I was looking for the world’s strongest destructive concentrate –

A touch of strychnine poisons water
Batrachotoxin is even stronger
But for sheer ability to destroy the original substance
My money is on literary criticism

For years running,
On the first day of a new elementary school year,
My son and I would eat here.

The old men in the cafe
Would kid the waitresses
Who waited on them ever day
(Except Sundays).

Eating eggs, pancakes and toast,
Sausage, ham, bacon and grits.

My son loved this place,
But we stopped coming when he hit middle school
Which was far away in another direction.

Before he graduated from high school, though,
We came back one last time.

The food was the same,
But a few of the old men weren’t there any more.

This is a good place
Not a great place
Except that we may have had great times here:

We shouldn’t idolize the past,
Which had its flaws;

We also shouldn’t despise the past,
Because in despising the past,
We despise part of ourselves.

I thought it would be a capital idea
To bring the truth to those still blind
But, oh, the words I had to say
I couldn’t find, I couldn’t find.

I thought it would be a smashing thing
To bring light to the hicks below
But, ah, the way to reach these plebes
I didn’t know, I didn’t know.

She walked in with a glass of water
And said it was time to celebrate

All the great times she’d been having going places alone, because I showed up late
All the family gatherings I missed
All the parts of her life she had poured out to me when I wasn’t listening
All the problems she faced on our behalf

So, I suck, I said
What’s the water for?

It’s not a real drink
And it’s not a real toast
Because this is not a real relationship

The camera never lies (they say)
But I say that it does
I say, it lies for spite, because
I do not look that way

I do not look like that, I’m sure
So old, so gray, so fat
I do not, cannot look like that
This I shall not endure

So camera, I will say farewell
Get hence from this, my life
While I think gratefully, my wife
Now cannot see too well

Still and silent is the night
As I walk among these stones
Wind blows cold and starts to bite
O’er this place of ancient bones

Sing the songs of lives unknown
In this place of sweet release
And may all life’s troubled souls
Find them peace, yes, find them peace

I lost nine-and-a-half pounds in one day
And you can too
With the new and improved stomach virus

Brings focus to your mind
Fever to your head
Four days worth of sleep
Packed into two

One day, soon
I might try eating something again