quick & dirty

First things first: you should all go see ‘There Will Be Blood,’ if for no other reason than to submit to the awe-inspiring expressions of Daniel Day Lewis’ oil-slathered, but beautiful face. Second, books this week were: David Mitchell’s ‘Black Swan Green’ (an amazingly well-crafted and oh-so entertaining British bildungsroman a la Catcher in the Rye, but set in the early 1980’s) and Oliver Sacks latest ‘Musicophilia’ (a fascinating examination of the physiological reasons for why humans exhibit so many strange attachments and aversions to music). Third, in the spirit of the season:

PRELUDE

“So much life we cannot have or find or repeat yet so much we had and found.”
– Dean Young

From the kingdom of second chances
we inherit February,

king-sized and defective.
Long winter draws my number

underneath a sickle moon,
so I leave my short slip in the closet

until its brocade becomes buffalo plaid.
To imagine living here was no different

from what became a real life.
Now, in the parking lot

of wishful thinking, evening,
may we empty, simply, our desire.

The smart thing I did was gifting
everything I cherished.

When you’re as dumb as I am
good things happen to you.