Month: August 2022

What made today so memorable?
What made today so meaningful?
What gave me all my energy?
What helped me stay ahead of me?
What all I owe my gratitude to?
What all I have tomorrow to do?

Do not suspend your sadness on
The comfort of a shoulder strong.
It breaks the scaffolding of pain
Before you learn to build through it.

Do not invite your trusted friends,
Except to fence your solitude,
As you tack on the splintered planks
You salvage from your own debris.

Do not rebuild to hide yourself.
The brick and stone will be your loss.
You’re full of seeds of suffering.
You ripen only on your cross.

I’m better now than I was then.
My every day’s been meaningful.
I’ve shouldered much of what I could,
Enduring much of what I could.

I’ve failed and failed and failed again.
Of course, I’ve cribbed.
Of course, complained.
And still, I’ve showed up once again.

For all the goals I’ve missed to reach,
– I’ve sabotaged a few myself –
I’ve done some things I’ve never done.
I’ve grown in ways I’ve never grown.

I thank this year for training me.
For challenging me every day.
For showing me how strong I am.
For showing me what I can do.

I cringe when someone calls me wise,
For wisdom in our Google age
Is dime a dozen – heads or tails.

You stake it all and win it all,
You’ll find a wise guy saying, “See?
Success is slave to those who risk.”

You stake it all and lose it all,
You’ll find a wise guy saying, “See?
It’s fools who roulette with their lives.”

You follow everyone and win,
You’ll find them all agreeing, “See?
The wisdom of the mass is safe.”

You follow everyone and lose,
You’ll find them all agreeing, “See?
You’re stuck in herd mentality.”

You follow no one and you win,
You’ll find them all agreeing, “See?
A visionary blazed a trail.”

You follow no one and you lose,
You’ll find them all agreeing, “See?
The pack survives, the lone wolf dies.”

No matter what the input is,
No matter what the outcome is,
No matter what you’re looking for,
You’ll find a line that sounds so wise.

When spreadsheets show compounding gain
That’s smoothened to an annual rate,
They do not show the random walks
The daily price of staying takes.

They do not show the days of red
That anchor down your confidence.
They do not show the swelling wave
That threatens to descend again.

They do not show how easily
A choice of yours could have been wrong.
They do not show if things will take
A different path before too long.

The marriages of sixty years,
Careers of the lifetime stars,
Miraculous recoveries,
Are built on daily bloody spars.

To write in verse is to compress
The infinite into a line.
It’s toothpaste back into the tube,
Against entropy’s spear of time.

It takes but a moment
For souls to shrapnel
In Selotaped families
With yellow-taped crimes
So commonly committed
In pain of wounded pride
Against the shared dignity
Of, together, being alive.

Even on a Christmas,
You’d rather not get
This midnight present.

I may not see her dip her feet
Again in waves of salty sea.
And so I pause and really watch
Her solitary ecstacy.

I hug her when she turns to me
And somehow she can tell I’m here
As I have not been here before.
She tells me, “Thank you for this year.”

She’s fifteen weeks plus day or two–
Already old enough for flips
On to her tum to celebrate
With toothless grins on shiny lips.

She hasn’t figured out the crawl,
But if she spots a beanie knit,
She flips and flips into a roll
To reach it, bite it, drool on it.

I wonder what audacity
Propels me daily to begin.
Begin again despite the odds.
Begin again despite defeat.
A year ago, it took me weeks
To make myself begin again.
Perhaps, it’s all I’ve done this year.
Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin.
Perhaps, it’s Sisyphus who laughs
The loudest at the end of day.