Month: October 2009

Getting and Spending
Ask the serious men who study joy and bring to bear
the rigor your old profs would praise.
They know what works – It’s not pretty,
but spreadsheets rarely are.

You’ll find a template in the better academic rags:
Daily measurement of function, frequency, lability, and depth.
Careful record kept of enlightenment anticipated
and the extent it gets achieved.

From there, it’s quick enough (as these things go)
to find the measure of your heart’s desire,
show cost-basis, year-to-date, of what you’ve felt,
and chart your benefits and costs.

And when you’ve mapped your course and all that’s left
is living it — seek other counsel, perhaps your own.

This week’s New Yorker has an ad for Range Rover featuring a claim that it has eyes in the front, back, and side of it’s head.

People have been fired for a lot less than a misplaced apostrophe in an expensive ad campaign, particularly one targeted at presumably well-read consumers.

Then again, if you’re going to sink that kind of cash into that kind of clunker, maybe you’re not the sort to quibble about grammar. Or build quality.

I didn’t like the close on that first version. This seems cleaner, but I’m not 100% satisfied.

Barnacles
These are not accomplishments:
Surviving a year, falling in love, making a promise, taking a loan.
Granted well-timed birth, propensity to books and worry,
proper schools, I passed by luck
(and care and wealth, not mine)
through the shoals of idiot youth–
I’ve done precious little on my own.

A man thirtyish, married and mortgaged —
As notable as a barnacle who’s found a hull.
And yet of note: In all the sea we’ve found our place,
latched on, and won’t let go.

Barnacles
These are not accomplishments:
Surviving a year, falling in love, making a promise, taking a loan.
Born in the right place with an inclination to books and worry,
taught in proper schools, passed by luck
(and care and wealth, not mine)
through the shoals of idiot youth,
I’ve done precious little of my own.

A man who’s thirtyish, married and mortgaged
hardly deserves more celebration than a barnacle who’s found a hull.
And yet no less: We’ve found our place, latched on, and won’t let go.

Don’t claim there’s nothing left for the working man
not when two hours off the books at Y-Not
gets you a 30-pack of Keystone for the weekend,
not when Frank and the boys get off work at the house of pizza
and come by with a pie and a dimebag,

and say Pat knows a guy at the garage who can hook you up
with a shady reg sticker and some new used tires.
It’s not much and it’s not easy,
but listen to Tony’s dad some time when he’s drunk
and starts to talk about the old days.
It never was much, never was easy,
but if you’re not too proud to do what needs done
you’ll have a case for the weekend
and bullshit to tell the boys at work on Monday.

On Gratitude
These thank-you cards get more sincere each time –
Not that I know what to do with crystal candlesticks
but that someone moved enough to give them
and their motion moved me in turn
to put my gratitude in ink, affix a stamp and formally thank
my great aunt, my parents, hers,
the barber and tailor, bar-back and busboy
each passer-by in each picture’s background become a celebrant,
each stamp a solemnizer of the gratitude I feel
for gifts, for luck, for making it this far, for promises of more to come.

On Settling Down
It’s our special day, and as days go it’s fine
It’s good enough for me, and I’m good enough for you.
And you’ll do, as you’d have done unto.
And so proceed to winter evenings on the couch,
whiskey with honey and crock-pot weeknight meals,
to takeout and paperbacks, chores divided
and the kettle on to keep us warm,
To the security of tax returns and joint accounts,
my only fear that all the days of my life
outlast the days of yours.
But that bridge I can cross half-way
if I get there alone.