If I felt obligated to begin by warning
that this stanza may contain content that is offensive
or at least inappropriate for some readers,
would it make the image of me holding my cock
in front of a computer screen any less poetic?
And where would the debasement of style actually occur:
in the grandiloquent expression for my superannuated manhood
or in the reference to coaxing Salinger
to come out and play?
Between Harry’s pecan pie and Sally’s ham sandwich,
I had a square of dark chocolate, and then it came to me
that if he can hide a disappointment and she can fake an orgasm,
I can consider myself lucky—in the end, no one hated me;
they were just indifferent, and though not quite what I expected,
what fun would it be to always know in advance
that love was what you pretended it to be?
If only I had been heartless
and thus never born,
perhaps the photographer would never have taken pictures
of the funeral procession my parents’ wedding was.
I always wondered where those grim faces came from
until one day one of the photos fell out of the album,
and I saw the date written on the back—a quick calculation explained everything.
After all, casarse de penalty, as the Spanish call it, is no cause for celebration,
and that’s about all I know
about love.
Being a poet pays nothing—that’s probably why I also write prudent stories
in TypeScript and Java—and I wrote my very first stanza out of love anyway,
but she just laughed at me—the girl, I mean, not love, as love has no feelings
and will leave you at the first wink of a passing globetrotter so you can learn
some legal jargon and that no one fancies a homebody in this brave new world
of dating algorithms. But I guess I could always become a magician—it worked
for Mrs. Münchgstettner—if it weren’t for my stage fright and the conviction
that nothing the world had to offer I couldn’t find in the free verse and ragtime
reclined on my sofa.
Time flies when you’re having fun, or so they say,
but to be honest, I can’t really call my life fun-filled,
yet five decades have flown by in the blink of an eye
without me even noticing, and now I’m staring
at a white-bearded face looking back from the mirror
and wondering what was the point in laughing
at that kid who thought fifty years was a long time
when I probably have twenty or thirty more to go
and can’t even imagine making it through a week
of family Christmas gatherings.
