Daily Archives: April 15, 2004

Common Grounds: a forensics poem

“The one thing I want is to be understood,”
she yelled as she slammed the door. I yelled back, “Good!”
Now looking in hindsight, I know that I should
have tried to defuse the melee, if I could.

But knowing is one thing, and doing is tough,
so against the door, I said, “Not good enough!
You claim independence until things get rough,
and then want help fixing things. I say, get stuffed!”

She opened the door a crack, threw out a plate,
and screamed, “Your compassion is misplaced, and late!
I don’t want to argue, or start a debate,
but frankly, your attitude is second rate.”

With that, I was fuming, and righteously so.
I picked up the car keys and quipped, “Well, you know,
I’ll leave the door open wide after I go.
Just pack up your suitcase with all of your clothes,

your angst-ridden CDs, your Sylvia Plath…”
And she answered, “And the rest, I’ll take my half!
I’ve suffered your breathing and miserable laugh;
that’s worth pain and suffering, you worthless calf!”

And so, she left shortly thereafter for keeps,
assisted by Valium and two Mohawked creeps.
The last thing she said was, “you sowed, now you reap.”
And I got my life back, on the whole, quite cheap.

15 APR 2004

Share This:

Our Children’s Lives: a villanelle

Adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives;
it won’t respond to reason or attempts to understand
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.

A place where having grown ourselves, we’ve proved we can survive,
although what proof we have is often just in theory; and
adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives.

A mad morass of clique and class, peer pressure and sex drive,
that we have with experience found the strength to withstand:
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.

They simply want more everything, and each day are deprived;
and nothing is deemed good enough or goes the way it’s planned.
Adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives.

The constant webs they weave, and the perspectives they contrive
are foreign now, though once we were their age, and knew firsthand
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.

Successful navigation of this world is one in five;
and those who last intact are held in awe and great demand.
Adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives:
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.

15 APR 2004

Share This: