Poems — Comments Off
30
Oct `10

Sunny Days

I hadn’t written a poem in over twelve years when yesterday I was inspired to do just that. What follows is a poem about lovers and friendships and all human interaction. For me, it’s about how silence is far more damaging than true conflict and how by trying to preserve someone else’s feelings, you make an enemy of them.

Many of my friendships and relationships have unfolded this way. For those of you, like me, who dislike conflict, I challenge you to tell your friend their breath smells bad—politely, of course. I challenge you to tell your wife that something about her drives you nuts, or that you disagree with her on some fundamental level. Trust is the freedom to be honest about what is going on in your heart. If you cannot tell your friend or lover what you feel, if you don’t feel safe, then tell him or her that.

Don’t make your best friend your enemy. If you do, you’ll suffer the worst kind of pain: the kind where honesty isn’t permissible.

Sunny Days

The foe not crossed on sunny days
or days less sunny still.

Cursed smiles abound
to appease her—or me—
with arms not in hands
daggers in silences grow.

In silence each bled to death;
a thousand cuts endured.
Not for love or lust or fidelity
but for sunny days in trust.

Trust not abound in silences
nor smiles nor sunny days nor promises next.
Though it did and does rain,
trust died here in the fear of getting wet.

And each does lie and die
in smiling silence,
as smiling, crying take each their
beloved as their foe.

Here on sunny days.

The Moose — 1 comment
17
Mar `10

Hungry Cat

My housemates’ cat is hungry and especially affectionate towards me this morning.

I choose not to feed the cat.

The cat likes me more.

I walk to the laundry room and switch the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer and the cat thinks I am going to feed him. The cat’s food bowl is in the laundry room. The cat runs ahead of me, anticipating that his need will be filled.

He no longer cares that I am here to feed him. He only cares that he is going to be fed.

I return to the kitchen where the burr grinder has finished crunching the coffee beans and I make my coffee. The cat’s tail wraps around my ankle and he sits there, purring loudly, with fondness, caring and affirmation for me. I walk away from the cat. He swats at me. He is now angry that I am not providing for him that which he expects. He is mad. I pet the cat on the head, but not because I like him.

He now is lying in the middle of the floor on his back, apparently in protest.

Perhaps, I hate cats so much because we are so much alike.

Career / The Moose — 2 comments
12
Mar `10

Six inches

I wear size nine-and-a-half shoes. I’m five-foot, nine-inches tall. I weigh 168 pounds. I wear size medium shirts. My waist is twenty-nine inches. My IQ is somewhere around 135. I got A’s in college, but really, I deserved B’s. I swear sometimes. I try to be nice to everyone I meet. I drive a few miles per hour over the speed limit, and I’m rarely late. I try to floss every day, but sometimes every other day is all I can manage.

I’m not overly handsome, nor overly homely. I don’t do any better or worse with women than the next guy. I rarely go out to eat, but when I do, I go to places like Applebee’s and Chili’s. When I’m feeling fancy, I’ll eat at Macaroni Grille or The Cheesecake Factory. I drive a Jeep. I get embarrassing pimples usually a half-dozen times a year. I get less sleep than is required. When I chew gum, I get that white stuff in the corners of my mouth. If I fart in public, I make that disgusted look like someone else around me did it.

I’m divorced, which I guess is normal. My marriage lasted just two-months longer than the marriages of my counterparts who get divorced their first go round. I couldn’t have 2.5 kids, so rounded up to three beautiful children. I am possibly changing careers for the first time in my life, which statistics say will be the first of six career changes for me.

By all accounts, I’m average, or at least that is the way I have been living. That’s what I have been telling myself.

Average is safe. So long as I’m not the worst, no one can ridicule me, and, until recently, my attitude and belief has been that there is always someone better than me. We use averages to determine our social norms so that we can function as a society. It’s good to know that on average, the cost of goods and services increases annually by three to four percent. That is a useful average. It’s good to know that my average amount of my average pay check. The process of adding everything together and divvying up is quite a useful function, but it has created a culture that inhibits people becoming their best; it has created a culture that on average, has kept me average.

I’m not being fair to society, It’s not society’s fault that there are elite and derelict. It’s not society’s fault that one man chooses to be a homeless alcoholic while another chooses to create a software company who’s annual sales are greater than some country’s gross national product. It’s not society’s fault that the majority of the people straddle some bell-curve and never deviate from the standard deviation. It’s not society’s fault that when I stand naked before a mirror, all I see (sigh) is average.

I choose to believe that my life, and my circumstances are those of my own making. I mean that on a much deeper level than it may readily seem. I mean, everything about my life is my own making. From my financial state (considering the current recession and my present career—average), to my physical health. All of it is my own making. My anxieties, fears, hopes, dreams, my mid-life crisis; all my own creation, all average.

Average doesn’t just happen to someone, they choose it, I chose it. No one just winds up poor or sick or depressed or an alcoholic, they chose it. Bill Gates, did not just happen to become one of the most wealthy men in the world. He chose that life. On some fundamental level we all choose our outcomes. We chose our outcomes, consciously or not, but choosing out present thoughts and attitudes. Me? I have chosen to be average; until now.

“Men do not attract that which the want, but that which they are. … Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”
- James Allen (1864-1912)

There is no one on this planet better at being me, than me. Today, I think that instead of being average, I’ll just be myself. I’m pretty sure that Jack Ensor does not live at the top of some curve; but rather, in the extremes. I will be great or I will be awful, a total success or a total failure. Good, fair, mediocre, average: these just wont do.

To be continued…

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