Faking it

of all the things we pretend
a la “fake it til you make it”
the second most dangerous is
“fine.”
...
and since you are wondering,
the most dangerous fake is “a surgeon.”








February 2020

Beneath the bridge

What lies beneath
allowing the world we know
is what was built within,
hidden against the stream
made of heavy beams we never see.
Until the anger of an afternoon
homeless in the gathering dark
drives us to this mirthless embrace,
and then we see, as we had not before
of what unyielding strength
this world is truly made.



January 2020

Why bother?

Why bother to care
if we are but passing through—
but that’s obscene; we do
of course, & sometimes that
is the only thing that lasts.

January 2020

Some days

Some days I am an animal biting myself.
Some days I am the memory of an unwanted gift.
Some days I am the blemish on a gilded picture frame.

Some days I do not fit
into the spaces meant for me; not
even on the highways built for strangers;
not even as a gentle friend.

Some days I am misplaced.
Some days I am my own dark imagination of myself.
Some days I am a thousand mild annoyances.

There will be better days
There will be worse days
These days are only middling
But when the universe has tilted
Listing to one side, still—

Some days I am the sidewalk underfoot
students bickering sourly about their love,
rotting & spoiled: no longer a comfort
but a threat, a catch in the throat, a snarl.

Some days I am all mast and no hull.

Some days I must remind myself
I have a right to be here.

January 2020

Troubles

What troubles us
who have too much?
For those with nothing
only dream of having
more—a little or a lot.
But what do we dream of,
whose lives are the stuff
of others’ dreams?
Behind our kids and schools,
our friends and marriages,
after work, after full meals,
in every thread & fabric
of our interknit community
we whisper in the dark
of an unknown malaise.
Why aren’t we happier?
You knew us well, Viktor,
to see our need for meaning—
and what is that, but love
for one another? Love
(without which we are a
clanging Nothing)—but
like everything else,
we have too much.
So then we dream,
subconscious & opposite:
of having less.

January 2020