THE NEWS, THE PROMISE

This is the news I never
want to share with you, son.

That you will suffer,
that you’ll lose many things
and way beyond what
you perceive to be your level
of tolerance; and you won’t break,
though no difference would obtain,
with that kind of breakage
being its own form of loss.

And you’ll lie to someone you love
and suffer another’s dishonesty, too
and more than once, likely.
Suffer fools and blows and
your own boneheaded mistakes.

Maybe it’s not lying if I don’t say all this.
Maybe someday you’ll read this.

My daughter asks me about heaven
these days. How old are you in heaven,
and what color hair? Is it gray, or do you get
the brown back? And what I want
to tell her, but don’t, is that all I know
of heaven if we get to live there
is there is desire there
and need and want and not having,
because without these we’re not really
alive any more. And given a choice
I’ll keep my gray hair in heaven.

A strange and perfect reflexivity of fear…
I turn my face from the mirror, bleeding
from a minor shaving mishap
toward my young daughter who
in her revulsion and fear walks out
the door and into the road.

THERE'S SAFETY IN GROUPS

I saw a documentary film in which
a multiple personality woman
is interviewed, and tells
how over the holidays there were gifts
hidden all over her apartment which
her many inner people had bought
for each other. She couldn’t look
anywhere or she’d ruin the surprise
for someone... blessed, with six or seven
personalities, and all
with the energy and resources
and on good enough terms to buy
each other gifts!

I guess all my personalities live
more circumspect and less
friendly lives, confined though they are
together in my head. I do have to fight
sometimes to be heard through the din
of the voices-- the man who says “No,
for shame,” and another who states
simply, “Who you lookin’ at...?”  The thinker,
the poet, the child, the lecher, the thief;
they all crowd around inside my head
like a party of narcissists
(who think it would have been
a nice party if anyone else but themselves
had been invited).
When someone from the outside asks,
“What do you think?” I have to pose
the question to that crowd,
who promise to get back to me
with an answer, pretty soon now.

About the Author:

Jay C. Davis lives in Portland, Maine, is the father of three young adults, is engaged to be married, and works on computers for an insurance company. He's published 3 chapbooks with Moonpie Press, and has read his poetry widely (less frequently these days) mostly in northern New England.