Ninety-Fourth Entry

In the office, preparing for the new semester. Boy oh boy do I have a lot of work set out for me.



Here's my poem:

IRAQ

Homeless. It's time to pick up that bag
and make a winner. Every day
I read in the paper about how great I am.
I've developed computer hardware
to process this manly slaughterhouse
of journalistic data, and it's small enough
to fit in my esophagus. There's a new kind
of fishing hook in my esophagus, and it tears
the red tenderness of my muscles. Here I am,
writhing, wet, disenchanted. Just in time
for my meeting.

My mule senses the potential in me, emotions
bursting from my surfaces. He goes back inside.
He's the best editorial journalist I've got,
and even he can't explain his own inner workings,
dented as they are like a cheapo clock, to his wife
in the blue twilight of their cold bedroom.
When someone takes more than two minutes
to buy lotto tickets in front of me at the store,
I get so hot I need popsicle shoes.
Don't involve me in conversations about economics.
Lest you see my claws.

It all comes from those virulent decades
walking my beat in pizza delivery.
Sometimes you meet a wreck. Sometimes you catch
a tip. And sometimes the white cold air bends
your neck back when you stick your head out the window.
If you want a cure for senile dementia
just take a geezer and put him in my step-mother's
basement for one winter and make him drive my car.
Soon enough the old so-and-so will be eating solids,
making 8.50 an hour, after taxes, and if I'm lucky
he remembers he's my grampy. That way I get
my deposit back.

Ninety Third Entry

I'm not a "lifestyle blogger," but I'm currently writing weekly music and architecture reviews for LVHRD.org, under a clever pseudonym. I'm not gonna come right out and tell you who, but it'll be pretty obvious.

Also, I'm not a lifestyle blogger, but I've been reading a lot of lifestyle blogs, and I've decided I love Zarf. Wow, it feels good to let it out.

This is a poem I wrote after seeing Gina at the Poetry Project. It's sort of dedicated to Gina, and it sort of has her name in it a couple of times.

Here's my poem:

STEVE AND GINA ARE DYING

Distressed to say the least. Folkloric design mit colors media pressed conference against white of hospital wall, the doctors keep their lunch-pails in the room off the hall. At lunch we transgress our mortal states, video-camera mit kit undetectable extensions. I’m new at this. This is my first film.

The models in government magazines dressed black, time she shakes her long-haired head. A porch, bottles of beer, nice of them to accommodate by skipping the cover charge. Pre-3 o’clock New Mexico prairie, chilled like a champagne glass, all yellow and clean. We, or at least you, are obsessed with the japanese. One mound clean, seems like popcorn went a little bad, must have left it out. Cut to slutty night, falling flat as if from the bed. Now a balloon manufacturer’s no-good son, tomorrow a pencil sharpener.

Let’s focus on the thing’s insides. Out bright window-shades, Marcel my ghost follow bright and placid. Not like a shadow and not like a skeleton. Forced, as you might say, to parade in the traditional manner but for all unexpected reasons. Flat like the flag they let touch the ground. That flag gets burned, Gina. An apology for the smell. I took all my tear-streaked bodices upstairs, combined them with a cuisinart and some rusty watch-springs, and made a stomach pump. Up goes the feather and down comes the brick.

Ninety Second Entry

It's very late at night. FINALLY getting some prgress into the novel, so someday soon I'll have it done (yeah right) and I'll havde many more posts for you. Until then here's something I wrote today. Gina-I'm finding the poem I wrote after your panel for next time!

Here's my poem:

POUCH

Tomorrow rests in the realm of snakes.
When did the river lose itself, bashful
and glad? Proud, as young salmon always
are, taking the late night flight to Fort
Lauderdale with their girlfriends, where
did they buy their glasses? I really like
them, thin and inadequate, expressing my
generation's wanderlust and basic inability
to carry themselves past the glass boat
of puberty. You see, these salmon
are actually men. Men who root for the team
nobody likes, but there are so many of us
clinging to the chain link that now
everybody likes that team. If we weren't
so timid, we might create a parade for them,
but I spend my time walking around barefoot
without the assistance of carpets, feet
against winter floor, pretending
I understand a world without central heating.