The Poet Book

That One Poem--The One in Prose-2006

I sit here today not because I am made, but because I am broken.  Where the color of the world is the color of stone and I walk past a church to my class every day, a church built before the four-digit date.  A church taller than me, stronger than me, with crumbling mortar, with gravestones so old they no longer have names.  So old that people have picnics on them and no one leaves flowers anymore.  And we will all be as forgotten as the nameless stones, and someday people will have picnics on us.  Those who aren’t forgotten will be degraded or lifted in myth, people will tell false stories about them and some that are true but none that bring the person back or carve their name back on that stone under the church with the crumbling mortar.  I can still smell the lavender, and I still have the lavender that I stole, and it has made it through travels to new homes and college, the tortures of books too heavy for one person.  As much as I hate the cliché, I sit here listening to myself, the depressed, morbid poet with the gravestones and churches.  But then I think, people are gravestones and churches, and England is gravestones and churches.  It is life, and soul, and age.  And I’ll toast to that!

My Best Friend-2000

If you said one nice thing
And graced me with your presence
If you gave me hugs when I was sad
It might have made a difference.

If the worlds revolved around each other
And not around a single sun
If you had called me once
I wouldn't have to run.

If you didn't turn the tables
And get everyone on your side
If you weren't all smiles and giggles
What if you hadn't lied?

A broken mirror can't be returned
To its original splendor
Once its shattered reflection is gone
Not to be remembered.

An Ode to Miss Chiquita-2003

And once you sat wrapped on a fruit
High up on a tippy tree
Deep in the jungle where tigers prowled
But now, now…
You’ve gone down the drain.
You had begun to brown,
You unwanted golden rubbish!
You were only a cover for natural candy,
So you were tossed down that silver tub
That’s dented and pecked
When you ceased to be useful to anyone here.
You once had a blue sticker
With the likeness of a woman
And it went on the hand of a child.
Now you are nothing
And other nothings shoved down the drain on top of you
Foul rubbish, foul allies, foul molding friends.
A monster grumbles below
And a push with a wooden spoon
Shoves you down its gullet.
In a flash, the yellow hide is gone forever
And all that it takes to remove the evidence of carnage—
A sponge, some cleanser…a little hot water
And all traces are gone.

An This is Iraq-2003

Like a Dust Bowl
That always was
Sand litters the ground.
And what was once,
I do believe,
Was the wellspring of society,
Craters have pecked the flooring.

30 men with dark glasses
Standing all around.
100 men with machine guns
Fire into a crowd.

Looters take the dictator’s chairs and guns,
Porcelain latrines and silken robes…
Plus priceless relics from long ago—
Stolen, taken, lost and gone.

Video phones and silicon journalists—
The kind that die
On our front lines—
Tell us stories:
7 recovered knights
20 dead children
(and that’s only the ones
Under the age of two)
And scripture written in blood.

And this is Iraq!
Bush’s reelection campaign!
Destroying lives
Just as he claims to save them.

Can cars run on sand and blood?
I don’t know
We’ll see
But the pump costs have
Dropped.

UNTITLED-2004 (but a poem about crankiness)

I think it funny that
When in the car the night before
I thought the poodle licked the jug
For nothing more than condensation
And to my astonishment when I looked
She bit a hole in the jug
And suckled from it the giant tit.
Man, was she in trouble.

I think I decided to write this
when I was on the chipping green
Picking up balls with a “Red”
And thinking about the day.
I know I’ve been snappish and cranky
And I feel sorry for all my friends
I think my string has been stretched to taunt
And I unwind, it seems, with a twang.
My friends they don’t deserve it
And I don’t deserve it myself
I want to be happy and I want to have fun
But crap, Almighty, I can’t seem to acheive it.

Sigh.

Shall I start? I think I’ll just write.

I’m falling behind in my school work
‘Cause of this and that and I’m sure other things
And I want to keep up my grades
But it’s hardly a thing I can do at this
Current time with all that’s going on.

I imagined this poem much better somehow and when I was at work I had words.
Pretty, imaginative and they all had good rhythm
And I thought to add assonance because I think it’s the best.

Oh my, where shall I go? What shall I do!
I’m on an edge with too much to do.
Too much going on
I’m going berserk
And I thought last fall was bad.
Bruce says I should be thankful I’m not in Iraq
But knowing that others suffer far worse
Does nothing to lighten my spirits.

I find it quite odd that when I worked
The rain soaked me through and the guys where all dry.
I asked, "How is it your clothes are not wet?"
And they shrug.
I shrug but I know they are wussies.
A little rain will not kill me and a little dirt can be washed
But they are prisses and cannot be sullied
Their khakis must be white at the end of the day.
God.
My boss and another fought over me because of my rainful dedication.
It gave me a boost but I was still stopping wet
So much so that it pooled on my thighs in the cart
(Damn my cell membrane made of phospholipids bilayers!
It kept me wet indeed)

I go to clean the bathrooms at 18
most every day.
Once there was a snake,
Foot long, pink width wide Mean as a retch and fast as his turtle,
That lived in the ladies lavatory.
I chased it forth with a broom
Twice
And twice it tried to bite me.
I considered running it over with my cart,
Number 8, guzzler of gas,
But I think I’m way too nice.
After the twice it never came back, thank heaven, thank god!

And another time at the lavatory, today in fact,
The gold leaves had fallen
And my job was to sweep them away
And sweep! And the wind would catch them and carry them back.
Sweep and they’d drift busily down.
Sweep and the would not travel thither.
Sweep and I gave up.

I wish I didn’t care money
And I wish I didn’t like things.
I wish I couldn’t drive to the mall
And I wish I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t.
I wish I could quit my job
Because it would make all things so simpler
I wish I didn’t care about money
I wish I wasn’t a puppet with strings.

And at home my dad is a jerk
And I wonder why I didn’t notice before.
Honestly I threw him the ball
But him being dumb he let it bounce off his head
So he threw it at me malevolently
And when I complained he played me off as over ‘acting.

I asked where my Deutsche book might be
And he said he had seen it somewhere
Dad told me a location and I went there
To find that the Deutsche book wasn’t.
It made him laugh malevolently
And I called him a “sick bastard”
As my mom had instructed.
He said “hey” dumbly and I stuck to my word
I wish he would just leave me be.

When he moves I get his parking spot
Which will be so much nicer than the side of the road.
Twice now while turning around
I’ve hit my neighbor’s retaining wall.
It’s ugly anyhow and now it has character
Straight up and down looked simply unsightly
And now at a jaunt angle I, um, hmmm…
Now at a jaunt angle I guess it will be
They haven’t complained
And my car has no dents.
Yay, I guess. Hmm.

I gave a painting to Herr Becker and it was an Escher-type lizard parade.
There is one thing that bugs me though that I have recently noticed
That I never did see before.
In the book of Job the color crosses the black
In a manner most unbecoming.
I guess you wouldn’t notice unless you were me
I want to bring some paint to fix it.

I hate Chemistry I do.
CN- I say for you.
Die, you class!
Why did I take you!
OH-! I need another science for my resume!
Urgh! I hope I can find a job without Chem.
Tell me what is antimony?
Sb only.
Tell my what is antimony,
Please, for it is my joke.
Chem is a joke.

Remember how I think about asymptotes
Before the lesson existed?
I did not think of them in math sense
But on a religious pulpit about religious red carpet
And how God, being He so, that he exists, is an asymptote.
He is our domain (Or perhaps we His?)
We can maybe get close but never touch.
Perhaps here the metaphor ends
In that He can’t quite exist.
Maybe a slant I won’t bother to find
Or a different type altogether.
Whatever the function I don’t think I’ll bother
To hook up with a crowd that can offer me
A book or a gimmick that steals a Sunday
For something we cannot know.

I’m sorry I’m so cranky and mean and evil and snappish and rude
I wish I could me, bubbly me, happy me, fun, quiet, calm, ruhig me
And I think if it were not for 1st and 5th I’d crash now
But maybe the jolt would break the spell.
I have no release, no time for release.
No poems, no stories
(I put off English to write this!)
No walking my Ben.
No art, no music, no TV

At least no one has died, like last fall.
At least I am here
At least I am here.
I’m sorry I’m cranky
But at least I am here.