I hate it when I spend my life 
breeding and training elite sled dogs
only to end up the crusty, old 
villain in some younger musher’s story.
             I hate it when I’m giving an academic talk 
at my alma mater 
and my old mentor is a no-show
causing me to question the value of my scholarship.  
             I hate when I humiliate 
a nerd in lunchroom   
only for them to become
cool later, humiliating me 
at a house party or a school dance. 
             I hate when I’m trying to avoid 
seeing a dive bar right behind me 
just as the city bus barrels by 
reflecting in its strip of moving windows 
the dive bar’s neon signage. 
             I hate it when I spend my youth 
decrying the hypocrisies of adults
only to become one
who conceives of hypocrisy
as the very pinion of consciousness. 
             I hate it when I cockily kiss my biceps 
in a dive bar, taunting a dock-worker 
into arm-wrestling me, only to be 
all the more humiliated when I lose. 
             I hate it when I fall off a boat 
and the weight of all the mobile gaming
consoles in my cargo shorts pockets 
pins me to the seafloor. 
             I hate it when I’m in geometry class 
intent on disrupting the lesson 
with inane and off-topic contributions 
only to be moved to silence 
by the beauty of the Pythagorean theorem. 

 

 

 

 

 

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ARTWORK BY CHRIS BALLANTYNE