Category Archives: Family Life

The Show Off

Family Life, Free Form, Poetry

She clapped her hand to her heart
She sighed not inaudibly and closed her eyes to fight the imagined tears
Mouth closed, back arched, breasts out.
This is rare behavior for her, thank god
Emerging exclusively at poetry readings
When she wants the poet to know how much her pampered heart has broken
Oh, this means so much, this means so
So much to me.
Her aggressively passive response trumping the toil the pauper endured
Capping the night
Usurping it
Without ever purchasing his book.

She’s my wife
She’s the reason I’m a banker
And not a poet

 

Paradigm Shift, The Victim Speaks, Exiting

Family Life, Free Form, Poetry, Work Life

I never sacrificed my family for the office
I was smarter than the rest
Until the night
I sacrificed my family for the office

They forgave me but the guilt and shame still gnaws
I was better than all the management books
I was better than Who Moved My Cheese
Wasn’t I?

Until Malcolm and his fucking demands overwhelmed me
And all the balance I’d achieved evaporated
Like spilled water in Death Valley or on Mercury
I never read metaphor books but probably should have

I never found ways to apologize
And now I just drink, here on the bench, in our backyard
Waiting for the missus and the mistakes, I mean kids, to settle in
The only sacrificing I’m doing tonight is my liver, ya get me

I don’t know that I can face the demon again
The asshole Malcolm who often smells of talcum
Believe me, I couldn’t make that up
Too many brains cells have died in the making of this poem as it is

Indulge me this long goodbye
Because I really need to stop writing
The pen is heavy now, the spirit dulled and dulling
If you see “penis” in “pen is,” then Freud was right and we’re all fucked

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