The most important day of your life

What kind of idiot
I ask myself
Would plan a wedding
For the afternoon of the
Blooming World Cup Final
The most important day
Of the year, hell of my
Entire life, if our boys
Should pull it off
Only a completely clueless
selfish self-centred
gold-digging
present-grabbing
fashion-obsessed
buxom curvaceous
traffic-accident-causing
drop-dead gorgeous
bombshell
that my
lovestruck best friend
Is so completely smitten with
That he can’t even bring
Himself to make her
see reason
That kind of an idiot
That’s who.
And so here I am
Standing at the altar
Next to my oldest male companion
Dressed in morning grey
While inwardly I curse
The bonds of friendship
That are causing me to
Commit this travesty of
Disloyalty to our nation
I mean, look out there
How many men are even here?
Only the wimps
Or the unlucky
Or the clueless
The smart ones at least had the good grace
To get mysterious sudden illnesses
Or simply to tell their better half
The honest truth – that yes
In the end some things are
More important than human love
And that while the average marriage
May only last for a handful of years
A world cup victory is forever
After all, 1966 is a LONG time ago
We’re tired of living on other people’s
legacy – it’s time for our own generation
To grab the memories with which to bore
Our own offspring for the coming fifty years
In any case, I am not a victim
I have a plan
And so I surreptitiously place the tiny
speaker in my ear and
Turn the volume on
Now, with my body still in place
I smile, while focusing all my deeper attentions
On the action half a world away.
The music swells
The national anthem. No the wedding march.
The congregation rises.
I do so too, with tears in my eyes
As the teams shake hands
And exchange tokens of respect
Here comes the bride
And God save the Queen
In my delirium I whisper
God save the bride
My friend the groom glares
And I smile apologetically
About to begin, I tell him
The elderly vicar raises his hands
In blessing, and we’re off
A cautious start
Lusty singing from the crowd
A fair amount of action in the middle
Punctuated by a long lecture
From the man in charge
Increasingly I am caught
In a strange amalgam of
Sport and marriage until I can
No longer keep them separate
The match is reaching fever pitch
The end of extra time
The two sides facing each other
Intently – having played their lives
To this moment of finality
The dreaded penalties
So often our Waterloo
our total undoing
And now again today
Oh why?!
Everyone huddled in the center circle
I wish to assume a fetal position
Yet valiantly hold my upright stance
Twitching imperceptibly beneath my cummerbund
The only way out is the vows
Each one standing alone and staring
At their respective goal
My ears are buzzing with
Long horns and obscene chants
But now all falls silent
My friend stands alone
Magnificent, assured
The whistle blows
Do you…
Can you…
Across the room I see
Fifty misty-eyed men
Transfixed – each with one hand
To his ear
The tension is unbearable
Will he…
Will he…
Our hero takes one step forward
And calmly delivers
He does!!!!!!
He does!!!!!!
He doooooooooeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssss!
My ears are on fire
And as one there is a
Roar of acclamation throughout
The room as all the men
And many of the women
Leap and cheer
With untold fervor and abandon
Weeping uncontrollably
The bride and groom embrace
And lead the enraptured congregation
Down the aisle
And into the reception beyond
Wildly celebrating this
Once-in-a-lifetime event
It will surely be a long time
Before any of us sleep tonight
On a whim at the door
I stop and turn
Just in time to see the
Mild-mannered man of the cloth
pull a small device
From his own ear
He smiles and says
It wasn’t this easy
Back in ‘66

Midnight on the beach

Moon-struck and laughing
Upon that distant strand
We left a trail of cotton
Leading to the water’s edge.
The sea breathless
In anticipation
We waded hands joined
Into the knowing surf
Giddy at our
Most improper daring
Startled by the shock
Of salt on skin
Then awed and
Suddenly uneasy
At the depths before
Our naked innocence.

The meaning of "No"

Sorry
I can’t
You’re wrong
She’s hiding
Let go
It’s mine
I’m full
It’s awful
Too salty
You’re only thirteen
I’m infectious
Too far
Too late
Too big
It’s sticky
It’s hideous
I’m pregnant
My head hurts
It’s too much
Do you know how much one of those things eats when it’s full-grown?!
Wrong color
Bad grammar
Too showy
Too dowdy
Whoa!
Mother!
Too baggy
Way too skimpy
Are you insane?
It’s illegal
It’s immoral
It’s Sunday!
It’s my body
Don’t do that
I don’t like it
I said stop

Now…
What part of
No
Don’t you understand?

Fresh picked

Hurry
There is no time to waste
This ripe fruit is so lush
And sweet upon the tongue
Tomorrow will be too late
Come and eat it
Now

First date

Silence is golden
The sales guy told us
That rarefied air of anticipation
Waiting for a response
Your mind turns anxious cartwheels
While your eyes become
Limpid pools of calm
Inviting trust and confidence
You can take that step
You won’t regret it
Says every fiber of your
Midnight-still being
And then you hold your tongue
Until they submit.

And so you wait
Pondering zen-like
With a thin stream trickling
Between your shoulder blades
Was it too strong or too much
Did I seem weak or ineffectual
And why isn’t she responding?
She meets your gaze
Amused and self-assured
Sips her drink and raises
One exquisite eyebrow
And then you realize
In your ill-judged
Cologne-drenched
Effort to impress
You have spent the past half hour
Calling her by the wrong first name.

Act of God

It came
Like the singing of a
Silver bullet
At five-to-eight
A hiss then darkness
And the earth
Bucked
A wide-eyed child
At the astonished window
And the looming form
Splayed dumbstruck
On the shattered earth

Twelve hours we kept vigil
For that broken form
Then stood in silent witness
As the first responders finally arrived
Five men and a woman
Bowed low to their triage
Neon deaf and unsmiling
The kick and bark of teeth well-meshed
A clamoring of diesel
Above the weeping
And swiftly there was nothing left

Nothing to mark the place
Where last week we were young
Longing, laboring
Trusting in immortality
Yet overshadowed
By its convention
Now suddenly the ground
Is plowed afresh
And ripe to possibility
Harrowed to infinity
By this most audacious
Act of God.

Bully

The city bus wheezes asthmatically
Between cars and lorries littering the street
Belching and inhaling fresh humanity
At every lurching stop

Pressed into a corner seat
Behind the central stairs
Too late I see him leering as he
Swoops intently on the space that pens me in

I’m gonna break your effing neck
He promises. I’m gonna follow you
When you get off this bus and
I’m gonna effing smash your face in

Staring through my shoes I recognize
The voice of my tormentor
The one who just the other day kicked me to the ground
In plain view of a helpless crowd as I waited for this bus

Something inside of me silently dies
I know now I will never leave this seat
But waking and sleeping I will ride on with this demon at my side forever
Replete he gives a wicked flash of nicotene and is gone

There is no victory of nonviolence this day
No glorious reconciliation no conversion of an enemy
Just an effing effing bully and a
Terrified eleven-year-old who will never ride this bus again.

Spelling Bee

(a cascade poem)

The children are sweating
Asking nervous questions of clarification
Because they have never heard these words before

Under such bright lights
It is no wonder that
The children are sweating

Like a jaded bomb squad
Circling each treacherous noun and verb
Asking nervous questions of clarification

I wonder what monster created this sport
That makes good kids cry
Because they have never heard these words before

Heedless

Somewhere down the hall
Baleful and unstinting
A clock radio is wailing
Its tuneless ostinato
Pleading for response

Jolted upright
I am outraged and amazed
That the intended recipient
Of this warning
Refuses to pay it heed.

Then abruptly
Almost too much so
Order is restored
And uneasy silence
Descends once more.

In the sleepless dark
I ask myself how often
Friends have been alarmed
By the sounds of trouble
That I stubbornly ignore.

Leaking

I left you at the front door
Hunching through the fray
Your forward motion blurring and then smoothing
The glistening at the corners of your eyes.

Driving away I thought again
Of the basement plumbing I had so inexpertly performed this weekend
The sharp-pointed tapping valve sitting not quite true upon its copper pipe
And the slow slow drip that echoed through the night

It is perhaps the genius of our lives
That we live by pressing forward through the crowd
Yet mark our progress most profoundly not in good intentions
But in the injuries of imperfection and in tears not quite contained.