Tomorrow May Never Come

When you feel the weight of tomorrow
Bearing down upon your shoulders
Feeling like Atlas and feeling the sorrow
Of beauty's converse in the eye of the beholder
Remember that tomorrow may never come.

When you feel yourself trapped within the amber
Of this moment gone that we call now
Unable to move and unable to tamper
With today, that which will you see cowed
Remember that today may come again.

When you feel the mistakes of yesterday
Break through the clouds of retrospect
And the expository glare betray
The remains: remorse and stark regret
Remember that yesterday has come and gone.

A Product of GM

What good is a broken refrigerator
Resuscitated on a regular basis
Only to slowly putter and die again
Killed by the perfect freezer atop its ivory tower?
It can't keep milk from curdling,
Vegetables from rotting within its rancid depths
And poisoning the unwary,
But the freezer with its ever-frigid air
Has never faltered, and as it beavers on
The coldness it collects clutters and chokes
The lungs of the body it rides upon.
I've watched strange men come and clear the ice
And the refrigerator come to life
A breath of fresh, cool, air
But sure as the frozen debris that litters my sink
Cleared from the icy realm where time holds no dominion
Will melt and spoil in a place so full of life,
The refrigerator will fail again as the freezer beavers on.

What good are these broken lamps
With crooked stands and flickering lights
Like the glow of embers in a still night
Winking into nothingness and forgotten
Or any light at all, for that matter
If all they can shine on is wreckage,
Scattered papers and ravaged books,
An untuned and ancient piano
That renders every tune unrecognizable,
An ancient house cat, once beautiful,
Now covered with matted fur,
And other debris of lives spent in futility?

What good is the queen of this domain,
Desperately trying to be proud of nothing,
Needing to be a mother?
She is a homemaker, a loyal employee, and an instrument of order
And yet her home is chaos.
It is a filthy hovel at best under her care,
Cluttered and reeking of urine and resignation.
At worst it is the end of the earth,
Expanses of the indeterminate dregs of wasted lives,
Piled upon themselves and compacted.
Oh mother, her children can't stand her
They resent her more than anything else for she made them
Cynical and weary of her world,
The only world she ever showed them.
What is good is the father,
Who does not deserve the title “king”,
Who could have been so much more
But worked two menial jobs for a decade,
Squandering his potential,
Taking his anger and frustration out on his family
Until now he has become almost obsolete?
Now he tries be useful again,
Unemployed and dying,
He monopolizes as best he can as much as he can
So that his passing will cripple the family
So that he will still be needed,
And so that he will be missed.

What good is the American dream
To the son of those who came to this country
So full of hope, potential, faith
And other such things that suckers are made of
Only to see the dream fail?

And what good is that son
For whom the parents will dare to dream again
Who doesn't even want to live for himself anymore,
Let alone let others live through him,
Who asks “What good is a home, is a family, is a life
To those who see only broken refrigerators,
Flickering lamps, shattered dreams,
Dying old men, and their own demise”
And other questions no wants to hear
Or answer?

Product of General Motors

What good is a broken refrigerator
Fixed repeatedly of the same problem
That still can't keep milk from curdling
Vegetables from spoiling and poisons
From the mouths of the unwary?

What good are these broken lamps
Dim, if they're ever gotten to work at all
If all they can shine on is wreckage
The debris of lives spent in futility?

What good is the mother's pride
Her need to be a homemaker and to be orderly
When her home is chaos
Filthy, cluttered, reeking more than faintly of urine?
Her children can't stand her, resent her for she has made them
Cynical and weary of her world,
The only world she ever showed them.

What good is her husband, the father,
Who could have been so much more
But worked two menial jobs for a decade,
Squandering his potential
Taking his anger and frustration out on his family
Until now he has become almost obsolete,
Monopolizing as best he can as much as he can
So he's still needed now, unemployed and dying?

How much solace can one take in acceptance
If it is given in resignation
For Sisyphus can only have despaired,
Knowing his beginning and his end
His smile is the Cheshire grin of mania.

What good is teaching the American dream
To the son of those who came to this country
So full of hope, potential, and the other adjectives suckers are made of
Only to see the dream fail?
And what good is the son for whom the parents will dare to dream again
Who doesn't even want to live for himself anymore,
Let alone let others live through him?

Face First

A two-faced man hangs over a cliff
Swaying in the salty breeze
That stirs the waves to gently lap the rocks.

He dangles from the tree of life
Its roots entangled in the cracks in the Earth,
Making the ground it stands on.

The sun sinks into the horizon,
The ocean bursts into flames,
Setting the canopy of night ablaze.

The string comes undone, cut by unseen forces
The two-faced man twists and tumbles,
Hitting the blazing waters face-first.

As You Lay Dying

As you lay dying swaddled with wintry sheets
Barely conscious and unable to recognize me
Or any of your family who shuffle in
Daily to awkwardly stare at you, emaciated
Perhaps hoping they'll make a difference
Perhaps hoping for a sense of closure
So that they can mourn you now
While you're still but barely alive
I'm reminded of the stories I've been told
The rumors, the gossip, and even then
Not much reached my ears.

I think of your colleague who looks so much younger
But studied with you at the university
He told me that while you were studying
You worked two jobs and gave blood to support your siblings
I'm trying to see something of that man left in you.
I think of my brother telling me that you taught yourself English
By reading Faulkner.
I wonder how he knew this
But then again, you always liked him more.
I saw The Sound and the Fury on your bookshelf, well-thumbed
But I was too young to recognize it,
And far too young to appreciate it.
I think of the feud my father told me about
Between you and an old family friend,
How you kept his son from coming to America with him
Because he was too young,
And how he didn't talk to you for years.
The son is an engineer in Maryland now -
The father retired in Buffalo.
I was told the two of you made peace years ago.
I remember the pride in my father's voice as we walked around Tufts
As he explained how you started an exchange program
Sending promising young Chinese students to the medical school.
I heard that same pride in the voice of another colleague
Showing me your articles, written in English and Chinese,
Telling me of the advances you made in... god knows what.

I try to think about what I remember of you,
And all I can see are hospitals and your quiet suffering
And how every few months my aunt calls to worry my father
Filling him with stress and dread as she describes your worsening condition
As he argues with my mother I can see his concern for you,
His anger at his inability to help,
And I think of his tentative hope when you recover slightly.
He will be mourning the death of a father,
A man he admired, who he was so proud of,
In who's footsteps he tried to follow and failed.
I think of your wife, all alone in your apartment
When your time comes and your family returns from America
She will notice the absence of her eldest son
He's been dead for months now, but for her
He would be freshly buried,
And she will have lost two of the most important men in her life at once.
I think of those doctors and scholars who talked to me
Sympathetically in the suite they gave you
They will mourn the death of a colleague,
The death of a dedicated teacher,
And the death of a friend.
I think of my cousins and my brother,
All of whom knew you better than I,
And they will lament the loss of a grandfather
Even though I know my brother will not be at your funeral.
And my mother, who you did not approve of,
Who's union with my father you and your wife at first condemned
Will shed a tear for you, because she's grown to care for you as well.
But I know that when I see you again
To pay my respects and say good bye
I will not be mourning a teacher, a friend,
A colleague, or even a grandfather.
I will be mourning the death of a stranger
Who I heard so much about,
But was never able to meet.