Dark Lie

By Joseph Hesch

I stopped trying to be who
the world always wanted me to be—
pliant, compliant, the good boy,
and the better man.
With age I see why
I’ve hated the effort I made
to color within everyone else’s lines.
Inside, I’m trying to be
cold and dark and
-- just to be me --
I keep all those beans
we’re supposed to count
in alphabetic order.
This is my life, my obsession,
and I’ll keep it the way that I want.
That’s who I am, for better or worse.
No partners, no bliss, self-service.
Deal with it.

Oh, excuse me, did you drop this?

Last Blue Sky of Summer

By Joseph Hesch

The night of my forty-ninth birthday,
I pulled the covers over a part
of my life I knew was ending.
The next morning would be the first
on the path to my autumn,
when everything about life would change.
I awoke to a morning sky
of such infinite azure beauty,
so clean of cloud and worry
that I made a memory of it,
something I could carry
in my gray remaining years.
Mercilessly, my memory sky
was smeared by flame and smoke,
by dust and tears.
And soon I realized the selfish dread
I hid behind sleepy eyes the night
of that September 10, would
haunt me for all my days.
Always it will sting my eyes
when I think of that
last blue sky of summer.

On this tenth anniversary of the horrors of September 11, 2001, my poem addresses a loss so much less important in the grand scheme of things. I lost a bit of joy that comes every year on my birthday. And I lost the glory that was that last brilliant sky of my life's summer. (Photo by New York Daily News.)