Mourning the Savvy Gentleman

The savvy

gentleman, being no help,

will trick

food into the pan

and wait for freezing

snow to melt

 

rather than melt

the snow. The savvy

gentleman is freezing

to death. Help!

He would pan

for gold rather than trick

 

’r treat, or trick

’n’ cheat, melt

the gold down, and pan-

handle like a savvy

traveler, never asking for help,

even when freezing

 

to death. The ol’ freezing

to death trick.

Help!

It will melt

the heart of the most savvy

cynic, like Zamfir, master of the pan

 

flute. (The pan

flute, so cool it’s freezing,

chick-magnet of savvy

hipsters. Not.) It’s no trick

to melt

hearts on a help

 

line for self-help

addicts if you’re a pan-

like god. Will snow melt

hearts, freezing

unprovoked? Will early spring trick

the savvy

 

gentleman, eating a tuna melt? God help

us all, both the savvy and the pan-cake-eating,

freezing-yogurt-eating, and other trick-food-eating masses.

 

Love's Circus

I claimed to be all out of tears,

though I’m sure I’d just heard that phrase somewhere

and thought it sounded hardboiled. Like

something a detective would say to a beautiful woman

who is not impressed. And still, I was sad,

but not sad so much as resigned to the whims of clowns.

 

I claimed to be whole. But that was a front, in clowns’

makeup, a fake-out, a mask with drawn-on tears.

In reality, I was far from sad.

In reality, I was off somewhere,

looking for a home, looking for the woman

with whom I was in love, and who I didn’t even like.

 

That’s not true, either. In fact, I was nothing like

a man in love—and much more akin to a clown’s

saggy ass. And in truth, the reason was a woman.

I think. Though it was really hard to see through the tears,

to see the horizon of perspective, off somewhere

beyond the edge of town, at the intersection of desperate and sad.

 

By noon the next day I was tired of this sad

sack complaining, and I resigned myself to act like

a grownup, over lunch somewhere

expensive, and then coffee, at the place clowns

go to die, drowning in their own tears.

All of this to impress a woman!

 

Had I been a woman,

I’d have been repulsed by this sad

posturing—the artificial tears

and unconvincing tales of woe. Like

a bar where only clowns

drink, acting like nowhere is somewhere.

 

I wanted to go somewhere

else, somewhere new, with the woman

of my dreams—not a nightmare filled with clowns.

I wanted to be through with this sad

life, and reengage like a butterfly, like

a cloud, like a rainbow sprung from God’s tears.

 

You clowns! I know you’re hiding somewhere,

behind your tears, behind the love of a woman,

where happy is sad. But we’re all alike.