I'm Always Letting People Down

I’m always letting people down
Wearing clothes unfashionable or antiquated
Sending cards not at all, or else belated
Mistakes far too many to be adumbrated
I try to keep up with projects, but mostly I drown
One skill I've mastered: letting people down

I’m always letting people down
Sending lame gifts to nephews and nieces
Breaking dishes (“pay attention!”) to thousands of pieces
Arriving late to weddings as dignity decreases
Still hung over from a night on the town
Trying to smile while letting people down

I’m always letting people down
Arriving late to jury duty
Getting distracted by physical beauty
Cranking out schlock as if I were Hootie
Facial muscles of course default to a frown
It’s exhausting letting people down

I’m always letting people down
Leaving scars in affairs romantic
Leaving late for the airport, and then getting frantic
Self-absorbed (obviously) to an extent gigantic
Heavy the head that wears the crown
Of the king of letting people down

I'm always letting people down
The verdict is clear: you must face it
As for your life, best just erase it
Life’s for the competent—you just debase it
When you're 90 and sitting in your dressing gown
You'll at least have your memories—of letting people down

My Computer Does What It Wants

My computer does what it wants
It toys with my emotions
and laughs at me.

Maybe I deserve this, I mean
After all
I did move some pictures from a folder (“My Pictures”)
into an app (“Photos”)
Inadvertently triggering some setting
Evidently called “Remind me of things I’d rather forget”
Big mistake, Pal!

So now I’m constantly looking up to find
That my laptop is displaying
Random collages of photos
The one with my friend
Putting lobster claws on his head
Like he’s a crustacean himself
During a trip to Portland, Maine
That one’s not so bad

But then there are the photos
From that work conference
From the job I’m trying to forget
And never even wanted in the first place
A symbol of how everything got off track
And never recovered

Luckily my laptop is there
To remind me of it
Whenever I stop typing for two minutes
Painful memories
Constantly repackaged in new collages
As if it’s doing something helpful
While silently torturing me
Like an infuriating “friend.”

Political Poetry

"Trying to put food on your family." 

For some reason this absurd Bushism 

Popped into my head today

And I was reminded of how long we lived like that

Subjected to the inane babblings

Of the (unfortunately for us)

"Leader of the free world." 

Its kind of amazing 

Years of "heh heh"s and ersatz cowboy posturing 

The occasional hilarity 

Always overcome 

By the cringeworthy ridiculousness  

And the realization that 

He was (unfortunately for everyone)
our representative to the world. 

They weren't dangerous per se

These ridiculous utterances

"We will be greeted as liberators"

To name but one example of others

Infinitely more destructive 

So I shouldn't be too hard on him

And I know it's long in the past by now...

Just that it somehow occurred to me
And like certain yoooooooge pronouncements 

From today's political figures 

Those sayings do have a certain poetry to them

For better or for worse
They belong to us; we can't escape them 

They have become our poetry

The poetry of the damned. 

Sorting Things Out

Getting rid of things is all the rage these days
Minimalism, letting things go, downsizing
aka
Throwing things out.
“Does it spark joy?”
If not it’s gone!
Experts enlighten me
Let go of the past so you can be in the present
And future
Grow into who you were meant to be.

Okay but

Sorting out an old box the other day
I came across Chicago Cubs batting glove
Its visage jumped out at me
Like the face of an old friend
Coming around a corner.
I remembered putting it on when I was maybe fourteen
Feeling the cool vinyl against my skin
Clenching and loosening my fist
The glove taut against it.

Back then

The whole world was
Lee Smith bringing the high heat
Or Gary Mathews (“the Sarge”)
“It might be, it could be, it is! A home run.”
The boy who wore that glove is gone of course (mostly)
And I have to let him go (but not yet?)
I can't say joy was what I felt
And yet I can’t deny the wonder
Of coming face to face with him
So unexpectedly.

Is that so wrong?

Haiku

Small purple flower
Blooms as winter wind attacks
An inspiration

Haiku

A red cardinal
Pops against barren park grass
Winter’s spell broken

Haiku

Brown sparrows pecking
While huddled against the cold
Two cities at once

Mindfulness

In
Out
In
Out
In
Out
Phwlllll, Phwlllll
In
OutIn
Out
Phwlllll, PhwlllllIn 
Out
That kind of sounds like a pigeon…
In
Out
In
Out
HOLY SHIT THAT PIGEON IS RIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOW AND I’M GOING TO BE DOING “PIGEON INSIDE MY GODDAMN APARTMENT” MEDITATION IN ABOUT TWO SECONDS IF I DON’T CLOSE THE FUCKING WINDOW RIGHT NOW!!!
Okay whew I’m glad that’s done
In
OutIn
Out
Maybe that was too reactive
No, you did good; that was totally the right thing to do
Cool, thanks
In
Out
In
Out
In 
Out  

Haiku

Gulls by the Seaport
Over the frigid waters
There’s no beach for miles

Picking a Few Bones With John Stuart Mill

“To say that we know not
what does or does not lead to happiness
is as high a pitch, I think,
as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical discourse.”
For a long time I had this quote lodged in my mind
Spoke it often in conversation
One of the last bits of intellectual sediment
That had settled on the riverbed of my mind
After a freshman year philosophy class.

But when I came across the text years later
A long search for the quote
Turned up nothing.
Had I just made it up?
Despite the mellifluous phrasing
It occurs to me that the sentiment may be mistaken
If indeed it exists at all.

He also wrote (as I recall)
Regarding the pleasures of intellectual pursuits
"Better to be Socrates dissatisfied
Than a pig satisfied."
On lonely Sunday afternoons
I'm not so sure about that one either. 

Haiku

Necklace of bare bulbs
In new condo construction
Snowflakes, urban-style?

What You Said

“You’re wearing your
end-of-year pants,”
I thought you said,
about the ones striped blue and white
but it was “engineer pants.”
Same thing
They’re now end-of-year pants
To me

“I’m not a pizza,”
You said one time
“You can’t just call and have me show up
within 30 minutes.”
But what if I’m hungry
For you?

Haiku

White chimney smoke framed
By wintry Brooklyn blue sky
You have to look up

Oh, New Year

Oh, New Year

There you go again

Sneaking up on me, surprising me

Making me feel hope 

and possibility (if only for a little while) 

Like an ex-lover 

Bumped into

At the coffee shop 

“What are the chances?”

With awkward hellos

Becoming shy smiles

And a touch of the arm 

And soon enough

I hear myself saying

“Maybe we should give it another shot

This time it could be great, right?”