A Memory of Joy

There are those days when it all seemed right

When no storms were overhead
The breeze of a lazy August day enveloped you
and 
You wanted to lie down in Lincoln Park 
and 
Hug the person beside you.

That summer in 1983 
It was a lost summer 
When I couldn’t feel anything

When my life had been drained 
of any curiosity about living.

I wasn’t looking for anything
Didn’t care about anything

Living was just a lazy routine
waking up
working
and
sleeping.

No one existed beyond my fragile world.

The Boogeyman That Won’t Leave Me Alone in My Dreams

I have never met the Boogeyman

I couldn’t tell you what he looks like,

But I know he
(maybe a she)
is real. 

As real as the physical reality in front of me

The computer
My water bottle
My phone
My notebook. 

The physical world I live in, 

that I can touch and feel, 
Or at the very least, 
is honest in my brain through my eyes. 

The Boogeyman is not real 

In the physical reality kind of way
We should probably call it an “it”
since applying gender to it
is perhaps not the right way to approach this.

It is a feeling

an atmospheric fog
That feels like
It is covering me
like a blanket

a tent might be a better word
or
sometimes it feels like
a straitjacket

where
I can’t move my
arms
legs
hands
even my head
At least my face isn’t covered. 

I wouldn’t know what to do

If I were bound from head to toe
and couldn’t move at all,
or, worse, felt like I couldn’t breathe.

I confess my worst nightmare

the Boogeyman
to my therapist

well
actually, every therapist
for the last forty years
and
no one has been able to give me a good reason
or
suggest a means of escape.

The response is always about

well
What deep-seated guilt
you have about
your mother
or
your father
or
a member of the family
or
maybe your first girlfriend
or
your last girlfriend
or
that one time with a guy
and
you thought you were gay.

I would listen attentively.

I heard the explanations, 
then nodded and twisted my facial muscles 
to show how seriously I was taking the conversation. 

After listening to these explanations for several years

I got the response down to a science
A moment of despair 
wrapped in a depressed lowering of my eyes

My head down
My chin was practically buried in my chest
My arms were sliding off my lap
and
hanging limply at my sides

My legs apart

A twitch in my neck
Visible to the human eye

Then the breathing becomes shallow
And I know I’ve sent the message
I feel like shit.

The Cruise of a Lifetime

The ship was much larger than I expected

It probably felt that way because I was traveling alone
All around me at check-in were families and couples

I expected most were Americans looking for the thrill of a lifetime
on a cruise ship whose advertising tagline is

“Yes, we are the biggest.” 

I thought it was not very original

But it piqued my interest enough 
to withdraw all my money from my banks 
and 401Ks to come up with the one hundred thousand dollars 
It would take to join this 

once-in-a-lifetime worldwide three-year-long voyage. 

My family said I was crazy. 

I told them I needed one last adventure 
Before I died from the sickness that was attacking my blood. 

Death was coming, 
And I wanted to fulfill my number one bucket list wish

See the entire world. 

And why not? 
There was only me now. 

My family had perished in a terrible car accident last year.
I had mourned enough.

Now it was time to beat the angels of death
before they came for me.

My doctor told me
I could probably live another year at best, 
But he would say, “
You never know,” 
in his usual sarcastic voice.

Doc can’t help it. 

He’s from New York, 60th and Fifth Ave. 
He was born into a family of doctors 
and grew up in a three-floor condo right on Fifth Avenue. 

Talk about privilege. 

No matter his rich pedigree,
He was still a New Yorker,
So we hit it off. 

He was a fellow homeboy who never sugarcoated my illness 

and 
the facts of life about it. 

“You never know.” 
was all he would say. 

When I told him about my plan
sail around the world for three years. 

He told me I was being overly optimistic

But what the hell. 
The worst that could happen to me was that I died on the ship.
“Heck, you’ll probably get a burial-at-sea funeral!”

The best thing would be that I got to finish the cruise
and 
Then I would drop dead as soon as I stepped off the ship
Right there in front of all those families and couples. 

I brought my computer 
and 
every note I had ever written about my life 
For the book, I would write as I go during the adventure. 

This would be the writing adventure of a lifetime, 

where I would write about my life 
while experiencing a life not yet lived, 
while facing the possibility 
of missing the end of the lifetime adventure. 

Yeah, that’s okay. 

I’m never going to fully know 
What will happen before it happens.

I wrote out ten facts about my life 
that I was going to use in the book, 
whose title I’m still playing around with. 

My first choice for a title is 

“Me: A Life in Time” 
Feels a little abstract. 

Then, there’s “On Second Thought.” 

Something about the book 
is about my second thoughts 
about all the things I have done in my life 
that I am proud of 

and those I am ashamed of. 

There are some things 
where both of those judgments exist 

simultaneously. 

I wanted to use this adventure to fulfill a dream 
Based on a quote I came across a long time ago

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”