Astronaut

after Linda Pastan

Every time I take that giant leap

outside our front door,

I feel like I'll miss our baby's entire lifetime,

and the gravity of it all

leaves a crater in the

craggy panorama of my chest.

It feels as if I'll be gone

until a new planet teeming with life

wobbles into view;

or until Halley's Comet smolders

through the heavens again.

I only launch myself outdoors

for a few scarce hours but I get

dizzy like a black hole

whenever I leave the two of you.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

May 29, 2011

Sound Machine

I lie on our bed,

A buoy atop tranquil waters.

You are downstairs

Preparing the baby's food.

The hum of the microwave,

A distant motorboat.

I flow in and out of sleep,

Waking to the sound of

You in the kitchen;

The clink of a spoon

Navigating a glass,

The syncopation of drawers

Opening and closing.

Our child is asleep

Like driftwood.

Pillows propped around her,

Preventing her tiny frame

From drifting out to sea

On a wayward tide.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

May 23, 2011

A Versailles of the Mind

It's that time of year again.

Crocuses spring forth

and birds perch on my eyelids.

My history is a little fuzzy.

I think this poem was built

during the time of Louis XIV.

From afar it is all gold and legend,

but up close it's just mortar and dust.

Renovations continue till this very day.
Care to join me on my daily strolls

through a living sculpture?

The fresh air will do wonders for the heart.

My dears, look closer, this poem

contains gardens of exquisite topiaries.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

March 18, 2011

Waiting Means Something's Gonna Happen

My thoughts are burnt out florescent lights.

I feel like I am an endless waiting room.

I should be more excited to live in this city,

but I can't bring myself to sightsee every day.

I am having a rare quiet moment.

Despite the dull brown boredom,

it is pleasant just to sit and wait.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

March 16, 2011

I'm Not Feeling Very Well Right Now

Today all I hear outside is sadness.

But last night was just lovely:

we got caught in the rain.

Tonight I'll be in the laundry room.

Why do you want to go there for?

To be eternal.

I love this city.

It's so old and held together by magic.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

March 14, 2011

Reader Beware

The speaker in the poem

starts off somewhere ordinary.

Let's say at the kitchen table

drinking Earl Grey tea.

You think you know where they are

but then suddenly you end up alone

on a luminous moonscape.

Where has the speaker gone?

You've made a quantum leap

and don't know how you got there.

To the untrained eye

your outward appearance hasn't changed

but the energy inside you is fundamentally different.

There is magic sprinkled within.

Look around you; all has changed.

The air is thinner and the landscape bumpier.

You experience some kind of emotion

and it is inexplicably sad.

No. Sad is the wrong word.

It is a feeling that goes deeper than that.

It is a feeling that has no name.

But it is deep and real.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

February 16, 2011

Valentine

Crack open my skull.

Inside there is an ocean of love.

The ocean is vast and profound.

Bobbing atop the waves is a tiny boat.

Below the flickering sail there sits a dark figure.

If I use a telescope I can make out the contours of your face.

Gotcha! Now to send a search and rescue team into my skull...

Greg Santos

Paris, France

February 14, 2011

I don't have a status update for what I'm feeling

I wish I could hyperlink you my thoughts and emotions.

It would make this poem more efficient and user friendly.

The act of eating reminds me I am alive.

Flossing daily helps, too.

Eating Pringles satisfies me more than real potatoes.

I make attachments with people who are "real"

but find real people elusive.

I rely on the internet to connect with people.

Does that make me a bad person?

Please don't answer that.

I feel that I am too sensitive a creature,

my feelers do their job excessively well.

In one hemisphere, my brain hurts.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

February 2, 2011

A Slow Moving Island

I drift alone on a

slow moving island.

People tend to know

what they are doing,

but not me.

A voice awakens me

from my stupor.

You're not the only

lonely soul, bucko.

It is my friend, J

hanging precariously

from a buoy.

The sea air feels sprinkled

with magic and salt.

The sun is doling out

drops of vitamin D.

My beloved emerges

from a sand dune.

Give your daughter a kiss.

My child coos.

You are the right man for the job.

When did she get so wise?

It seems like just yesterday

that she needed me to burp her.

Now look at her,

offering me a job.

I am grateful I brought an updated CV.

I toss my white beard

over my shoulder and adjust my tie.

I should consider myself lucky

to live in such a wonderland.

We all drift on a

slow moving island.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

January 29, 2011

The Disease is its Remedy

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

-Mark Strand

I have crumbs around the corners of my mouth.

I am a man of Herculean appetites.

I eat poetry like potato chips.

I have been told to vary my diet.

You should indulge in more food groups, they say.

Too much of one thing will give you a stomachache.

But I have a unique condition.

I am prescribed to eat poetry for the rest of my days.

Do not cry for me; it is a happy ailment.

I will round up other inkblot hearts who have a taste for salt.

We will pass around books, licking them.

We will whinny and stomp with joy.

This poem has been laced with MSG.

The bag is done.

I can't eat just one.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

January 25, 2011

The Pains of Parenthood

It's three in the morning.

Her whimpers echo through our apartment.

I half expect tiny wolves living in our cupboards

to respond with their own melancholy howls.

She balls her fists, a diminutive pugilist.

"All children get colds," my mother tells me over the phone.

It is a badge on the Scouts sash of life, I suppose.

It doesn't make her suffering any easier.

Hugs and a damp face cloth are small comforts.

A pain that pulses deep in my chest -

a pain that drops suddenly into my gut,

an elevator plummeting down an endless shaft -

I can't get the image right! A sensation I've never felt before:

the pain of parenthood.

That feeling of helplessness, of guilt

for not being able to take away my child's hurt,

to click it into oblivion like an icon on a desktop.

I have been permanently marked.

I will exhibit my scars ala Jaws to other veterans of parenthood,

their knowing nods and slaps on the back, perhaps a consolation someday.

Let the scars on my heart be a warning to those not yet parents.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

January 11, 2011

Shack Wacky

A visit to a cabin in the woods

is both exotic and terrifying

for this city born boy.

The wind and vacuum of silence

make my sinuses and brain quiver.

True, my Christmas-time cold may be to blame

but that detail is not essential

to the molten core of this poem.

I was once told never to use

the word quiver in a poem

but I stand by my word choice.

It makes my heart throb with joy.

Greg Santos

Bains Corner, New Brunswick

December 28, 2010

Imaginationland

I wander the Tim Burton-ish forest in my head,

the one with the knotted and gnarly trees.

Squirrels dance merrily with foxes

and wind-up owls whirr incessantly.

Every once and a while

my face is whacked by a stray branch -

Honestly, I don't remember ever going outside.

Taxis and ambulances rocket through the thistles.

My wife and daughter wait for me in a gingerbread house

safely hidden deep in the woods.

This is a weird and wonderful land.

Truly God's country.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

December 17, 2010

My Daughter's First Poem

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Greg Santos

Paris, France

December 13, 2010

You'd Better Watch Out

The cold

she comes at your eyes.

My contact lenses

offer scant protection and frost over.

I watch ice crystals

whirl and dart.

Worries of long-term vision loss

brought about by a winter's kiss.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

December 7, 2010

It is Snowing in Paris

Charcoal-roasted chestnuts glow,

incandescent bulbs on the verge of exploding.

Wayward snowflakes

ripping through the heavens like tiny white meteors.

Parisians whip their umbrellas open in a mad rush,

force-fields to keep the wayward snowflakes at bay.

The snow is terrible but nothing like back home

where the bitter cold squeezes your soul like a vice.

I keep my soul in a fur-lined case in the boreal forests of Canada.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

December 3, 2010

Reading Ou Yang Hsiu in a Café

There is a flying pig on the mural.

I find this mildly comforting,

as if the cosmos were reminding me

an impossibility had been possible,

by a viewer like me.

It is a damp autumn afternoon.

The waiters are busy watching soccer on TV

and the impenetrable depth of my espresso is like the Loch Ness.

I am lucky. I have no dead friends like Ou Yang Hsiu.

But I have lost friendships over the years,

some drifted apart like hulking icebergs.

The past is sometimes a desolate chunk of Greenland.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

November 26, 2010

Epistle to New York

I remember having bad vegetable dumplings with Ben, Alina, Lia, Lauren, and Mollye. The place looked like a rectangle. From the windows it seemed like they only sold trays and cups.

I remember Alina bicycling into a crowd of people, her blue blouse flapping in the crisp autumn evening before disappearing.

I remember walking back from Café Loup with Ben and grabbing cheese fries and hot dogs at Papaya Dog.

I remember going to Papaya Dog one night and being completely flabbergasted by an angry guy who was upset because they wouldn’t let his girlfriend use the restroom and he told the African American cook behind the counter to “Go back to Africa.”

I remember walking by either beautiful people or the raging mad.

I remember we went to the bad dumpling place because someone outside said “It’s good. Really good.” And we believed him.

I remember talking about how bad it was to eat greasy late-night snacks, yet still doing it.

I remember having strong coffee and soy milk while sitting cross-legged on Ben’s apartment floor.

I remember Ben asking me to buy him some rice crackers and being worried I bought the wrong kind and at the same corner store being asked if I was from India.

I remember hearing sounds coming from one of the apartments near Ben’s and him saying, “I’m not sure if she’s masturbating or is just crazy.”

I remember having pastrami on rye with Ben at Katz’s Deli and feeling both at home and homesick for Schwartz’s Montreal smoked meat.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

November 22, 2010

Scrambled

I did not know that stracciatella,

the Italian egg-drop soup,

and stracciatella, the gelato flavour,

were spelled and pronounced the same.

You would think

that could potentially

make for some disastrous

meal-time orders.

These are the types of thoughts

that pummel my brain like a cudgel

at four in the morning,

while attempting to rock

my three-month-old

back to sleep.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

November 19, 2010

The Great Hoarder

Sometimes when my wife and daughter are asleep

I feel like I am forever filling up an attic

with boxes of knick-knacks I'm not prepared to throw out

but have no clue what to do with.

I think of errands to run: I have to go to the bank,

diaper supplies are dangerously low,

we are out of milk and orange juice...

Other thoughts drift by like odd deep sea fish:

Will I be able to read all the books that are piling up?

My hair is getting too long. Does anyone read my poems?

I wander this dark attic when I cannot sleep,

thinking of friends I've lost touch with

and speak to ghosts in need of company.

They want to know what it's like to be young

and laugh at my talk of being mired with responsibility.

Well, you haven't changed diapers

while trying to write a status update, I say.

You're lucky, I tell them, you don't have to choose

between Apple and Android, Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus.

Go back to sleep, Greg, they say.

Those are questions for the ages.

Greg Santos

Paris, France

November 16, 2010