Best Ever Present

I am a massive memory ship violating icy waters
I am a closet of sacred treasures, juju talisman of the holy cigar box
I am an empire of joy, of sweet boy fears of never getting enough
I am a summer birthday with a zero at the end of it, twisted backwards

#6: Strangers serenade my melting candles on a big boat to Europe,
best ever present, thin-tired, hand-braked racer bike,
I fall from it, under the teacher’s first grade fur
I feel the maid’s wartime metal plate as I set her curlers

#9: A sweaty friendless June I’m smothered by love I barely notice,
Perry Mason mysteries & farm-stand beefsteaks, two for a quarter,
best ever present blares: transistor jesus dancing WHACK Connie Francis, WHACK Elvis croquets me upside the head on a trip to Sears

# 12: More half-eaten cake pushed aside, quivering fingertips
peel Scotch tape with care from clattering best ever present
Smith-Corona electric typing living writing from my
broken dead refugee cat heart left behind, annual family impersonation

Oh my holy blah blah blah,
Oh my graceless off-key chorus of numerical ingratitude
Oh my pathetic brain lobe battle
Oh my endless craving heartsick vomit
Oh my blessed gonads rising, what is happening?
Something here is very wrong, man.

Fuck this poem
Fuck this sentimental scrabble game
Fuck you for making me
Fuck me for writing it
Fuck this poem

Supposed to be an inventory of days, 59 of ‘em, marching with military precision across vistas of manhood and mountains of madness

Supposed to be a ditty of grimy triumphs and hospital nightmares and champagne toasts at the Russian Tea Room

Supposed to be an album of faded Kodaks, throwaway crescendos, deeply felt regrets, everyday epiphanies

Supposed to be a catalog of wounds and gifts to help you live each year knowing less at the end of it than you did when you started

Supposed to be wisdom

Supposed to be metaphor

But nobody dreams anymore in the lonely house with the atrophied amphibians that crawl the wallpaper to God,

where makeup artists are mortified that their very best gifts scare the horses

where amnesia seizes happiness and throws it out the window

where I forget that I still bite my nails

world without shame, world without end, world without me

Deserve more

Deserve the best ever present

Deserve to stop hoping