January 2012

2020

Pathos

I have a friend named Calvin

who spreads shit

and tells lies

but somehow brings it back

to how much he loves 

You,

The best of friends.

Except let's be honest,

his name isn't "Calvin".

Identities have been changed 

to protect the innocent,

unlike "Calvin" who's as innocent

as he is guilty as sin.

We coddle him,

shield him from his reality,

a tacit understanding among friends.

A reticent river of deep dark secrets,

sinister insecurities only to him.

It's hard to resist pity,

until you've shared a drink

which often turns into ten,

followed by reckless abandon,

"Calvin" pushing away

the demons in his head.

9 January 2012

2200

Heavy Metal

The gym smells of sweat and impermanence.

Solid black rows of silent weights 

next to panels of unblinking mirrors.

Maybe that's why the gym brings

such excellent stress relief.

While daily tribulations bear down

like the weight of the world,

heavy as the bar you struggle against,

the sweat dries and the machines forget.

The scales always stand ready,

the machines unyielding to infinite reps.

Like the gentle ebb and flow of one's physique-

gym goers tending toward the extra holiday cookie or two,

then toning their resolve with a new year

or the impending specter of bikinis and the pool-

problems take on new perspective.

Unfeeling rows of ellipticals ridden round the moon

have pedaled through the break ups, the take overs, 

the buy outs and the meltdowns,

have transformed the energy of every saddled rider

into tighter abs and leaner thighs

and brought them through to the other side,

arriving at a finish line though stationary the whole time.

4 January 2012

2245

Conversations in the Car

"I'm a feminist!" she declared,

eyebrows raised.

He looked at her askance,

doubt in his features.

"Really?" he questioned,

"it just seems"

his voice trailed off,

dot dot dot.

"What?" she wanted to know.

"Well your past hardly seems the feminist ideal" he countered,

almost apologetically.

She sighed and shook her head.

If only the heart could be made to listen to the mind more often.

3 January 2012

0700

Melancholia

Crazy's only crazy until it really is the end.

Then all of your worries about the worth of the world

are suddenly validated.

Put another way, maybe mental illness is relative to its context.

For example, we'd all seem a little insane

preoccupied with raking the leaves and watering the lawn,

making our endless to-do lists and resolutions,

crossing and adding, subtracting and erasing,

if in reality, the world really was coming to an end

hurtling toward a hidden planet hitherto unknown.

It would be beautiful though,

a fiery apocalypse to end the earth

with dueling stars across the sky

and surreal shadows slipping across the lawn.

Then suddenly her crazy obsession 

with the end

and the evil of humanity

transforms from a deluded rant

into prophesy.

3 January 2012

0630

Juxtaposition

The little men saunter with such swagger,

perfect miniatures of the world around them.

Big brown eyes amidst a sea of cornrows, 

there's a startling contrast of hardness and light.

It's unnerving to see them walk with an affected limp,

puffy coats shrugged past small shoulders,

perfectly imitated versions of their reality.

It serves as an unavoidable reminder

that we are so much a product of environment,

that little men become full fledged adults

molded by the society inculcated unto them.

Their tiny Tims walk down self fulfilling prophesies,

coerced into stereotypes we've perpetuated.

3 January 2012

2205

Down the Rabbit Hole

Over the years, I have found I curse my memory often.

Thoughts tumble out my ears with each turn of my head.

For important moments I focus hard,

willing my brain to imprint each word, each inflection.

It succeeds with intermittent success.

The mundane activities, the everyday life,

washes by like the eternal current of a river,

peaceful or raging but traceless.

Knowing these moments will grow mossy with age

no matter how I dam the flow or direct the stream

fills me with frustration, or sadness.

My friend, who's robotic memory churns out dates and minutae,

says it's a blessing to forget.

He keeps it all, the good, the bad, the painful,

the best forgotten.

Maybe I'd agree with him if the forgetting were volitional.

As it stands, on the whole I'd say he comes out ahead.

At least he'd remember cracking roasted chestnuts,

champagne in the glow of the ball drop,

jello and reunions to the tune of country music

Even if it comes along with every evil thing said,

every moment of self-doubt and regret.

2 January 2012

2330