Poems Written in April and May, 2024
A brief selection.
One Way to Look at It
If your heart can still hurt,
try to take some comfort
in the fact that it is far from
being fully broken. Yet.
Too Good for Dumpster Larrys
Tonight I went on my first first date
since my most recent breakup, and the woman,
without my prompting her, taught me that if you
threaten to delete your Hinge app profile it will reset
your algorithm and shoot you to the top of the crop.
“So I quit getting matched with ‘Dumpster Larrys,’”
she said. (I do not know who Dumpster Larry is, or
if he is just an idea.) So, yeah, strange meetup.
Not too often you get dating hack advice from the person
you’re, well, on a date with. But stranger things have happened.
And I suppose you really do learn something new every day.
I hope she and Dumpster Larry both find what they’re looking for.
Educated by the Internet, Mostly
Today I Googled “Can you get
bunions on your finger joints?”
And in case you were considering
searching for the same, I can save
you some time and let you know the
answer is “yes.” Just, you know, if you
found yourself in need of something else
very annoying and unlikely to happen to you
to still worry about. Put it on the ole’ tab, right?
Workshopping It
Have you ever thought of a joke
and decided you would try out your
brand new material on several friends,
so you text the same thing to a bunch
of them and then keep feeling phantom
vibrations from your phone, but pick it
up to see there are no notifications and
the only sound you hear are the crickets
coming from the therapist-level noise machine
you got because you completely fear total silence?
Yeah, no, me neither. Was just kind of wondering.
How the Bacon Is Made
I had this random meandering thought today
where i wondered how and when bacon had been
discovered, created, if it was some sort of happy accident.
So I decided to take a break from Googling whether or not
I might be experiencing atrial fibrillation at an uncommonly
young age, and Googled “the origin of bacon” instead.
Realized that if I were, you know, going into a-fib now and then,
there might be a direct correlation to my not-at-all modest
consumption of bacon through the years. Reasoned that if I
did a little deep dive into how this sodium-addled meat comes
to be exactly what it is, the process behind the product, it might
turn me off to eating it (or at least so much of it) in the present
and the future — might cajole me to pivot to when I buy a delicious package
and get ready to sizzle it up, I’d make a solemn vow to not consume
every single strip purchased in the span of one evening.
That I’d take into account that although this cured pork might help
cure whatever’s ailing me in the short term, it will eventually make
things more complicated, via congestion, clogging, et. al.
But passion is passion. And a cheat day is a cheat day.
When I got out of the Google rabbit hole, I just wanted a huge-ass
BLT. My newfound knowledge had not served to make me wanna wean
off it at all. It’s likely someday I’ll end up blowing rails of Lipitor (thank you, science). But buy the ticket, take the ride. And at least now I know some shit.
