The life you wanted


The life you wanted is dead,
pieces of it scattered from childhood to Kansas,
victim of a thousand million gouges, scrapes, and slices.
You can blame television, album-oriented rock, Jesus
and hip modern novels – they all stuffed you
with vile hopeful heroism and pretty principles
-- but they didn't kill that life.
You cut away some of it yourself in a frenzy of pruning
to increase fruit-bearing potential, but other parts fell away,
stunted and starved by your pruning.
You found out too late that potential is just that.
Nobody ever got satisfaction out of potential.
The life you thought you wanted turned out
to be a facade of a real life, dominated by late-night drama, recriminations, desperate
prayer and door-slamming, in the end
a lie.


The life you wanted is dead. Turn around
and embrace the life you have. It is not a dream,
never has been. This life has crises
but not cosmic and existential ones.
This life has conversations, growing children with
their tears and school artwork,. fender-benders and late credit card payments,
constant house repairs, but
you need this life the way your dead one never needed you.
This life lumbers wonderfully on,
not all that sexy and maybe not even noble,
but comfortable, satisfying, alive.