You are all around
Your stockings hang by my tree
I hear your giggle, your squeal, your soft feet
by the stairs at 4am
I feel you all around
Your icy smooth cheeks on my rough stubble
Your breathy smell when you crawl in my covers
at 6:30am so cold out there and warm in here
I see you all around
Your sparkle and blush and blood red pout
Unbreakable china white with scabs and bug bites
in the summer bright night 9pm and fireflies
I watch you go in September
In your pressed new blues and your fancy-licious
Away for just the day between my love and your play
I fill you with love, and you come back
and you fill me with love, love, love
till anger takes you away
or we softly pad on into the wee wee
dark as it was meant
to be
When the bitter darkness recedes, when we return to light, how quickly we forget those dungeonous times. Thrown back to the struggles of nigh a month ago, now we sit astride our five-burner Eiklor logs, engrossed in our virtual-lives, awaiting a return to normal, which is to say a return to living virtually with the lights on.
Oh will my wine warm to above 59F? Will our Edy’s Grand Light Slow Churned devolve into soupy sweet milk? Will my i-This and i-That lose charge? One might think our past suffering had made us stronger, but alas now my physical anguish is laced with fear, with trembling that our discontent might become true inconvenience.
I write to pass the time. I write to occupy the folds of my brain, to stave off solitary boredom. But wait! What is that?! Why…it’s the glow of my wife’s i-Device! Oh sweet angel of mercy–I am not alone. I can scootch to the other end of this vast sectional and find comfort…and perhaps more.
A haiku a day
Gently unfolded from my
Dull narcissistic self.
Survey the kingdom
Coffee in hand slippers on
My meaningless myth
Once I said to you
That I could never not be liberal
That rights and freedom and compassion
Were all that I considered
Now we’ve worked these 13 years
And bought and played and not for free
Now I woke up this November
And voted for goddamn Romney.
Remember when I walked downtown
To buy you that little ring
I had no money had no cash
Only fifteen dollars in pennies
Did this make me a better man
Because I had nothing nice
But what about my manhood now
Can I ask our kids to sacrifice?
I never had so much and felt so little
I’m between the center and the middle
What is it that you meant
Do we give it away and go back to rent
Those were good times
When we were young
We could make do and go without
Now I suit up, punch in, punch out.
The market’s ups and downs
My clients’ smiles and frowns
I push around their assets and create
A shelter to hide their take
In a moment of honesty
I tell my partner we have fake jobs
He recoils, spins and looks at me
And asks me where I get off.
Usually when I’m on the train
Slightly buzzed and numb to the pain
North Broad Street, Brick Church and Orange
Slide by in darkness like shutters drawn
non-existent stops for non-existent lives
To me, at least, the one with blinders on
Moving through this experiment like the constant
Whose outcome is irrelevant.
I never had so much and felt so little
I’m between the center and the middle
What is it that you meant
Do we give it away and go back to rent
Those were good times
When we were young
We could make do and go without
Now I suit up, punch in, punch out.
Friends, comrades, compatriots, this has truly been a most extraordinary day. Early in the hours of this bleak day, nay, when it was still the darkest night of the evening before, when I did so humbly prostrate myself to the patron St. James, I crawled from the womb of my REI 20F below Polar Pod to don my Diesel jeans and fashionable flannel, to furth
Further in the great beyond, we were able to obtain that golden high octane nectar, and a fellow refugee voyager, unaccustomed to pumping his own fuel, even sought my help at turning on his pump–God bless my Southern upbringing.
Upon my return to the Hills, I turned myself to the real work of blowing leaves and ensuring that my exterior lighting was well-placed in the event our apocalypse might be averted. For a momentary diversion, I laced up my new Salomons for a trail run over South Mountain. As I was mixing my recovery drink, like the diaphanous light from the heavens, like the quick chirp of the click beetle, like the hum of most unnatural stainless steel appliances returning to life, power was restored.
In that moment, as the beer fridge came online, as the LED displays flashed “Set Clock,” I gave thanks. And I sang Hallelujah: Hallelujah for amp-burning plasma; Hallelujah for filament burning incandescents; Hallelujah for consumerism; for capitalism; for isms I have not yet considered but somehow wish so vilely to indulge in at this very moment.
In what began as a swift return to cold and darkness, I did confront my true nature. And it is a soft nature, a nature that must be coddled by convenience, a nature that must be wrapped with time-saving devices; it is a nature which has lost its way and now rejoins its sojourn down the path of doldrums, the path of the usual and the oblivious where what we truly want, what we truly desire is, simply, a Keurig with autostart.
In these dismal times, my fellow Short Hillers huddle in masses at the alter of our local St James. Here in the oaken arms of this faithful steward, we find comfort for what ales us, allowing us to tap into the frothy nectar so long held sacred by our ubiquitous, Irish cousins. Thank you, St James, thank you for having electricity and a killer cheeseburger.
I rose to a pounding in my head, to a soft stillness surrounding me. The somniferous combination of L-tryptophan and Bordeaux have taken their toll. Roasted turkey. Mashed Potatoes. Le Vin Matin. The suffering in Short Hills continues. Curse you oh friends with whole house generator–oh curse your generosity. Oh the horror.
I have returned to the Tudor style ice castle to defend its walls against raccoons and other marauders. The night is still. My wife, my children, my neighbors have abandoned our waste land for warmer climates. The generators are silent. I am huddled in my 20-degree-below REI sleeping bag previously purchased for my daughter’s Adventure Guides trips, and I thank the Ma
As I log off to the familiar pings of received mail and don my North Face vest, I am reminded of the cruel world to which I am about to return. With all the concern in the world for my neighbors, many of whom have children suffering from Xbox withdrawal, I can only ask this: if I find gas, will it be high octane?
Justice Redux 