The Presentation

She laughs, but not with her eyes,
which widely bear down on mine:
desperate with feigned confidence,
tinged with distracted desire--then
on to the next face, and the next,
before clicking back to me. I meet
her gaze evenly, unspeaking, offer
an attentive face from the crowd.
Happy with my bureaucratic excuse
to look unfettered at a pretty face,
I’m waiting for the meeting's end, for

the next thing, and the next, until
I click back home at night, feeling
vacant toward familiar faces, which
often for obscure reasons, I avoid.

The news proclaims another man
met ruin for some lust-filled act; and
in between the faces of my worlds,
I imagine myself in such a place.
The scene opens: I have found
success, and fame, and riches,
which in movies associates with
easy sex and women, of course.
But the dawn of wealth brings
no girls with kind desires for me;
no gentle flirts to capture all my
vacant thoughts, nor coy smiles
to inflate my vacant heart. And yet
what I have has no mystery; while
to what intrigues me, I have no right.
The weak man's simple conceit--to
gaze in silence, never to touch--seems
incomplete now, surrounded by this
newfound glitz and glamour. How did
this impoverished desire survive
my overwhelming wealth and fame?!
--And yet it does, and crushes all...

Snapping back, I drop this gaze,
ashamed even of the line of thoughts,
and wait for the pretty face to let us go.
I'll hold a familiar hand tonight, and gaze
unfettered at the pretty face I know.




nov 2017

Masks

One day I wore my mask askew,
to see if anyone could glimpse
whether I still had a face behind.
But neither she nor anyone
looked long enough to tell;
this, I suspect, because
on balance—I mean, every
human being on the scale—
we hate ourselves
more than each other,
and want to love
far more than we do.

November ‘17

Meetings

In college I had a friend
Who’d “live slowly” in the days
Before heading home to Mississippi;
He said it slowed down time,
Elongating the moments he cared about.
Time, being something we can only
Perceive, seemed to comply.
But I would live quickly through
All my loves, my joys and laughter,
I would diminish every intimacy,
Every tenderness and treasure,
Just to knock a second off this meeting
About our time management and
Milestones or whatever other nonsense
Bureaucratic buzz word you’re saying
Right now.

Crows in the fall

Crows in the fall
make their long calls
in three cries
and live, on average,
8 years; so the birds I heard as a child,
from the woods behind the nursing home
where Great Grandma Gow died
are, like her, all dead
ten or more years hence—
while their sad, wise cries
still echo in my head,
and I can still hear my Great Grandma Gow
scold my scrawny other-self
for being a child out of bed;
can feel the hot retort in my chest
even now: that I wanted to see
my parents going to the car.
Before we would leave, my parents
would talk at length in quiet tones
to my father’s parents, as the kids
ran around the lot, and I would caw
back at my friends the crows.




October 2017