Poems

The Reputation That Precedes I did not build the reputation, I built the actions that assembled it,every contract I delivered and every promise I embellished itwith the quality of execution that nobody had the right to expectfrom someone at my level, but I gave it out of self-respect. The reputation that precedes is not a […]

The Question I Should Have Asked Earlier We were forty minutes into a meeting when I realized clearly,That I had missed the foundational assumption quite severely,A premise established in the opening that I hadn’t caught,And everything since built on a misunderstood thought. I had two options: interrupt and ask the question now,And reveal the gap

The Pretty Privilege Report I’ve been conducting a study of years and I’ll sayThe findings are exactly what the data displaysThe beautiful move through the world on a slideWhile the rest of us take the stairs from the outsideThe pretty privilege report is coming inAnd the numbers are ugly beneath the beautiful skin The pretty

The Price of EverythingI know the price of everything and the value of nothing at all,I know what a handshake costs in a hotel hallway by the wall,I know what a friendship runs if you need a favor to get through,I know what a reputation costs when you’re deciding what to do. My father had

The Person Everyone Likes Except Me I have spent two years trying to identify what I am missing,What quality in him the rest of the room keeps consistently kissing,He is charming in the way that leaves me with a specific doubt,A warmth I cannot fully locate the mechanism of, throughout. Everyone I know considers him

The Pharmaceutical Ad Ask your doctor if Veluxamine is right for you,Veluxamine is approved to treat the moderate-to-throughSevere condition that the first two minutes of this adHave been describing in the clinical language of the sadBut manageable symptoms that you or someone knownHas probably been living with, and now you’re not alone,Because Veluxamine has twelve-week

The Path of Least Resistance Water takes the lowest available incline and I have genuine respect for that,I find the paved road and the already-lit and already-heated, and the factthat it arrives two minutes faster to the same location isn’t laziness —it’s the natural law of the efficient, and I embrace this. I could have

The Patriot Act Exception He waves the flag at the appropriate occasions,He has a flag in the reception area of his office,He speaks about American values at the persuasions,Of journalism and his publicist, which is the office. The patriot with the offshore account is the picture,The patriot who loves the country and its fixture,But parks

The Party Where I Knew No One I arrived at the correct address at the correct appointed hour,A man with a beer and a plan that lasted about half a shower,The room was at full operational conversation capacity,And I stood at the margin with a slowly filling audacity. I found a painting on the wall

The Passenger I realized at thirty-five that I was not the driver,that something else had been behind the wheel, a quiet survivorof the personality I thought was making all the calls,and I was in the backseat watching highway through the wallsof tinted glass that filtered every color slightly wrong.The passenger has been here since the