Daily Archives: November 19, 2012

After The Recession He Was A Better Man

Once a rich man now not so much.
He fell over his own feet into a rock.
Can’t get out.  Can’t even see how.

How did he fall into the rock, you say?
He lost his money and so was made porous
to tragedy.  

He fell onto the rock assuming
it would pass through
and instead he was absorbed.

So now he’s a poor man in a rock.  He’s not alone
in there and he feels a little trapped
but he’s making do until he dies which he has determined

will be his only way out.  But he’s OK with that.
He won’t be rich but he’s OK with that now too
now that the granite walls are feeling more homey. 

He’s glad he’s not alone mostly.  He remembers
being rich.  It was good but there were horrors too
based on the money being such a big armor and cushion

that he felt under attack all the time.  No more.  He’s in the rock
because of how soft and transparent the money had made him.
He thinks he’s more rock himself now.

Better this way around than the other
way around.  He might have become a jerk
if he’d come into the money late.  

Better to have entered the rock
poor and soft at his age  
so being with these people became a community.

You say he might be a jerk now because of his memory
of being rich and having a certain power.  Maybe.
But would he have these friends and family now?

He thinks sometimes he’d like to be rich again
but when he thinks of how soft and invisible he once was 
to others, he smacks his hand in joy upon his wall.


How I Sleep

It’s broken;
I only do it in shards,
leave them on the pillow
repeatedly.  I get up
and do other, cannot
do it, not often, not for long,

and I miss it.  Miss its long form.
Miss oblivion, miss utter blankness —
miss upon waking
the recollection of how
upon its beginning
the dimming blue
deepened into…

how the blue deepens into nothing;
too often now I’m left
trying to recall that.

What’s that on my tongue,
what’s that on my fingers?
What can’t I feel?  
What am I missing?

Soon enough, I fear,
I will abandon sleep altogether;

when I do,
I shall miss this life.