Classic Michael Appleby

From the regional finals of the 2005 National Poetry Face-off. It's a shame I couldn't go further into the contest with this. I just read it back for the first time in a long time and didn't think it to be half bad. Maybe I'll have to do this one for a Raving Poets show one day since it's only ever been performed once and almost forgotten since.

Nuclear Families
It was fun to be among you again,
you nuclear families of the happy little world.

It was fun to play make believe one more time.
It was fun to put on stupid ties
and silly little hats:
Well honey, I’m off to work.
And have that bagged lunch of the peanut butter sandwiches,
crusts cut off,
handed to me at the door.
It was fun to wait for sleep at night
and giddy in my imagination
and the billion or so what if’s
that rained down on me in the dark
soaked to the bone with
my own personal utopia.
It was fun to think that a hammock could be anything more
than a cradle swinging me into my grave
and that the Sunday afternoon summer picnics
were anything more than fast food take out eaten on a wooden bench
in the park
with the initials M.A. + C.I. carved precariously close to wads of dried gum
and the edge from which we inevitably fall.
It was fun to play make believe one more time.
It was fun to go through motions like reaching for her hand
and moving in for a kiss goodnight, close my eyes doing so.
Only expecting a hug when one of us was sick.
It was fun to talk about things that didn’t mean much,
pretend to be Professor Frink to her rest of the population of Springfield,
explain concepts and ideas that nobody could be interested in except me
and accept the Wow, that’s interesting with a shower of fingernail clippings
and the agitated roll of paper, the turning leaves in a magazine.
It was fun to quote Downie’s line about brassieres
and know that all the while I thought it to sound romantic
for her to think it to sound perverted and creepy;
cull love songs from my CD library
and have each of them dismissed:
thoroughly obscure
tragically cacophonous.
It was fun play make believe one more time.
It was fun to be struck out of nowhere
by You were really good to me and all. Very nice, but…
and actually know every single word that would follow that but
right down to a perfectly played apology
and feeling more like an operator at a psychic hotline
than a man who just had his heart broken.
My lucky numbers that day were 13, 27, and 36.
I could see a long, hot shower in my immediate future
and lo and behold
I went to bed clean.
It was fun to put on stupid ties
and silly little hats:
Well honey, I’m off to work.
And hear nothing in response except the slap of my own hand against my forehead:
Oh yeah. I forgot.
It was fun to get completely lost again
wondering how I would ever manage to fit in with people anymore.
Back to my curmudgeonly little room:
computer games with strangers from across the world
and literary self-abuse.

It was fun to be among you again,
you nuclear families of the happy little world,
maybe next time I’ll stay long enough to put my feet up for a change.

-Michael Appleby
January, 2005