Dead Man Walking - Aug 29 2026

 

Dead Man Walking

Aug 29 2026

Is there ever joy without sadness?

Must life always be yin and yang,

good and bad,

overhand and rebound?

But then, would a life of untempered joy

be like the perfect spring day

 — sunny and warm, with cotton-puff clouds —

every day, day after day

until you stopped noticing

how nice it was?

Got impatient, soon enough

for a heart-stopping storm

of pelting rain 

that hits you sideways,

thunder 

loud enough to pop nails;

a sound

you feel as much as hear.

Perhaps there have to be highs and lows

  — a life of intensity, not sameness.

Because it’s not the seamless vacation

that makes memories

and the stories you love to tell,

but the time your pocket was picked,

you missed the train, and hitched,

that bad shrimp turned you green

and you truly understood

what projectile means.

The alternative

is a featureless topography

not worth remembering.

I think of a lone man

plodding ahead

step-by-step,

and a desert of scudding sand

where the horizon is a long straight line

shimmering in the distance.

Or, if you were hooked up to a monitor

and told to carry on,

a life well-lived

would follow the spikes and troughs of a healthy heart.

While his opposite

who never took a risk

would have flatlined long ago,

avoiding the lows

but forgoing the highs

that make everything worthwhile.

A dead man walking

to the predictable end

of an uneventful life.

Something with which to console yourself when shit happens —  as it inevitably does:  that in the fullness of time, it will make a memorable day and an even better story. And isn’t a succession of memories — both good and bad — really all life is? And don’t the best stories come from the time the worst happened?

A weak metaphor for an uneventful life and its opposite would be the contrast between a place like San Diego — where the seasons never change, and why even look at the weather report? — and where I live — with real seasons and weather that can change by the hour.

But the poem offers a better metaphor for a life of few ups and downs when it highlights the word “flatlining”:  not just the moment of death, but also living a life that’s as good as dead.