Today

Today it's like when this started
I'm full of snot and aches and self-hate
Only now I'm 55, not 19,

and the recurrent URIs settled
into a stupidly-named diagnosis that make it sound like I need a nap instead of a new body.

I always hoped I could be Somebody
so the brilliant hatred of self-hate would fade like all too-bright lights
and eventually be an anecdote I'd tell in the past tense, like something I grew out of or something that just went away.

Like if you read this poem-story
and like it
maybe the hard light that shows everything I think is bad and wrong and undeserving will dim and there will be something left
worth loving.

Written Just Now

Daily

I lay before myself

a long list
of things

To Do

To Think

To Be

There's no way to accomplish it all

I add more

sometimes even more

Not walks or stopping to smell flowers, No.

Every moment must be an accomplishment.

Then I wonder
so often
why I am so sad &
hate myself so much

Thoughts on 1/27/15

You're a dear. But...
Your well-meant bromides
don't soothe me at all.

Not a Haiku

You remind me of hard rock
and mullets
and Chevys carefully painted with primer;
of boys who never liked me in high school,
who wore hatred as casually as a t-shirt
and as lovingly as a favorite pair of jeans.
And, instantly!, I'm fifteen and ugly again --
feeling alone, fumbling with a cigarette,
wishing you'd deign to just look at me, and
maybe like me just a little.

Middle Age

The lush garden of
youth, with its brilliant self-hate
now fades, bit by bit.