Another Bad Year for Florida Man
       

It's become less a state and more a state of mind.
He wakes daily not knowing what perils will present themselves,
nor can he safely predict how he might react.
Life is unpredictable. That's his motto.
Will it be another python in the toilet?
That's not the best way to start out any day.
But he is brave, creative, a man who recognizes opportunity
and seeks to seize it in true carpe diem fashion.
Like the day when released from prison,
all those sweet late model cars tempting him
spot after spot in the jail parking lot. What?
In his defense, he only tried to steal 26 of them.
No one mentions the ones left undisturbed.
He feels like a super hero,
because in a sense we're all super in some ways.
Besides, it's cool to dress as Spiderman
when power washing that Spanish-tiled roof.
People take notice, as well they should.
Because he is a hero at times:
fighting alligators to save his dog,
or pouring salt on the Walmart's floors
in order to remove evil spirits there.
See, he cares about others
and, like MacGyver, utilizes whatever is present
to solve pressing problems,
from pouring ketchup on his sleeping girlfriend,
to that time he attacked his own mother with a cob of corn.
Mostly, he is misunderstood.
That cocaine the cop found on his nose wasn't even his.
He tries to live a life of compassion and empathy.
When he broke into that elderly woman's home,
he wasn't there just to steal her belongings.
He also wore her clothes, trying to gain perspective,
walk a mile in her shoes, literally.
He is not a man of great skill or accomplishment,
asking a passerby to help start the scooter he wanted to steal,
or attempting to attack that ATM with a blowtorch.
They all seem like good ideas at the time.
Does any man deserve to be beaten up by the Easter bunny?
Life is unfair, even for a guy with deep authority issues.
He now knows telling the cops to go to Dunkin Donuts
was far better than the time he told them
he would behead them and eat their eyes and tongues.
It was a metaphor, perhaps. One that no one understood.
But all the great ones are that way.
Further, he is a freedom fighter, often going about his tasks
shirtless or completely naked. Feel the breeze. Open up.
It helps his basketball skills, he claims.
No one relates things in a fair and balanced way.
That time he fought a tree, did anyone mention
how the tree was the one that started it?
Or when he attacked that mattress — did anyone realize
that mattress was where his girlfriend's lover had been hiding?
He is a victim of incomplete and subjective reporting.
They never tell the full story.
Does he have anger issues? Doesn't everyone?
Perhaps he overreacted when stabbing his nephew
for taking too long in the bathroom.
In hindsight, that seems obvious.
Or when he threatened the handyman with the sword
just because the power outage ruined his video console.
Or when he beat up his folks over that acidic pork chop.
He promises to work on the anger thing.
This year will be different, he swears,
a new start and some practical resolutions:
no firing the gun inside the house,
no stealing boxes of golf balls stuffed down his pants,
no pooping in the yard,
no power washing his neighbors.
This year he'll finally disband his army of turtles.
He'll remember to wear clothes when visiting the mall,
and try to not burn down the house
baking cookies on the George Foreman grill.
It's the thought that counts, he tells me,
even when the road back to jail
is paved with good intentions.

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Copyright © 2020 Gary Glauber All rights reserved
from The Covalence of Equanimity
SurVision Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission