Saturday, January 23, 1999

Anxiety Nursery Rhyme

Anxiety Nursery Rhyme

That tension
is green
and electric
it trickles from
dark corners
a head’s turn
away
at all times

and before you can
meet it eye to eye

it pains your stomach
regions by and by.

Another Breakfast Poem (for Michelle Anna Jordan)

Another Breakfast Poem (for Michelle Anna Jordan)

Yes,
please place logs in my stomach,
slow
burning
logs
with my morning stomach acid
as hungry as fire,
and please jolt my rat-caged brain
with electricity
from the cup
so that my efforts and
musings and sideways glances
will all ring iron
with sharp edges-well defined,
against odds,
on Sunday mornings.

Sunday, January 3, 1999

Old

Am I really this old?
Perhaps that’s why
I am now growing mad-
all this early growth
piled onto
this young frame,
a heavy load
(too heavy!),
all this forbidden perspective
crucifies me
and the blood just gets
everywhere;
on the friends
and the walls
and in my walk
and on any woman unfortunate enough
to crash into me
on randumb drunken freeways
(and alleys!)
and other meaningless
excursions.

(sorry,
space has been explored.
everyone just go home.)

Saturday, January 2, 1999

Curse the Puppet Show

Ah Karen-
fictitious ghost
haunting a beautiful
idea
in my mind,
you can feel the falsity
of all this
yearning
of all this
anticipation,
you come from a clan
which fights this nonsense
with razor sarcasm
and a bitter, bitter love,
all of you
with your poor caged hearts,
growing tenderer by the minute;
overprotected,
yes, your smothered heart
and my naked infant one,
bouncing off each other now
with a sound louder than fate
and much louder than tendency
and much more painful than both.

Ah Karen,
we suffer the bondage
of slot car tracks
and curse the puppet strings
that we actually hold
ourselves.

Aching For Some Sort Of

Aching for some sort of
beauty or grace
in this barren land
as my blood rusts
and I turn to stone
and watch the vultures
tear away flesh and cackle
and spin
fueled by final knowledge
of death
being the only truth
and life being that
meaningless
void
/////////////in between/////////////.

Friday, January 1, 1999

11:35

11:35

Here at the Petaluma Center for the SRJC
the clock is stuck at
11:35
it has been
11:35
for two weeks now
here at the Petaluma Center for the SRJC
my educated
guess
is that tomorrow will be an
11:35er
as well.
Probably the day after that
too.
Oh how
I wish it were possible to climb up that
clock tower and
twist those hands up
making them say some impossible time
like 57:65PM
or even something cute like
12:34 or
the old traditional
4:20

anything
but
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
however
soon
on another humdrum day here at
the Petaluma Center for the SRJC
some computer science major
will lift up his
standard issue head
and see the holiest of sights-

11:36!

and he will pass the word and
announcements will be made
and plans planned
and there will be an 11:36
celebration
and all the administrative assistants
and career path hopefuls alike
will bask and roll
in the glory of this monumentous development
called
11:36
and a plaque will be cast
and awards handed out
(the first one to the famed computer science major who first caught the sight,
it will be called the Amerigo Vespuci Award)
and pictures taken of the clock
with all the administration
including one wacky photo of the dean
pretending to pull the minute
hand one more minute
in order to prompt another day of celebration
so that he can get out of his office
and into the fresh California air....
...........
so perhaps 11:35 is okay with me.
At least it keeps things
quiet
around
here
for now.