Wednesday, February 18, 2015

poem of the day 02.18.15


telling a twelve year old
that my wife is the incredible hulk

because he’s always around me at the job
hanging on my every word

he wants to know what my favorite color is
why i wear my hair long
he points out daily that there’s gray in my beard

because i can’t have an adult conversation
when he’s in the building

last week he heard me call my supervisor
an incompetent ass and threatened to tell him

because he heard me tell another co-worker
about my wife’s radiation
i had to tell him that she was the incredible hulk

it made me feel somewhat better to tell this tall tale
because it made radiation not seem so bad

of course he’d never seen my wife angry
while i have some vivid memories of her ire

maybe she is the incredible hulk and i just didn’t realize it

i think about last week
when i told her we should just buy a gun
and put a nice exclamation mark on this year

but he brings me back to earth
he wants to know why my wife is getting radiation
he wants to know if this is why i’ve seemed angry all summer

because he’s always around me at the job
listening to every goddamned word that i have to say

reading my emails when i’m not looking
catching me in the office when i’m looking down
or staring off into space

he can tell that i’m lying

about this and about how i feel all of the time
because tall tales are just great big lies

and besides what twelve year old
believes that the hulk is real?

                                                            10.07.14

okay...so this is the last of the cancer-related poems that i've had backlogged. tomorrow is back to the typical...well...whatever it is i've been wasting my time doing here since 2008.

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