I’m curious about people, too.
X is difficult for me to be curious about.
I was unhappy when I was his age; it was especially hard
graduating from college and not feeling I had any skills or connections
to take my place as a working person in the real world.
Funny how the world allows one to live a semi-real existence among poems,
and yet one is fed, and housed, and one maintains a somewhat normal front.
And one is actually happy! X is addicted to video games.
He plays with his friends remotely, noon and night—literally.
This is his cocoon: video games, and his mother.
When I go upstairs he’s either sleeping or playing a video game—
and it’s usually fairies and elves blowing each other up.
It doesn’t even look like an interesting game to me, and I love games.
His reaction to me is always “why are you here? Get out of here.”
If he watches Jeopardy with me, and politics happens to come up,
it ends in disaster. He’s convinced white people are racists
and orange man bad and climate change will kill us in 9 years.
That’s what they teach in the schools now. These are the facts.
And there’s deep, psychological animosity if you disagree.
The only nice moments I have with him are joking and making fun of others.
His mother makes him food at odd hours, mostly soup or frozen meals.
She continues to bully me whenever I dare to see things differently
in the domestic sphere. So I end up agreeing with her, and then it’s okay.
The car was at John’s because of a snow emergency,
and I overheard Z saying Y had to work at 3
and Z had a zoom work-meeting at 2:30,
so rather than let Y walk all the way to John’s and be late,
I volunteered to walk to the car, de-ice it, and drive Y to work.
That’s the only way I can be a hero these days.
I had hopes of Y getting good marks and being a star in college;
that was very hard to take when I saw she did so poorly,
and more or less deliberately, from not doing work.
Where was her advisor? Where was her mother? Where were her instructors?
They teach in school how “supportive community” is everything,
and “evil right-wingers” only care about “profit,” but where is Y’s “community?”
That’s the thing about the Left—one can question its message,
but in fact the Left isn’t even real.
There’s no there there. It’s a hologram. It’s a video game.
It’s Z having sweet, innocuous conversations
and making her kids feel they are always right,
And never making them do chores.
But back to Y and her lack of academic achievement. Maybe that’s our family.
The fall of the House of P_____. I’m looking at myself.
I didn’t do terribly well at school (but I would never let myself get Fs!)
And I was scared of success. I didn’t think I had what it took to make it.
I had acne. I was shy. You and mom fought a lot. I was scared. I was anxious.
The world was run by nasty right-wingers and so why bother?
Successful in the past, our family is slowly succumbing to poverty—
the seed is not going forth and flourishing.
There’s one great-grandchild, and where is he?
My niece is in California and I’m sure that pains her mother.
Y, simply by luck—online connection—has a boyfriend in California.
I will be very sad if she should move out there.
I have little connection to my kids and maybe that’s why
it comforts me that they are at least nearby,
In the next room. Z keeps talking of selling the house,
and I will then be out on my own,
as Z will welcome a scattering—who needs me around? That’s her stated attitude.
I suppose the mature attitude for me would be to strike out on my own
and fashion a life for myself with people I like.
I don’t finally like people, that’s the problem.
Oh, I adore people. When they belong to me, in some real sense.
When I can do something for them, or have a laugh with them, I like people.
But to go forward and form relationships in terms of
landlord, employer, doctor, grocer, bar-mate,
that just makes me feel lonely. But that’s what we all need to do.
I didn’t like doing it at 21. Or 18?
At my age, I feel like it will be worse. I’ll have experience and wisdom,
but it won’t help quell the existential dread.
Of course I can be charming, when I want to be.
I usually form superficial relationships in which they seek me out,
and I finally don’t have time for them.
I know I can be charming, but after a while, I think: why bother?
But I never form relationships with successful people,
people who are going somewhere, people who can teach me something.
Maybe because those types are disciplined and cold?
I form relationships with lovable losers
who finally aren’t good for anything but a laugh.
The relationships that really count—wife, children—
I’m generally failing there because of money.
Z hates me because I don’t make enough money.
I don’t have money to give to my kids.
That’s what it finally comes down to. Not a PBS interview.
Not a book of poems. Not school reform. Money.
So it all comes together—successful job, good friendships, happy wife and kids,
motivated behavior, with money. But one sees wrecked homes
and miserable lives where there’s money, too. You can only live one life.
I don’t know first hand what money brings. I certainly have comforts.
I chiefly want to be able to share what I know with my kids,
share what we have with each other as a family—
we do have what we need, really, as a family,
but Z keeps insisting we are not a family,
and she doesn’t want me to have that happiness;
she doesn’t like it when I bond with the kids,
she makes sure there are negative feelings in the air in our home
and she welcomes that our kids breathe it,
because she has decided I don’t deserve to be happy as a father.
I’m old and wise enough to understand that human beings
are miserable, secretive, creatures—
selfish, insecure, jealous, craven, unwise, fearful.
I can write and you can read and we can pretend to be reasonable,
but humanity is tortured and confused as a rule, and life is short.
I have shortcomings and Z and I are equally guilty.
This is finally just a glimpse into my thoughts—of my thoughts.
Nothing, really, but a sharing. Beautiful, because it doesn’t cost a nickel.