Tin mailboxes line the gravel path,
their wood posts aged a silver gray.
The stones tickle my bare soles
as I look through my box
for the letter you’d said you sent,
but it’s not there, and it’s as if
I’m no longer there either.
Just a shell standing in front
of an empty metal box.
Any exit will do,
even the shoulder.
Abandon the car
and be the eight
year old inside me.
Not 41, stuck
looking at the world
through tinted safety glass.
Standing in my underwear in front of my closet,
Should I wear this or should I wear that?
Who do I need to be today?
But what if no one needs me to be anyone?
I’m lost in a sea of indecision,
Barely able to choose which pants to wear.
Without a goal I drift,
Using inquiry to cut loose false meaning in my life
Like ballast in a listing ship.
Trouble with asking questions
Of what everyone takes for granted
Is that the answers aren’t nearly as forthcoming
As I would expect from what is so accepted.
Likes and dislikes seem irrelevant
When I don’t know who
Is doing the liking and disliking
Though I know it’s me.
Do I like green pants? Someone in my past didn’t, so I don’t.
Just who am I today? Green or blue or beige?
Sometimes I give up and take a break
Because really, what is the point of pants?
Am I not more comfortable in my underwear?
Maybe I’d be more so without even that?
That’ll make me happy,
Or, they’ll make me complete.
I think I want something
Or I want to be with someone,
But when I get it I want something else
And it ends up going to Goodwill
Or we split up and go our separate ways.
The repetition has revealed the pattern.
Now I don’t know what I want
And don’t trust my desires
To be anything more than distractions
Until the next shiny bobble shimmers by.
She’s got on way too much makeup
but he doesn’t care about that.
She’s wearing black leggings
that leave little to the imagination.
He stares at her ass, lavender lace
peeking out above her waistband,
even the white tag works for him.
Her ass tells him she’s the perfect woman
but he hopes she won’t speak
and draw his attention
back up to her makeup.
Whenever my birthday approaches
I start poking at my life
like a kid with a stick.
More than halfway through it
and nothing is as I thought it would be.
My history is full of wrong turns
and dead ends I had to back out of.
I should’ve done this… I think,
and I should never have done that.
I don’t allow that life happens in the moment
and not while second guessing it
in a funk on the couch.
Some insights are so clear to me today
that I accept them as truths.
But only a few years ago
I would’ve hesitated
to consider them at all.
If I met my old self on the street
and we talked over a meal,
I’d consider him problematic
and be concerned for his future.
I’d have no desire to be pals
and would walk away after our meal,
relieved to be free of him,
and he’d probably feel the same.
His addictions would make him uneasy.
My sobriety would remind him
of the demons nipping at his heels
that he would soon have to face.
But he’d come up with another reason
to avoid that thought.
He’d say to himself,
that guy is quiet, that guy is dull,
and his impatience to lift his next drink
would write me off.
As a kid of six or eight,
my favorite time of day
was the car ride with my dad
down the hill to the liquor store
where he was always in a good mood
pulling into that parking lot.
I didn’t know why back then,
But I did when I grew up
and learned to drink too.
The trip to the liquor store
was the turning point of my day.
Getting oiled for the evening’s clubbing.
Girls in painted on clothes.
But as my thirst grew with each year
and drinking was no longer a choice,
but kept the anxiety at bay,
the trip to the liquor store was filled with relief.
Pulling into the parking lot,
I completely surrendered to the thirst,
gave up the fight to quit that plagued me.
Not today, maybe tomorrow.
Maybe when I’m forced to.
Until then, just ride it to the edge.
“Hi,” I’d say to the cashier,
always at my friendliest with a cold twelve pack
on the counter in front of me,
my fingers tapping out a rhythm on its sides.
It was the closest to happy I would get,
just like my dad.
It was irritating but inevitable
when they traded in Captain Kirk
for a younger actor in the reboot.
Even though he was old and puffy,
and the action scenes were all body doubles,
he was my Captain Kirk,
the James T. of my childhood.
Now he’s from a younger generation
and it peeves me that they can’t
come up with their own icons
and instead reuse mine
when Captain Kirk should be allowed
to say so long and goodbye.
