I think it would inform us to exchange
announcements about diet, fitness goals,
and other resolutions with a range
of news reporting relapse in controls.
Do you agree? Or would it be too strange,
to share the fail or fracture in the roles,
and mention not the subtle slide to grace,
when we succeed at soft and steady pace?
(Ottava Rima)
I call them assholes when I’m in my place
and talking to myself, without controls,
of those who snipe and won’t confront my face.
I call them assholes.
They suffer vacancies within their souls,
and feel correction as profound disgrace
(like blame and shame in lieu of growing goals).
I seek to limit error. I replace
what failed and try informing other roles.
Accused of yell and rush for talk and pace,
I call them assholes.
(Roundel)
I know a forceful personality,
who might have made a most impressive man,
but culture deemed her shrill, and family
was sore the more she nonconformed to plan.
They said she was a strident know-it-all,
(who loved to learn and talked to get response).
Her mother shushed her, trying to forestall
the fits, who never mastered nonchalance.
Two weeks ago amid the pain, she said
“They think I’m tough. They only see my shell,
but inside I’m as soft as mush instead.
Don’t you agree? I think you know me well.”
And so we stopped to sense what she forgot.
We laughed together then. For who is not?
I don’t recall exact atrocities,
but I remember hating English class
most years of secondary school. The keys
to wit and eloquence were not dispensed.
The teachers made us write down summaries
and our reactions – called them book reports.
Diverting me from plots and mysteries
to lit I loathed was teaching from the ass,
but they did not deflect me from degrees.
(Magic 9)
I planned to do complete home exercise
today, but too much mucus changed the plot.
I got through half but had to leave the prize –
I feared the problem’s aging, but it’s snot.
He registers embarrassment because
I grinned at him, although my smile had
no relevance to any of his flaws –
of course I never meant to make him sad.
Her feelings have been bruised. With hurt she’s full,
and so she flails internally at those
she says she loves but holds responsible.
Her pain’s the only clarity she knows.
Apparently it isn’t rare to find
such instances of misdirected blame.
I’ve friends and relatives, acute and kind,
who seek to give their sadness someone’s name
beside their own, their vision steadfastly
away from self and dagger-shot at me.
Review the choices made when you were 8,
for everyone gets hurt in childhood,
but most survive to age and recreate,
with strategies and tactics that were good
enough to serve them then, but rarely worth
continuing to use when they’re mature.
I watch too many suffering a dearth
of wisdom, still repressed and insecure.
A story is a popular device
as old as song, as ancient as cave art.
It can be utilized to give advice,
or illustrate a precept, or to start
a way of thought-in-action, but the tale
cannot be messy like reality.
Too accurate a plot or foe will fail.
A narrative must simplify, to be.
A saga can explain or entertain,
but first it must eliminate the murk
that complicates existence. Please refrain
from falling for the myths in fiction work.
You’re armed but mustn’t heed the author tricks.
You should have outgrown gullible at 6.
He wants me misremembering his past,
as if his wife were honest even then,
his mother kind, his party life a blast.
Another whom I’ve talked with all her life
describes herself as if she has amassed
a history of work she never did.
And then there’s my obsession, by contrast:
to not forget. Remind me once again –
I can’t make others’ recollections last.
(Magic 9)
She got too high last night. She reached the stage
of almost seeing double. To assuage
the symptoms, she tried counting up to ten
while blinking and refocusing again,
acknowledging she wasn’t feeling sage.
She didn’t have to drive. The only wage
she paid – embarrassment and inward rage –
was quite sufficient punishment for when
she got too high.
She failed adjusting dosage for her age.
A little pot and wine unlocked her cage
that never would have rocked her young, but then
it also wouldn’t stir this morning’s pen.
An aging character misplaced her gauge –
she got too high.
(Rondeau)
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