A Manual for Living with Defeat
Run home to awe no matter how awful a ma she’s been. Don’t ask a musician how to get to Carnegie Hall, a lunatic how to get to an asylum, or a priest how to get laid. Call pest control on your most persistent nightmares, the ones that made you wet the bed and the one about people finding out. Hire a hitman to play on the company softball team. If you’re beside yourself, pat yourself on the back. When you feel like a wild animal, snort or kick or write poems and tack them to the door of the nearest church. If you’re alone, look for someone who needs a loan, but don’t expect or accept payback. If someone tells you to get lost, fine, but don’t let that person find you again. Break the record for the world’s largest vinyl collection and the record for the most detailed journal, and then break your own records.
12 thoughts on "A Manual for Living with Defeat"
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Love this huge variety of defeats, great poem
Thank you!
I love your use of tone here. You get to the heart with humor in a way I admire.
Thanks Shaun.
So many perfect contradictions and spins. When I read “but don’t expect or accept payback” my mind said: “Don’t except or accept payback” such is the game you are playing that I started to play it on myself!
Thanks Jon.
Such novel musings here, sequenced beautifully. “ If you’re beside yourself, pat yourself on the back.” made me laugh out loud.
Thanks Jason.
Funny puns and great play on words and ideas.
Thank you!
The humor is wonderful.
approaches the sublime.
Great ending, too.
Thanks Melva!