Given a thousand years to become great

I don’t know if I ever will be

Hope, ticks away, like time, running out

I tick-off people,

complaining about it. “You’re sucking my blood!” They scream.

“Why am I not great?” I ask.

I wait

for it,

like a guru, who promised to see me,

 but he has car trouble,

or a demanding wife,

or a weak body due to excessive fasting, (or is it farting? I don’t know). Anyway, it slows him down, and we don’t meet.

People who write poetry are barking mad

I used to be so normal

but my desire for abnormality

changed me.

My get-up and go has been limited

because I don’t know where to go.

A poet can write a million words in a mental institution

banging-out the letters of the alphabet

while he learns Greek, but he’s still in an institution.

The passage of time,

goes quickly.

I remember key moments in my life, as if they were yesterday

I don’t know why, but they were snapshots

Pictures, I hid inside my mind

short videos, of seemingly no significance.

I was in biology class and we were watching Patch Adams.

Our teacher was 24 and he went on to become a medical doctor.

Strange, he seemed so old then

when I was so young

and now, I’m 35

19 was a lifetime ago.

It was my Senior Year—two weeks before the end of our regular school year

and after graduation I wouldn’t have to come back.

“We’re going to finish-up Patch Adams in the last week of school,” our teacher said.

“I’ll come back for that,” I replied.

“You’re crazy. When you’re done with high school, you’re done,” he said.

“I’m coming back.”

I never did, and unlike many kids who visited

after getting normal jobs

the thought of returning made me sick.

That summer, I told my mother, I wasn’t going to college—

that I was going to play golf professionally

and she told me, “You can move out!”

I never did.

Then, after 10 years of higher education

I decided to become a writer,

and

I’ve been doing that,

ever since.