For my parents
It’s twenty twenty-four; I’m forty-nine,
and sometimes I think about my death;
but what I really want is to tell my kids
that at some point life will contradict them,
yet they have to plan and then carry out that plan;
that this will happen again and again,
and that their kids, if they have them,
will not believe them either.
I happened. I happened to them just as my birth happened to me.
Inevitably, neither of us were prepared for the many regrets
that come with the territory. No wonder I was too old to be young
and later tried to compensate with a nuclear family of my own.
I remember books, lots of books, and the librarian looking at me
with suspicious disbelief as I put another stack on the counter,
so I resorted to a trick, signing up for all the libraries in town.
I wish I had been as cunning with the bullies in the neighbourhood.
Then came puberty, with its teenage acne and masturbation on the couch
under a kitschy reproduction of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa.
I even got a taste of adolescent rebellion—for a whole week or so,
until I got home from boarding school and my father saw my Mohawk.
Adulthood turned out to be not as exciting as I thought it would be.
Well, except for a few acronyms I had to learn along the way
—some we all had to know, even if without much commitment,
some I experienced first-hand—MRI being the latest.
I miss the comfort of ‘not yet,’ when everything was a possibility
that could easily become irrelevant if only shouting ‘hold your horses!’
to the offspring of impatience and thirst proved to be anything
but a fool’s errand. But nature knows no respect, and there was no moé
that could save me from what I had left behind in the muddy trenches.
Now the late life of mine is but a mere hindrance, leaving a bitter aftertaste
that occasionally soils my otaku path to the Shangri-la of demise.
There is no purpose to life—we are born to die, and that’s it.
Everything in between is a flaccid time-filler. And yet we flex
our muscles and strike dignified poses, as if we were better
than seagulls fighting over a box of chips with chippy sauce
dumped on the pavement by bar-goers on their way home
after a Friday night out, when in fact, even our cries are as loud
and desperate—except theirs say that there is no purpose to life
but life itself.
What is the future, if not an incoming bygone,
or the present, if not an ongoing hereafter,
or the past, if not the nonce—just erstwhile?
When you think about it, our perception of time
is no better than of the squawking of a magpie.
No wonder we populate scrapbooks with eidola,
as if every departure comes in an untimely fashion.
If only I could believe in a sentence that begins with ‘I’ and ‘myself,’
one that soothes the gripping drama of coffee beans in a howling grinder,
one that covers the silence with ‘One too many mornings’ on the turntable,
one that sums up a man’s life without conveying persuasive language,
one that perhaps this once I myself would dare to resist falling for,
except the forbidden never asks for forgiveness, and that’s the sentence.
Why cling to life if it’s such a hassle?
You have to take care of all the daily necessities
just to keep your body in shape, let alone your boredom-prone mind.
And then there is everything you crave—and often feel entitled to
as a creature of scripture—and what’s expected of you.
But whether you are Anton de Franckenpoint or Richebourg,
or the triumphant general in his quadriga or the auriga whispering in his ear,
you can count on nothing but two dates and perhaps a commemorative inscription
on your tombstone. Why then?
I doubt my parents asked that question that night, but five decades later,
I’m still looking for the answer.
Tinker Bell tried to convince Peter that there was more to life
than peeking at public displays of affection, the disappointed
voice on an answering machine, or moments of happiness
scheduled for every other Sunday by court order.
She couldn’t stand the sight of him lying under the plastic fir,
whistling carols—for heaven’s sake, it’s June!—and wailing
that he could no longer remember a time when he was fearless.
Who said that one could only forget things that one once had?
Tinker Bell tried to be patient with him—even admitting that
they needed each other—but in the end, it proved too exhausting.
But before she left, she marked on his calendar the end
of mourning—one more arbitrary deadline he would never meet.
Is wrestling a paper in a desperate pursuit of words enough
to prove one has a chance to transcend an inanimate object?
After all, if there is nothing morbid about the first breath,
why would it be about the last one? We all know substitutes
are endless.
hidden pilcrow 