It’s time for a moratorium On worries and procrastination, On moorings and parking meters And slipped opportunities. It’s time for a rucksack manifesto. A few lines from one of my current favorites. It's still a rough, rough draft. I've been dancing with it for longer than almost anything else in this project. I've given up repeatedly, abandoned it, tried to forget about it. But it keeps ...
Midlife Poems
Handmade Notes
If you receive a wrinkled Sheet with wine rings and Almost illegible green ink, Forgive cryptic penmanship, Carets and inline doodles. I wanted to share my words With you. And no one else. Smudges and all. (Source: "Handmade Notes", 40x41: Midlife Crisis Postponed) This is the last stanza of a tribute to handwritten communication in an era of digital everything. Yes, I wrote it on my iPhone. No, ...
Paris by Night
Perhaps we all live in darkness, drawn to the flicker of light emanating from a fading affair, vagrants bumping clumsily, intentionally, hungrily in a Paris night. (Source: "Paris by Night", 40x41: Midlife Crisis Postponed) Some poems are conceived of tenderness. Others erupt violently, gasping for air. This turgid fragment from a prose poem called "Paris by Night" is neither tender nor ...
Noise
A garbage truck thunders past, doubling the thirty mile per hour speed limit. Then a slow car. And another. Then quiet except for the crinkle-strain-crinkle-strain of the palm paddles on the ceiling fan above my head. Type. Click, click, click. (Source: "Sound Escape", 40x41: Midlife Crisis Postponed) Excerpted from a soundscape poem originally called "Bucolic Study", but probably eventually ...
Italic
Headlong toward My emphatic point Pressed earnestly in- To and through type. Pedal to the mettle. Stop. Go. No typo. Race over. Stand up. Straight. Still. Again. (Source: "Italic", 40x41: Midlife Crisis Postponed) Movement, motion, emphasis. Willful progress. Eagerness. The lines above come from a compact riff called "Italic". Explaining more would be saying too much about a poem that ...
Twitch
ADHD today, but a twitch in 1975. And a twitch again today, but just a small twitch like a miniature heart beating in plain view to remind me I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive. (Source: "Twitch", 40x41: Midlife Crisis Postponed) Before ADHD was so tidily packaged up, some of us were just jittery, distracted kids. Hyper. But totally alive! This excerpt pops up midstream a poem about a subtle, ...