The memory of each mistake, like a complementary mishap
to the countless accidents that all too often fill life, is the lullaby
that accompanies me every night as I rest my head on the pillow
of an empty bed, and yet I still consider myself lucky—at least
I no longer have to smile.
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?
Perhaps history is impatient and likes the old-fashioned way,
so it would never walk you further than from yours to its own
prematurely announced end, only to, with a slightly ironic smile,
mark its face on the necrology—written by an aspiring visionary
over a lot of coffee and cigarettes—with a casually scribbled
moustache and bowler hat, and yet I can imagine Charlie Chaplin
working feverishly at a click farm.
He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery
The Good Book. Consolations. 27:29. Made by A. C. Grayling (2016)
I’ve never been fifty before, so this should be interesting,
like the day I finally decided to be happy—as if becoming a merry chap
greeting fellow carousers with a pint in his hand could assuage the guilt
I’d accumulated over the years—by taking dying classes
on a maternity ward.
Nothing heralds the arrival of the month of forced joy better
than binge-watching Hallmark Christmas flicks—only slightly
toned down by a reserved immersion in Russell and Hitchens
during the commercials—with all the remarkably irrelevant
characters in the spectacle of self-inflicted sorrow that some
call the holidays. After all, even a die-hard atheist like myself
deserves his guilty pleasures.
I learnt a new word: commiserations.
Ironically, it was used in response to the news
of someone’s engagement,
but frankly, having tried wedlock myself,
I understand the sentiment.
However you slice it, marriage has always been
and always will be a soul-crushing trap
that complements the cruelty
of birth.
For the future me
As a creature of symbol, bored with the steady pace of every day life, he craved
gestures and milestones marking the progress of his tedious little insignificance
full of wishes of small importance and efforts that did not matter in the slightest.
After many a year, he learned how to pretend so well that he convinced himself
that he was about to be happy. Maybe another step or two, an extra drop of sweat,
or one more bitter bite to swallow—but felicity was there, or so he told himself.
The irony is that in his futile attempt at scoring big once, he actually missed all
the trifles that ultimately each day is made of.
hidden pilcrow 