The hard thing is not coming
to confession, but tearing
myself away from it.
I cannot find
in myself a stone
on which to break vanity:
I am soft, not stonelike,
and vanity covers my softness
like a gauze.
* * *
This week my 28th birthday slunk by.
I am too young, still, to indulge
in proper remorse. Even my first
marriage holds fast, all five months of it.
What went before was nothing, a waste
I almost said of spirit, but not that:
of effort solely, exertion bent
on self-defeat. I don't deserve my wife
or my son. That goes without saying.
* * *
There was some work I said
that I would finish, and now cannot.
I may not even be much of a poet
but I can normalize a database
and know that there is really nothing to it.
The world of work is where my days are spent.
I want to join Greenpeace, and join or start
a co-op. Neither will bring back my youth,
thank god. I cannot go on as before.
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