Oh, Ten

Every year it seems I arrive back at the workbench, the thought-generator, the most heavenly seat for my impurest thoughts. Alas, oh ten you little scoundrel, what surprises you had in store for me. Love! Of all things, it was love that finally found me. My angel and my muse, the mistress of all these horrible doggerel sessions, catharsis on high, yet you find me nonetheless. The year was within you, a spectrum change of sorts that left me bewildered, and getting my relationship “sea legs”. I’ve managed thus far, eleven glorious months and counting, my love remains strong, evolving, never wavering.

Lord knows what the evanescent eleven holds in store: heartbreak, triumph, marriage, children, disaster, clarity, clairvoyance, myopia.....ah, the lists never get old! Will the sapling year find me accomplished in my field, a best-seller of half-hearted verse, of a mindwell drying up sooner than his premature pruney skin? Eleven will you find me happy? Perhaps that’s the most important question; for happiness is constantly fleeting, the dream on the periphery escaping our grasp with a fiendish giggle. Yet to attain happiness, one must define, and occasionally, redefine what happiness truly is to them. I won’t claim to be the sage, nor an ardent advice-giver, yet in the self-contained microcosms of our lives, we are the law. We dictate the tides of our happiness, the fluctuations of our sorrows, and yet the ever-warring battle of emotions remains permanently enigmatic to us.

Eleven I hope to see you out in your fullest, and return, perhaps not to this decaying throne, but hopefully to an elsewhere slightly less shoddy. I leave my fate in the hands of the days and the ruthless machinations of my fellow man that hold sway over them. I’ve retired pride for a time, left him to hibernate along with his slightly more sinister cousin Hubris, and have claimed humility for as long as necessary–for mastery takes time and patience. An excellence of self is mere faux-pas without sacrifice and self-contentment. I remain on the eve of your death oh ten, wreathed in phantom responsibilities that I know full well shall be slow in abating, yet my steps do not falter nor quiver, for the unknown is lighter with my love by my side, with the knowledge that love only grows the best parts of you—like an exotic tree.

I’ve never claimed to know it all, though I am responsible for the idiocy of arrogance and youth. I know more mistakes will be made, though efforts shall be made to minimize their devilish damage. I know it will be hard, more painstaking than any adjective I can currently conjure, yet the bruises barter a wisdom all their own, like the scars bequeathed to us through every new experience. I can only remain optimistic, eyes gazing steely into the unknown maw of the impending calender days, and let the exquisite mystery of oh eleven have its way with a body steadily churning through its maze.

"86"

He grew up talking astronomy
with the regulars,
treading carefully
‘round guillotine kitchen doors—
“86 It”

Spent hours dropping eaves
on decadent multiformities,
imagining kingdoms
in cancerous rainbow packs.

Remembering
the ole Rebesko’s ways–
a curse & a kiss.
Bacon extra crinkly,
a crisp Benjamin underneath.

Days spent undertaking
the jellybean quest,
steps boisterous
in the unguarded rejoice—
mere shoe-lace tumbles,
knee-scraped calligraphy
reading back
tumultuous vividity.

Those walls imploded
under burden of memory;
Ole Rebesko’s legacy
in ashes.

At his grave remain
the grease-stained and
blood-splattered apron—
artifacts of the sweltering time sink.

Beneath his village moniker
lies the “Victory”—
his people carry it on,
spilling it onwards
into the irascible grease.

He carries it now:
remembering celestial milkshakes,
snuck-dollar delicacies.
He remembers
the world within the man—
“86 It”
that means finished.