April Poetry: Best Laid Plans
Poem #14 for National Poetry Month
The opening line for this poem lived in my Work in Progress folder for a long time. That line came from the never-ending stream of articles and influencers peddling their advice about planning for your future. Saving, investing, home and health maintenance. I became acutely aware of how privileged I am now, and how not-privileged I used to be.
For the first half of my life, my day-to-day activities revolved around getting through today – finding food to eat today, putting gas in the car today, paying for my prescription medication today. There was no room for consideration of tomorrow. Although I managed to escape the hamster wheel of survival, I still carry those existential wounds. I understand the daily grind of hand-to-mouth living.
This poem is dedicated to those who have been there or currently are there now.
Best Laid Plans
Planning for the future is a luxury reserved for those who have secured the present.
Maslow tells us we can’t contemplate self-actualization if we go to bed hungry.
Sometimes our boldest plans are to survive this minute, this day. How can we
save up for a rainy day when our whole life is a torrential downpour?
Swimming upstream, struggling just to stay afloat, salmon racing to spawn—
like the salmon, we eat, we fuck, we repeat another day. Unless the bears eat us first—
our glistening pink guts splayed open on a jagged edge of quartz.
Originally published in Pink Panther Magazine March 8, 2025, Volume 16, Number 1