Enthusiasm
"Don't
overdo it," Dad yelled, watching me
Play shortstop, collect stamps and shells,
Roll on the grass laughing until
I peed my pants.
"Screw him," I said, and grabbed every cowry
I could find, hogged all the books
I could
From Heights Library, wore out the baseball
Diamond dawn to dusk, and—parents in Duluth—
Gorged on bountiful Candy dusk to dawn.
Not until a Committee wrote of my poems,
"Enthusiasm should
be tempered,"
Did I change my song. I write now
The way I live: calm and sober, steering
Toward
the Golden Mean. The Committee
Was right to withhold funds. I'd have bought
A hundred box turtles with lemon-speckled
shells,
Flyfished for rainbows six months straight,
Flown to the Great Barrier Reef and dived
Non-stop
among pink coral and marble cones,
Living on chocolate malts, peaches, and barbecue.
I'd have turned into a ski
bum, married
Ten women in ten states, written nothing
Poetry would glance at twice, instead
Of rising
at 5:00 as I do now, writing
'Til noon about matters serious and deep,
Teaching 'til 6:00, eating a low-fat
meal
High in fiber and cruciferous vegetables,
Then bed by 9:00, alarm clock set
Five minutes late: my one
indulgence of the day.
The
Death Of Santa Claus
He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,
he's let his Blue Cross lapse,
blood tests make him faint,
hospital
gowns always flap
open, waiting rooms upset
his stomach, and it's
only
indigestion anyway, he thinks,
until, feeding the reindeer,
he feels as if a monster fist
has grabbed his heart and won't
stop squeezing. He can't
breathe, and the beautiful white
world
he loves goes black,
and he drops on his jelly belly
in the snow
and Mrs. Claus
tears out of the toy factory
wailing, and the elves
wring
their little hands, and Rudolph's
nose blinks like a sad ambulance
light, and in a tract house
in Houston, Texas, I'm 8,
telling my mom that stupid
kids at school say Santa's a big
fake,
and she sits with me
on our purple-flowered couch,
and takes my
hand, tears
in her throat, the terrible
news rising in her eyes.
