Yeah, you might have seen the commercials. I think they’re advertising a beer, anyway, I got to thinking… Would I really like to be the “most” in anything?

Even the most interesting man has to accomplish the most uninteresting of duties. Take a leak. Brush his teeth. Eat some eggs.

I caught myself thinking “I want to be the most humble man in the world.” I don’t know if that is a paradox or an oxymoron. Maybe it’s simply moronic.

Maybe I want to be the most “telling-it-slant-poet” in the world. I would lay down lines which echo for a hundred or so years.

Being the most… Most. Most. Most. What a funny word. The more I ponder it, the sillier it sounds. Say ‘most’ out loud enough times and well, what do you think?

Honestly, have you ever met anyone aspiring to be the most UNinteresting person in the…

Oh God, come any other way,

but not as a child.

Come in a space ship

so we can claim you as an alien,

as a figment of our imagination.

Wash up on earth’s shore

so we can claim you as a castaway

an unknown, scraggly and salt soaked.

Walk into town as a vagabond

so we can look and call authorities

to distance us.

Stand by the side of the road

so we can decide if your thumb up

is necessary for us to stop.

But please don’t come as a baby.

Don’t come and coo and cry

and take our breath away.

Don’t come as we did,

dependant and humble

and wrapped up tight.

Just don’t, don’t be so vulnerable

as a wonder from a womb

bathed in the liquid of humanity.

Don’t come as a child, please.

For then we would need to

hold you in our…

I know,

is the back seat really a place for love?

In one respect, I think not…

But hold on a minute,

I’m talking about love.

I dreamt I was a taxi driver,

in and out of traffic and jams.

My light was on, waiting for a whistle or a hand.

She got in and sat in the middle back.

The rear view cropped her face.

Her brown eyes caught mine in the mirror.

“Just drive a bit,” she said calmly.

I nodded and pulled back out into it.

She smiled her eyes and

I think I smiled mine back.

“So, any destination in mind?”

“Life.”

“Ah, sure, is that near West 42^nd Street?”

“You never know.”

“Well, I will never know if you don’t tell me.”

She winked and fully opened her eyes,

briefly exposing the whites like teeth.

Somewhere, I heard the eyes are the window to…

My dad was like a father to me.

He took me with him to fix my Godmother Ginny’s air conditioner at the Ceramic Shop. He showed me his humble quarters at the Burdick Hotel. I followed him around while he repaired fridges and jammed locks. I recall watching Dad play horse shoes by the tracks at the fire station. He wore blue pants most of the time.

I remember the sound of the tires on a gravel road as we delivered his Free Press route before sun up. That’s when I asked him what his biggest regret was. “I wish I hadn’t got so angry at your mother.” Me too Dad.

When the benign tumor stole one eye, half of his smile, fifty percent of his hearing, and added an unsteady swagger when he walked I was nine. I had no clue how scared he was when he went to…