Monthly Archives: November 2012

Thank You, and Thanks

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So I want to (slightly-belatedly) thank everybody for reading, liking, commenting, sharing, etc. I haven’t been posting quite as frequently as I was hoping to when I started this site, mostly because I’m lazy, and in the battle between writing and watching How I Met Your Mother reruns, How I Met Your Mother wins like pretty much all of the time. But I have been writing more, and I will take small victories over no victories.

Please feel free to provide feedback if you read something that resonates (and share – I appreciate the shares), or even if you read something you don’t like, let me know why, and after spending a few hours despondent in a dark room with a bottle of Jameson and my Smiths albums, maybe I will emerge from it a better writer. Just kidding about the dark room. I take criticism much better than most dictators and about equally as well as the hitchhiker from There’s Something About Mary.

So in summary, thanks to Cobie Smulders, Jameson whiskey, the Farrelly brothers and Morrissey. And to everyone who has been reading, thanks especially.

And, I hear you: there should be fewer pop culture references than there are short paragraphs in a blog post. That’s a great rule to live by, and I’ve broken that rule, and next time I’ll do better. Thanks again.

Hemingway at the 231st St. Station

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when she’s gone for days, I read Hemingway
and write her compact texts in his style,
until I meet her, later, at the station,
arms full of nothing
in preparation for her slender frame.

when she’s gone for weeks, I read Bukowski
and become increasingly lecherous and erratic,
cringing at every evidence of promiscuity,
calling bets and bluffs, equally
reckless and indiscreet.

when she’s gone for months, it’s undeniable;
I’m dense but not delusional.
I drive towards Martinsville with Kerouac
and wonder when a new destination
will replace the 231st St. Station,
and who else will be worth waiting for?

fragile things (Humpty Dumpty redux)

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To be fair, the horses never stood a chance.
Chide the novice journalist for his frivolous poetic turn, and
focus instead on the men, learned, presumably, qualified
to succeed at this the most seemingly crucial
of reconstruction projects.

Convene again the learned minds, and begin the root cause analysis
(an expansive list of scapegoats and red herrings), and point
to causes vaguely while reciting the most cloying monologue
from your favorite romantic comedy. But strike through

fragility is an unacceptable excuse, because
nothing not fragile is worth writing rhymes about;
nothing not fragile is worth fixing.

Point less-vaguely towards complacency. After
years of chewing gum and duct tape repairs,
their wrenches had rusted in tool sheds,
and so Humpty died, a victim of gravity
and oxidation.

And clearly, he was out of place. Eggs and
ledges do not combine. There was likely signage
pictorially representing what we scoff at, never
fear, until we, vivacious, oblivious, enliven
those crude, black on yellow icons.

Chide the novice poet for moralizing, but

there is nothing you can say
to the invincible collective, prior, and now
it would be crass, so stay quiet and lament
that the most fragile among us don’t keep to lower ledges
even after we fall victim to failure, inevitable
and universal as children’s rhymes.