Instead of Reading this Mediocre Poem Composed by a Gray-haired Middle-Aged Man in Checkered Flannel Pajamas Bemoaning Life’s Little Let-Downs You Could Explore the Physics of the Impossible.

I am damaged goods.  Perhaps

we all are.  The fat kid who didn’t

know how to be

skinny.  The beauty queen

who didn’t know how

to be more than

beauty, her mind like wildfire

enclosed, smothered within

a perfect shell--talking all the while

of boy friends and painted toenails

while bridges of cable spanned

gulfs of water and glittered

in strands of steel notes.

And of course there are old loves.

We all die several times

before we find the right one--if we are lucky.

My heart was ripped out thrice

by perfectly good women, and each

time I tried to reassemble it, nothing fit

right, but as I had to get to work,

I just forced bolts

on with a pipe-

wrench and threw

the extra parts in a dirty yellow

pail.

Now and again I wake up

In the night and realize

even with you here

I’m simply not right.

So I tinker

with bailing wire words,

try to make her perfectly-dimpled

smile  finally fit for me, not him.   Closure I want,

I guess.

But everything refuses.

My past I can’t love, can’t hate.

I don’t even know where it all

goes. 

Finally, I slide

the bucket under the bed, read the Book

of Mormon or Murakami.

6:00 a.m.  The alarm goes off

like a wind-up bird.