A Couple (More) Poems

My Compromise

For five years, or so,

These lips have touched no meat.

But on Thanksgiving Day

I load up on gravy

Made with the drippings

Of a sacrificial turkey.

By this, I tell myself,

I didn’t kill the bird,

But only performed

A kind of liposuction,

Which, in the final analysis,

Might have been exactly

What the creature had needed.

Time and Space

We are then weightless souls

Whisked away at light’s speed,

Finally seeing what had been there all along,

Hidden behind a façade:

Time is but another location.

That’s when the pieces fit,

And we’re privy to past and future—

Including the narrow corridors of mortality—

Suddenly earning us full knowledge,

Rendering us unable to suppress the notion:

“Aha!”

To that future self, I speak:

Don’t judge me as I do now,

With a disapproving eye that belabors each point,

Recollecting the infinite number

And irreconcilable costs of my shortcomings.

Let’s agree, instead:

Yes, I wield unrighteous dominion

And my faults are limitless,

But somewhere beyond time,

Against all odds and expectations,

I am you.