Excerpt from What Narcissism Means to Me

WHAT NARCISSISM MEANS TO ME

There’s Socialism and Communism and Capitalism,
said Neal,
and there’s Feminism and Hedonism,
            and there’s Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism,

but I think Narcissism is the system
that means the most to me;

and Sylvia said that in Neal’s case
narcissism represented a heroic achievement in positive thinking.

And Ann,
who calls everybody Sweetie pie
           whether she cares for them or not,

Ann lit a cigarette and said, Only miserable people will tell you
           that love has to be deserved,

and when I heard that, a distant chime went off for me,

remembering a time when I believed
                    that I could simply live without it.

Neal had grilled the corn and sliced the onions
                      into thick white disks,
                      and piled the wet green pickles
                                            up in stacks like coins
           and his chef’s cap was leaning sideways like a mushroom cloud.

Then Ethan said that in his opinion,
if you’re going to mess around with self-love
              you shouldn’t just rush into a relationship,

and Sylvia was weeping softly now, looking down
           into her wine cooler and potato chips,

and then the hamburgers were done, just as
the sunset in the background started
                      cutting through the charcoal clouds

exposing their insides – black,
streaked dark red,
                      like a slab of scorched, rare steak,

delicious but unhealthy,
or, depending on your perspective,
                                            unhealthy but delicious,

-- the way that, deep inside the misery
           of daily life,
                      love lies bleeding.

SOCIAL LIFE

After the first party peters out,
like the gradual slowdown of a merry-go-round,
           another party begins

and the survivors of the first party
climb onto the second one
           and start it up again.

Behind me now my friend Richard
is getting a fresh drink; Ann, in her black dress,
is fanning her breasts; Cynthia is prancing
from group to group,
                                 making kissy-face—

It is not given to me to understand
the social pleasures of my species, but I think
what they get from these affairs
is what bees get from flowers – a nudging of the stamen,

a sprinkle of pollen
about the head and shoulders—

whereas I prefer the feeling of going away, going away,
stretching out my distance from the voices and the lights
until the tether breaks and I

am in the wild sweet dark
where the sea breeze sizzles in the hedgetop,

and the big weed heads, whose names I never learned,
lift and nod upon their stalks.

What I like about the trees is how
they do not talk about the failure of their parents
and what I like about the grasses is that
they are not grasses in recovery

and what I like about the flowers is
that they are not flowers in need of
empowerment or validation. They sway

upon their thorny stems
as if whatever was about to happen next tonight
was sure to be completely interesting—

the moon rising like an ivory tusk,
a few sextillion molecules of skunk
strolling through the air
to mingle with the aura of a honeysuckle bush,

and when they bump together in my nose,
I want to raise my head and sing,
I’m a child in paradise again
when you touch me like that, baby,

but instead, I stand still and listen
to the breeze streaming through the upper story of a tree
and the hum of insects in the field,
letting everything else have a word,

and then another word—
because silence is always good manners
and often a clever thing to say
when you are at a party.

FORTUNE

Like in the Chinese restaurant, it is
the perfect forethought and timing with which
the slices of orange arrive
on a small plate with the bill.

So, while you are paying what is owed,
The sweet juice fills your mouth for free.

And the fortune cookie too
which offers you the pleasure of Breakage
and then the other pleasure of Discovery,

extracting and reading the little slip of paper
with a happiness that you maybe conceal,
the way the child you once were
is even now concealed inside you.

Maybe you will marry a red-haired woman.
Maybe you are going to take a long journey.
Maybe a red-haired woman will steal your car and take a long journey.
Maybe you will be buried next to your mother.

And when the people you are dining with
smile and read their fortunes out loud,
and ask you to tell them your own,
           you smile and tell them a lie,

and they laugh and think you are weird and funny and sad
and you know that you
                                    are all of those things,

but you don’t tell them the truth
because you don’t trust anyone,
                                            and you never have:
that is your fortune.

HOW IT ADDS UP

There was the day we swam in a river, a lake, and an ocean.
And the day I quit the job my father got me.
And the day I stood outside a door,
and listened to my girlfriend making love
to someone obviously not me, inside,

and I felt strange because I didn’t care.

There was the morning I was born,
and the year I was a loser,
and the night I was the winner of the prize
for which the audience applauded.

Then there was someone else I met,
whose face and voice I can’t forget,
and the memory of her
is like a jail I’m trapped inside,

or maybe she is something I just use
                                            to hold my real life at a distance.

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower
                      plucked from a river of lava
and held aloft on a tightrope
                      strung between two scrawny trees
above a canyon
                      in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it—,

And when you do, you will keep looking for it
everywhere, for years,
while right behind you,
the footprints you are leaving

will look like notes
                                            of a crazy song.

Copyright 2003 by Tony Hoagland. All rights reserved.