Except For One Thing

I’m not yet thirty,
and I’ve already failed

at residing in the right house
in the right part of the right town,

at being the proper weight
and having a well-balanced face,

at delivering on the promise of my potential
of winning a Pulitzer and being a professor
and designing a new internet all the while
not drinking too much or wanting to
smoke one last cigarette,

at making everyone happy when they think
of my excellent taste in music and cars
and wind-surfing equipment
and skylights,

at having servants or at least someone
to come clean up after me once in a while,

at wanting the right sort of dog (because
who wants a dog that looks like
a deer anyways?),

at writing at least three hundred words
every day like Ms Lamott has
admonished me time and again,

at making art with rhyme and metre
and words that go from sweet to sweeter,

at having the right name and being born
in the right part of the world and having
the right skin colour,

at resembling all the handsome men in
my family line,

at finishing enough school and getting
the right job,

and at being just about anything and everything
other than what I am.

But at the end of my life, when
I go over all the things I have done
improperly or not at all,
I can say this much:

I put that son-of-a-bitch semicolon
right in the middle of the sentence where
it belongs, and there’s still nothing
you can do about it.