How It Adds Up

There was the day we swam in a river, a lake, and an ocean.

And the day I quit the job my father got me.

And the day I stood outside a door,

and listened to my girlfriend making love

to someone obviously not me, inside,

and I felt strange because I didn’t care.

There was the morning I was born,

and the year I was a loser,

and the night I was the winner of the prize

for which the audience applauded.

Then there was someone else I met,

whose face and voice I can’t forget,

and the memory of her

is like a jail I’m trapped inside,

or maybe she is something I just use

to hold my real life at a distance.

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower

plucked from a river of lava

and held aloft on a tightrope

strung between two scrawny trees

above a canyon

in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it—,

And when you do, you will keep looking for it

everywhere, for years,

while right behind you,

the footprints you are leaving

will look like notes

of a crazy song.

Source: What Narcissism Means to Me (Graywolf Press, 2003)