361/365

has there ever been a group of
nearly fifty year old men who
look forward to the decades ahead
rather than reminiscing about the lifetimes
lived? sitting at the local pub with the blokes
sharing the same war stories of shows seen,
trips taken, women known- sprinkling the
conversations with medical woes and the
deterioration of their bodies. slipped discs
and the inevitability of eveything slowly
getting worse before the final call. look at us
at eighty, if we are lucky, looking back at these
days as the ones when we were still spry
and alive, raising teenagers and playing in bands.
drinking on tuesday nights planing future trips
wondering if there will be enough time to be
better dads, husbands, sons, friends- men.
what do you want to do next? one of them asks
nursing a headache and a watered down whisky:
a gentle tropical breeze ambling through the street.
each quietly contemplates an answer, unsure
how to respond publicly. somewhere an obligatory
promise-made shifts in a pocket- waiting to be set free.

247/365

you’re a fat fuck.
and you’re running clothes
don’t fit right. you should
consider a bra, which is weird
since you’ve always been
the scrawniest person in the group.
you sport khaki shorts
and draft a fantasy football team.
middle aged clone placing safe bets,
wearing a safety preserver.

all of us with wings.
all of us with wings.
all of us with wings.

jane’s addiction is
the worm hole
into a past so familiar that
you can reach out and touch it-
it’s yesterday in that apartment
on natoma, the silver shirt and
your cousin up from santa barbara
for the show with ken kesey
at the bill graham auditorium,
you're in the stands,
with that vest from the indian restaurant
with the tiny mirrors. you are a disco ball
forgotten in oblivion, lost in it,
and floating across time. a delayed acid test
in muted tones.

young men need to understand  
that we are hanging on for dear life.
it matters just as much to us as it matters to you.
the music is just as loud and the stakes are just as loud.

the hair is white,
the gut is large,
the fire still burns.  

239/365

a gaggle of middle aged men sit
around a round of beers
talking about their glory days.

the first time i…
…i…
bragging about reckless
hedonism and arrested development.
hoping their distant social capital
has accrued interest.   

it’s remarkable
how little the world cares
about their souls.  

grow up.
get over it.
be a man.

how many lies do we tell our boys
about the future of their lives?

211/365

friday night
one o’ six am
forty seven years old,
half glass of pinot
a stale brownie
and phoebe bridges
on the ear goggles.
finished clean up
after pam and martin left,
washing dishes and packing up
the left over cheese,
listening to pink floyd and bob marley
brain damage and bablyon system.

before they came,
i brewed raspberry syrup and
squeezed fresh lemon juice,
ordered pizza, laid out the cheese plate
with home made pickles,
made a clover cocktail, a mojito,
a gin and tonic, a manhattan, and a few
brooklyns. we drained three bottles of
cabernet sauvignon, ordered pizza
and listened to an acoustic
indie spotify playlist.

the conversation settled into familiar pockets:
children, concerts we went to, television shows we’re watching
the authenticity of reading books versus listening to them.

earlier, i watched a video from a nineteen ninety seven.
a road trip we took across the country. i’d found an
old vhs tape a few days ago and transferred it to mp4.
in it i am young, skinny and jittery. ears pierced,
a few fewer tattoos. anxious.  full of life.

it’s a miracle how we live in the past, this moment and
in awe of who we might become in the threatening future.

there is no way that boy in nineteen ninety seven
could have imagined this man, constructing this poem
twenty years later- fat in belly, white in hair and beard.
how will we look at sixty seven?
how will the promises weather the storms?

i don’t want
this night to end,
but tomorrow
is closer than it looks
and these days
there is little need
for such reckless chaos.

204/365

growing a garden of weeds
just because it’s green.
saturday starts watering the porch.
skye blue. sun bright. day wideopen.

he asks her join him for a few errands.
he needs bar supplies in chinatown:
a mixing glass, coupe glasses, a fine citrus strainer.
one for three. they grab ice cream. they don’t argue.

in the car the music’s louder than mom likes,
but it’s just father and daughter.
first born. middle aged man.
nineties rock. each one gets a song.
she keeps up. listen to this trumpet part.
it kills me every time, he points out.
she waves her hands to the beat.

next stop guitar shop:
test out a new amp,
grab some picks and a guitar stand.
next stop the art store:
water color pens, new sketch pad, tiny notebooks.
she asks him why he doesn’t draw more often.
he fumbles with an excuse
and thinks he should draw more.

she asks where it hurts most to get tattooed
he draws her a map. where did she come from this
piece of him, unraveling into her own person?

at home they excavate a box of his
old journals, letters, photos,  
she’s old enough to probe
the pg-thirteen material.

what does she need to know
about who he’s been
to become who
she needs to be?

we are more than who
we are in the present.
he leaves a few journals
on a shelf, hoping the proximity
keeps parts of him alive for her.

growing a garden of weeds
just because it’s green.
water any life you see.
keep the soil moist.

144/354

life is the laborious
realisation that
everything plods
toward the inevitable
cliché.

how could one with
such kerouacian dreams,
and rock and roll yearning
succumb to this state
of mid-life crisis.

my dad told me
on the phone
the other day,
that although
he is turning seventy one
this year, he still sees
a young man in the mirror,
whenever he looks—
“i feel like i am still
in my forties or fifties.”

the true spirit of adventure
blooms in the ability to transform
what the average person
sees as obstacles,
into opportunities.  

you can’t rely on
the open road
or the ocean
or a raging freezing
himalayan river,
or the alleyways of
foreign streets,
or sunrise at mount kenya
or the gentle waves
of a fire in the wild,
to make you feel alive.

there is heroism
in banality,
it’s the work that
reveals the frenzy
in contentment.

5/365

We had some friends over tonight for
deep dish greek pizza
and IPAs.

It was a tame night
of middle aged conversations about
books, TV shows, worst school trips,
and other mundane things I cannot recall.

I tempered my drinking
because I have a long run tomorrow
and the hangovers hurt more than they used to.

“What’s your poem going to be about tonight,”
Sarah asks.

I didn’t have an answer when she asked,
and I don’t have one
as it nears midnight,
and I scratch these few words before bed.

It was another day
in a new year,
I drove the kids round,
thought my little thoughts
and this is all I have to show for it.

You tell me what this poem is about.

So Many Boxes

What else is there besides this? What more do you want? What fantasies do you still concoct as you lay awake in the darkness or when you let your mind drift at the traffic light? What random memory do you crawl to, to try and leverage a future you feel you are owed? Why can’t this always be enough?


The light kiss and the long hug from your wife in the living room on a Sunday afternoon. The fist pump from your daughter as she sinks a basket at basketball practice. The tangy salsa in your breakfast burrito. The casual conversation with a friend about the trials and tribulations of parenting. The work you begrudgingly had to do to get back in the swing of things. It could be worse- you could be doing a job you hate. Something that is not your calling.


What else is there besides this? Sure, the minutes can trickle by at a pace that feels frozen. A routine induced boredom that you try and remedy with…what? Why can’t you enjoy the trips and the journey? The small moments in front of the mirror, admiring how you have finally grown into yourself. The look matching the mood matching the inner voice- the one that won’t shut up. The one that is never satisfied. The one that argues with itself and demands more, while begging to be grateful.


The lives of the characters in the novel you’re reading seem so desperate, but their familiarity puts you in a panic. What are your rituals? Where is your romance and bliss? Is the literature a mirror of your routines? A cliched mid-life episode? Is this all there is? Will I cherish this at the end? Am I doing enough? Living enough? Loving enough? Am I to blame for the ho hum, hum drum of these days as they pass? Am I the only one who sees them? Feels their weight?


Why don’t we talk more about our dreams?
At this point what the hell is your dream?


So many boxes already expertly checked: job. wife. kids. expat. travel. hobbies. friends.


What else is there to want? And if you can’t even name it, why do you want it so desperately?


As a kid from an inadequate family, why can’t you just focus on the one goal? Have you forgotten the promises of selflessness you made to your infant daughter, on those quiet dark nights in the glow of her bedroom, with the tender music, and her in your arms, perfect and precious, an empty vessel for everything they didn’t do for you, an empty bag waiting to be filled with everything you salvaged from yourself worth passing on. You vowed to erase yourself piece by piece on those nights, promised to ignore your selfish needs for the sake of your daughter and your wife and this family. And now what ten years later you are wondering about your needs again?


Where did they go?
What are they?
Why do they feel so trivial and obscene?


Your priorities are in front of you. No more lethargic days passing away in a slow drip. Tell her you love her more often. Thank her. Help her. Live your politics instead of tweeting them. Go to Ikea with a smile. Care about the curtains. Get excited about the parties and the holidays and the future and the present. Be more present. Play with the kids. Talk to them. Look deeply into their eyes so they can tie themselves to your ballast.


Slow Sundays in your head can be exhausting. This election is pulling on you like dead weight, forcing you to carry around its bile with every step. The videos. The words. The Tweets. The half-baked opinions of every idiot in a comment box. Why do you let them burrow into your heart. Your space?


What else is there besides this? You are a middle aged man: a father, a husband, a friend and a son who is doing his best. Although, this seldom feels like it is enough, you have to trust that it is.

I Have Become Fragile

I spent the majority of this lovely Sunday in a considerable amount of pain. I don’t mean the low-grade constant aching kind either, I had sharp shooting pain in my both my wrists, occasional spasms in my lower back, and the tendon or muscle or whatever it is that attaches my right wrist to the elbow was pretty painful too, not to mention the muscle just behind the elbow bone, we think it is called the tricep, but really what do we know.

The elbow pain was the most constant, especially when I opened drawers, started the car or even got off the couch- where coincidentally I spent a lot of time on today, inspite of Mairin's occasional glares and eye rolls. I tried to be useful and productive, but I felt like a marionette who had been split apart and haphazardly put back together- every joint tender and slightly askew.

What may you ask caused this level of discomfort? The answer to this question is the most painful aspect of this story. My body is quickly becoming older than my mind.

I spent so much of my youth taking my body for granted, and now that I am well into my fortieth decade, now that my mind and spirit are wise and nimble and eager for life, now that I am starting to understand and appreciate my own mortality, now that I might be thinking about the early stages of onset middle-life crisis, my body has chosen to become not the temple I was promised, but more like a geriatric ward of some decrepit and ignored hospital.

I have become fragile.

I went skating with Kaia this morning and while she was having her lesson, I was swimming in my own sweat in the bowl practicing pumping and carving up the low-grade sides of the pool. I was super careful not to push myself too hard or ride too fast or go too high. I skated like a timid old man who was afraid of getting hurt. Lots of slow repetitive up, turn and back down the ramp. Nothing fancy. Nothing reckless. Nothing stupid.

But even when you are skating like this you fall. I tumbled a few times. Nothing major. I had a helmet, elbow and knee pads and I landed on them each time I fell, which wasn’t too often and I was never going too fast. I don’t even remember a specific fall that could have caused the pain I am still feeling as I type these words twelve hours later.

I am hoping that my some miracle I wake up tomorrow and a night’s rest will have cured all my aches. That somehow in the night a better puppet master will put me back together properly, but the reality is that my body will only be getting worse and more frail and enfeebled. Now, that I am finally ready to use it to run half-marathons and do body pump and skate in a bowl, I have to be worried that the slightest mistake can cause serious injury.

All this talk of degradation has got me down. I know I am still young and I have time, but it’s a stark wake-up call to realize that forty years have passed and the time you have got left is less than time you have already had. You are on a downward slope. You have reached peak life. The realization that your life may have reached climax and your story is on the falling actin side of the plot line is a sobering fact.

I just hope the pain goes away by Wednesday because I want to get back to the park and practice my moves. I actually felt pretty good out there today.

…

The rest of the day, as I mentioned above, was pretty chill. We went for a swim. The girls did some baking. I read on the couch, fell in and out of a few naps and got take-away sushi for dinner. There were a few times when I thought that I should try and sneak in a few mentor comments, but then I convinced myself that it was Sunday, my day of rest and that I shouldn’t feel guilty for resting. Even now, as I type this and wait for Skye to fall asleep, I am in intense negotiation with myself to try and write at least three, two, one comment to give me a jump on the week, but did I mentioned the pain? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just crawl into bed and read some more? Early bed time? Ready for the week? Give my bones time to heal?

It will be a game time call whether or not I write a few or not. As of now, it is too close to make the call.

…

“Daddy, why are they called The X-Men? I mean shouldn’t they be called The X-People? There are lots of mutants that are girls or women. It just doesn’t make sense to call them all X-Men. And why do most of the women always have such big boobs? Why can’t they just be regular?” Kaia.

Looks like someone is already exploring sexist comic book tropes. I wonder if I should start preparing her for the abuse she will face if she ever makes these thoughts public, or just let her question and think without the glaring abuse of sad pathetic Internet trolls.

…

I didn’t say anything about Mohammad Ali yesterday, but he has been on my mind. What can I say that millions of people armed with his quotes and their memes won’t say in the coming weeks?

I was not a super fan, but I knew enough to know that he was one of the bravest revolutionaries this country has ever know. I saw the films and read the books and articles and pumped my fists at his quotes and quips and assaults on the hypocrisy of the American empire. He was not only a boxing champion, but a true champion of the people. There has never been and there will never be another person like Mohammad Ali.

I am sure he was and will be many thing for many people, but I hope in our enthusiasm to celebrate his life, we do not white-wash his brash, in-your-face, activist spirit. Kind of sad to think that while so many people in the media are celebrating his life, if he were a young, black, outspoken athlete in today’s Trump America, he would be just as hated if not more so than he was in the sixties.

Anyway…celebrate his life and his ideals. Post pictures of his victories, because he was so pretty, but do not forget that his biggest match was against the imperial systematic racist side of America, and this is a match that is still being fought by African-Americans today.

For you Ari. I know how deeply you loved him.

…

I jammed a lot in this one. Give it more than a like. Engage, leave a comment. Connect.