happyless

30 poems in 5 days

I want to be happy every day now. Not happy telling secrets over landings

or whispering about the neighbors wife, but happy like Spencer Tracy in

"Guess who's coming to dinner",

knowing that Black folk was now the ritual you hum along to; Monk

hummed his way through the ugly of reticence, the ugly of

Art Blakey and Nelly;  ugly as sin but beauty rarely cares

that spring never stops improving/

The doomsday preppers have this pessimistic view of mankind,

that it cant console itself long enough after all civilization is lost

to laugh again at Bob Hope telling golf jokes, so they store,

in their concrete store houses, cans of pork and beans and chili

and 22 ammo and jugs of water (and I too question the

congruency) but the end, I suspect, there's  happiness.

But if you're the last man alive and you own al the rivers of the world

there are still those you cant drink from. Still those not crossable,

still those that go dark over sunlit skies. Still those so turbid

and full of dead folk you pray out loud, to the last God standing,

to let you have happiness. Again, in the world with it's

turmoil you've survived.

So its gets cold and people are unhappy, so they go to the casino

and loose their money and leave unhappy. Then they get on

the highway, get cut off by a stranger, yells profanity out the window

at another unhappy person, obscenities that cant be mentioned here

in a poem about happiness, but you get my drift?

So you go home alone

and warm the house up to 76 degrees ever knowing the heating bill

is already out of sight and you drag out the Dorito's

and the 2 liter Mountain Dew because some poet said

that happiness is fleeting. And it is. So you raise your

temperature and your blood pressure and your blood sugar in a room

where the lover that left you last felt

that happy heart of yours.

Reviews

[Beccy]

This life is full of obstacles, twists and turns; some real, some imagined, and others, no more than, as you say, those propounded by the doomsday preppers.

Unhappy is a state of mind that always sees the half empty cup, never the beautiful gift of our three score year and ten. I would not like to be happyless, or the last person alive.

Beccy.

[Terpsichore]

To be happyless is to have the wrong perspective on happy. It's a burden particular to today's world.

Happy isn't a brand new Merc in the driveway or a stupid designer handbag, never has been, never will be.

I do like this.

T

[h d e rushin]

thank you my dear friend....dana

[Steven]

Happyless? I wish I thought of that ;)

"ugly as sin but beauty rarely cares that spring never stops improving"

Smart. Fact is not pretty or ugly, but can call the same accurately.

This sort of took me down the road of Berryman's Dream Songs. Know them? The weaving of perception in and out of an omniscient voice to one meek and introspective is charming and very human.

"in a room

where the lover that left you last felt

that happy heart of yours."

Some real gems in here. Good stuff dana

[Rewel Acosta Rivera]

I love the way you you highlight the true events that could be seen as tragedies. But the faith on life remain always. Happiness is what you do of it. So is inside and we may let it out whatever it happen. Your poem is so inspiring. Thanks for share this wise poem.

[Gerry Legister]

A wonderful expressive view of mankind, warm and enjoyably, crossing a civilization lost in the sixties

[emmajoy]

Perhaps, just perhaps all those goings and comings, analysis and research, those outs and ins are done front to back instead of... whatever!

So much mottled vision and understanding turned on its feet. That's what negativity is! Folk spend so much time feeling for the dark so they can wallow in their own misery worse than the man across the street. Nobody likes to say 'I'm happy' any more. If you smile at a stranger, he/she thinks you're taking the wotsit; if you hug an acquaintance he/she thinks you're making a pass, etc. As to love and high temperatures and all the nibbles and wet, nothing compensates for standing tall and saying 'I'm happy, I'm in love and loved and - if you don't like it - go find the way how!'

'.. Again, in the world with it's - turmoil you've survived.'

Great style and great writing yours, dana, makes a person let rip a few thoughts..

[Olivia]

'drag out the Dorito's
and the 2 liter Mountain Dew because some poet said
that happiness is fleeting"
great line
your poem is very powerful and beautiful
great work!

[Justin]

Thank you. I needed this to reassure myself I'm right about a few things going on in my life.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

god, this is great.
even if we got everything in the world to be exactly as we want it to be...some of us would still be miserable....even with our doritos---and mountain dew---
a perfect world is never really perfect, is it?
the only ideal is if we can live with ourselves...find inner peace...because we will never really find it with another or without another---

[Ed Hart]

well, s**t, that old happiness bugger got out cause someone left the door open again...meanwhile, a blizzard of unhappinesses came in the mail and slipped out the 50 inch tv screen (i mean, those seahawks need some rightous pain, and tiger wood ain't never gona get it up again, and that b***h in the kitchen who have not fucked me in a decade since she learned how to scream and i've got six dollars in my pocket and the govament check is still two weeks off and jesus forgot to come back a long time ago...

[W.k.kortas]

Well, there's all sorts of happiness after all, and, as the title suggests, they are rarely unadulterated things--the lowest-common-denominator happiness of the "doomsday preppers", happy in the sense of being the last ones around to turn off the lights, the transient artery-clogging and wallet-emptying happiness of the junk food lover and the gambler, even the joy of a Monk, Blakey, et al, transcedent as that may have been...well, at some point you have to come off the stage or out of the studio (and the citing of Spencer Tracy amuses me, for wasn't his happiness a secretive, albeit the worst kept secret, type of happiness?), and even the highest form of love cited in the last two lines is not promised us forever. This piece strikes me as you stepping outside your comfort zone a bit, not full-blown narrative poetry, certainly, but more of a narrative string than your norm. What it is, unmistakeably, is sweeping, observant, and wise; there's a trifecta any of us would love to hit.