success

April 19, 2023

WHEN

“When all else fails.” Oh, how I hate that phrase. Plan Omega perhaps, but how do they know all else has failed. Did they make a list? And just perhaps did one else succeed just a little. I mean failure ought to be complete. I know it never is, and if it isn’t tha complete failure then it was at least partially a success in that binary logic. So how do you ever get to when all else fails? God forbid you do, I don’t want to think about hearing “when all failed” for there is nothing to say after that is there?

December 29, 2022

BUSINESS SUITS

“What do you think is the likelihood
of success in the long run,” she asks,
and I watch the fly land on my forearm,
perched on hairs that barely

bend under his inconsequential weight.
His wings are a perpetual twitch,
almost unseen, and felt only as a faint
breeze in my imagination, while a world

is created, a reality collapses, a butterfly
is born and dies, and the fly stares at me
a thousand faces the same, each processed
in turn, digested and stored in

a finite space, overwritten by
the next face, flower, while
his tongue unfurls, flicks and sucks
on a bead of sweat at my elbow.
“Not very good,” I respond.

First Published in the 2005 Scars Publications Poetry Wall Calendar

November 19, 2022

EXTINCT

You want us to believe
you are small, kind creatures
sucking hungrily on the teat
of democracy.

We see you for who
you really are, parasites
who would suck the teat
dry until democracy
withered and died.

Some believe you,
accept you blindly
but what will they do
if you succeed, for like
any invasive species
when the host is gone
there is only mourning.

November 20, 2021

KEEPING TO THE SCHEDULE

The cat has had a busy day,
supervising all manner
of domestic affairs, all
the while offering
a running commentary
on our successes
and failures in the use
and maintenance
of her home.

She did take time
for several pettings
and brushings, necessary
she says, to keep our
joints lubricated as we
get down to the floor
or flex our wrists.

She reminded us
it was time
to feed her, then
walked away, noting
it was time
to feed her, not
necessarily time
for her to eat.

September 15, 2021

CAREER CHOICES

We were certain then that we’d be
a success in life, that we’d drive
the kind of cars our fathers
only dreamed of as our mothers
chuckled about mid-life crises.

They spoke about sons and daughters
of friends who were doctors,
or at least lawyers, bemoaned
those who taught or held jobs
they called manual labor.

But we were going in a whole different
direction, we would eschew medicine,
reject law, for we would be titans
of retail, and one day we would have
too many lemonade stands to count.

July 4, 2021

THE CHARM

The first one felt right,
there was nothing deeper considered,
just that feeling that now,
I know, anyone might have provided
but then, it was something
in a world of nothing.

The second, really, was
certainly right, for life this time,
the wisdom of a single failure
enough to ensure success,
and when it came apart
thirty years later, it was
apparent it was never right,
just more than nothing.

This one is right, for it
does not require feeling so,
merely being in her presence,
a completeness I never knew,
which explains why this time
nothing can get in the way
of the ultimate everything.

May 8, 2021

HOUSING CRISIS

I laid it out
with great care, insured
that it comported both
with my idea and sound engineering.

I drew it with
a draftsman’s pencil,
measured each dimension
at least twice, visually
tested every joint.

It ws the culmination
of a lifetime of trying,
my final success, after
which I would stop,
there being no need
to improve on almost perfection.

Building it took time,
but I completed it,
finished it, and readied
it for display to the world.

The dog walked over,
looked in, looked quizically
at me, and raised his leg
at the neatly arched entrance.

January 26, 2020

MEDITATION

A wise Buddhist teacher
once told me that anything you do,
if you do it mindfully, can be
a form of meditation, and I have
taken this into my practice,
albeit with mixed success, but that
is one reason they call it practice.

Walking silently, following
your breath in and out, aware
of your feet, the earth, the sky
is definitely meditative.

Chopping onions, carefully drawing
the knife thorough the layers
creating neatly incised bits
is certainly meditative.

Sitting by a pond watching
the sun slowly set it ablaze
as the breeze ruffles the surface
is absolutely meditative.

But folding laundry, no matter
how mindfully I approach the task
always and quickly morphs into
a mindless search for the missing sock.