More things described

Two men sit on a park bench
talking impotently
about their impotency problems,

while a local wit quips,
"The only constant is someone
saying the only constant
is change."

Meanwhile, someone
in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s
acknowledges another night
of desperate drinking
in a ripping yarn
completely threadbare,
about as interesting
as actual sweater lint.

Here,
the poet winks at his audience,
reminding several in the crowd
they'd best avoid the side effects
and take their meds.


***

This one is inspired by a pretty lousy day, all told. I try to deflate it, really poke at the ridiculousness of it, with a sharp poetic stick, and hopefully find some humor along the way.

"Press Your Luck"

The ice cream man,
in from the heat,
balances in his chair,
squinting into his stack
of secondhand televisions.

Into a notebook
he strategizes,
numbers and diagrams,
divining the patterns
over weeks of work.

He will soon make more money
than he has ever known,
green peeking out
of plywood dressers,
pushed into cups and shoes.

Insulating himself
against his wife
with a turned-up radio
promising more cash.
He just needs one match.

Scanning every serial number
when they read them
over the air.
Thirty thousand ones
from five or six banks.

It's become a blur, this story
passing through his hands,
and every page is
every Washington
that cannot tell a lie.

***

I wrote this after hearing the story of Michael Larson, an Ohio man who won more than $100,000 after beating the game show Press Your Luck in 1984. He won by carefully memorizing the patterns on the prize board by pausing and unpausing the action on a VCR and stack of TVs at home. He discovered that the so-called random movements of the board were actually five or six patterns cycled through again and again. Armed with this knowledge, he flew out to California and made game show history. His winnings on the show were considered the largest single-day payout in the history of game shows at the time.

Despite his historic win, he soon started losing his money (and his family) as he took part in hare-brained scheme after hare-brained scheme to make even more money. It crossed into illegality when he took part in a national lottery scam. Michael Larson, who no doubt thought of himself as a pretty intelligent guy for figuring out the way the game was run, seemed to have trouble really understanding the rules. In the end, it destroyed him. Diagnosed with throat cancer, he died in 1999 in Florida, still on the run from authorities and estranged from his family. He was 49 years old.

Closet creep

From between
the hanging coats,
the pale glow
of its radium eyes,
the smell of ozone
in its smile.

A sound emerges
from its throat
like winter droplets
touching the keys
of a toy piano
missing for years

that grow longer
as minutes collapse.
Hear the seconds
ticking out now,
before, and after,
and once again now.

***

This poem started out as a simple description of one of those nightmare clowns you might encounter as part of an overactive imagination during childhood, or from a Stephen King story. But then the poem seemed to warp in on itself and decide it was about something else entirely.

Universal play

This year has been particularly death-heavy. Family members, family of friends, friends of friends. So I've heard a lot of invocations of spiritual/religious ideas to deal with the certainty and finality of death. However, sometimes I think children have it right. Running around, carrying on, not really understanding what's going on, and not trying to. Here's a poem about that.

Universal play
Heaven has gained an angel.
Unless you don't believe
in heaven or angels.

Then, the earth has gained
a body. Unless you
burned the body.

The sky has earned some smoke.
You should never mistake
the flyaway ash

as the dusty, pigmented
sidewalk chalk
thick in children's hands.

Notes on language learning

I've been studying Japanese since March. It's one of those things that probably seems like it came out of the blue to a lot of people. When I lived in Los Angeles in my 20s, for example, I was exposed much more to Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese signage on restaurants and in grocery stores. Since returning to New Hampshire (where I was born), I've had even less exposure to any Asian languages. So why Japanese?

It's a complicated answer. Part of it is because my fiancee and I have been trying to eat healthier, so have adopted a lot of Japanese-style food into our diets like tofu and miso. Part of it is my love of old obscure video games for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Turbo-Grafx 16, many of which never reached American shores and were written in Japanese and designed for a Japanese audience. But probably the biggest instigator was seeing all the devastation on the news from the earthquake and tsunami. When I saw a YouTube video of the port city of Kesennuma literally being wiped off the map in a little over six minutes, I was not only shocked at how quickly a natural disaster can happen, but at how little I knew about Japan's people, language and culture. That might be a strange reaction to a natural disaster, but it suddenly cemented my desire to learn the language and feel a little less ignorant about a very important part of the globe and its people.

One tool I have found invaluable in learning the language is JapanesePod101.com. What I love about the site is it's about more than just the language. It's about learning the culture. It's about using Japanese in a variety of situations, from informal to very formal. I also love how it is taught via podcasts. Not only is it extremely convenient, almost a habit, to slip on the headphones and listen to a new lesson, but dialog is taught using a range of native speakers to really give you an idea of how words may sound different coming from different people.

One of the most recent lessons talks about very basic adjectives and using them in very basic patterns. For whatever reason, one of the phrases really connected with me. Hence, this poem:

Notes on language learning
At a very early level
of Japanese language study,
he paused at the phrase
"Nihon no natsu wa
mushiatsui desu."

Not much of a sentence.
Roughly translated:
"Summers in Japan are humid."

But the gentle tap of ns in
Nihon no natsu, like bug's
feet on skin,

the wet net of steam
swirling in the
baking street of
mushiatsui,

were immersive,
impressive
enchantments.

No matter how we adjust

Each screen comes up
blue and blank,
no matter how we adjust
the rabbit ears.

Shopping this morning,
we had to put back
the raisins and vanilla,
and other items.

We joke about jumping
off the bridge,
as some have done lately,
but do not have the gas.

But laughter, huge
wells of it, is free;

we just laugh and
laugh and laugh and
laugh and laugh and

We are all very excited to be here

He shaved off about 40 years of his life
at the company, until he was told
to stop.

Packing up his corner office,
he had assumed his job was
a never-ending track that aligned him,
like a model earth facing a model sun,
stars and systems at his back.

But his career was not a perfect coil;
it was a spike. Now the calendar
is as bland and open as his waiting,
and the wall.

"2011 Corporate Strategy Meeting"

Profit & loss! Profit & loss!
ROI. Revenue, revenue!
Profit & loss! Profit & loss!
ROI. Revenue, revenue!

It was the song the publisher sang
as she stood in front of us,
discussing ways to cultivate
sales leads, roughly four hours
into our seven-hour day.

Behind her glowed an inspiring slide
of the building we were in.
Michigan corporate headquarters,
each window polished to reflect
the unified front of the sky.

At the top-right edge of the frame,
nearly smudged out of focus,
a lone bird perched on the roof.
Its trilling melody very far removed
from multi-sponsorship webinar pricing.

Understanding the void

We will not meet in blackness,
all bony and unzipped of self.
Rather, an endless green pool
will greet us.
The more we stare, the more
the color will slide
to a thin, veiled yellow.

Rising at the edge of the water,
delicate trees engulfed at their tips
in white budding blossoms of flame.

We will glide down to meet them.
The trees will shrink and grow giant.
The fire will not burn.
The water will not drown.

Mystery

Raising her rolling pin high, she dances,
unaware of the man with thick glasses,
sitting perfectly straight
in the kitchen chair.

The baby in his lap bats at the smoke
spilling from his nearly done cigarette.
She swings her hips, sings as she swings,
she dances. Unaware.