Coffee Denial

What if I write a poem

About staring at the screen

Until it goes blank,

Scratching my head and grizzled chin,

Wiping the gook

Out of the corners of my eyes,

Denying myself coffee

Like some torturer,

Trying to get at what’s really in my head?

What happens if on some mornings

It’s blank, like when the screen went blank?

Maybe it is and I finally broke

And I’m imagining this

And I’m still sitting here

Starring at a blank screen,

Snot running from my nose,

Coffeeless.

Surf Bum

Got some tech, Man?

I need a few bytes to communicate.

I wouldn't ask but I’m broke down

On the side of the information super highway.

Can’t get up to speed.

I’m running an old beater

A friend gave to me.

It’s old man.

All the innovation keeps passing me by.

So if you could spare some tech.

I’m just trying to keep up.

I don’t need much, man.

Just enough to get where I’m goin.

Mechanism

I've been staring at the screen

Waiting for magic to put words on the screen,

But, I've finally had to rely on my fingers,

Or maybe the thought of coffee,

I pushed the dispenser button,

Has stimulated my cortex, or whatever,

So the word making release valve has been tripped.

It’s hard to say the true mechanism at work.

I've no actual window in my head,

And even if I did it would be hard

To get past all the blood and gore

Even if I didn't need microscopic vision

To see the electrons bouncing around

Like some pin ball machine,

Which is probably a good thing,

Because then I’d wonder

Who was working the flippers

And putting quarters in the machine?

In That Time

Many told of the time coming,

But the king and queens of money and power

Ignored the words of the prophets

For many years until the warming came.

In that time the winds became angry

And they confused the air.

There was a great migration of many creatures,

They fled the waters,

They chased the ice.

The waters rose up in violence

The ice ran from the things of man.

The great bears lay down forever

And the ants burned across the earth.

Death snaked across the seas

It walked across the land.

It visited many peoples

The leaders rose to meet it

After it had already gone by.

They rung their hands and gnashed their teeth.

They lay down in its tracks and perished.

Click

As you've noticed, ads have appeared

For you to click on the ones

You find naturally attractive.

Anyway, that’s the theory,

Thereby making me a few pennies

Every time you click.

It’s a shot in the dark,

As, personally, I've never found ads attractive.

I found plenty unattractive.

Insufferable even.

I once saw a TV ad with Jack Palance

Putting on his best mean guy face,

And trying to scare the watcher

Into buying deodorant.

So believe me;

I’m no fan of advertisement

And all around corporate evilism.

Something needs to be done.

Join me, won’t you?

Strike a blow against shameless profiteering.

Click and ad

Then ignore whatever comes up.

I promise,

I’ll feel shame with every penny.

My Imaginary Cat

My imaginary cat

Lies in wait in the tall grass

Waiting for me to mosey by unsuspecting.

Sometimes I see her haunches twitch,

Or her tail signaling her eager, imminent pounce,

But by then it’s too late.

She’s quick with her swipe, claws extended,

Going for blood

Before I even know I’m in a fight.

It’s her purr, and the rubbing up against me

That lulls me into believing it’s okay to be me

Until I make a wrong move.

It’s amazing for such a little thing

What a devastating strike she has.

Small Favors

I don’t know today, what I’ll put down.

I’ll type some words.

In the back of my brain is the idea

I should write something politically relevant

About the dispossession of anybody

Who can’t buy their way out of it,

But it feels like a broken record,

Another shmuck getting caught in the undertow

Of the economic collapse

Brought about by circumstances

They were not privy to,

Or another diatribe against evil bankers

Or giant corporations worried only about

The bottom line,

Or despotic rulers who don’t think twice

About breaking heads

Or those willing to be devils

In the name of God.

But I don’t want to write about those things,

I rather mention the little bird

Chirping outside the window

And the morning nice enough

I get to take the Harley to the burbs

To look at a job.

Shorty

Shorty traveled a long way

From herding sheep in mountains

Like his fathers before him

After they stopped being warriors of the sun

And learned Spanish.

You can still see his squat warrior body,

Broad flat Aztec nose,

His warrior heart

The conquistadors failed to conquer.

Maybe that’s why sometimes he drinks too much beer,

And falls in love with squat little hookers

And misses his father

And the mountains

And maybe the sheep?

Birth Announcement

The world was not thrilled today

And, in fact, paid little attention

To the unannounced births

Of first born sons too numerous to count

In many god forsaken shitholes

And places you would think are privileged,

To girls overpowered by twisted men and boys.

The press did not gather,

High society ladies did not gush,

Nor was there speculation what the unfortunate

Child’s name or life expectancy might be.

The blessed events were largely ignored

In developed countries whose upper classes

Would rather pretend they live in a Fairy Tale

And not be reminded of their culpability

In tawdry affairs.

Preconception

Preconceived notions color everything black,

Give no room for nuance or imagination,

Aborting the ability to see anything beyond assumption.

They are the enemy of openness,

An idolatry of the self,

The rejection of mystery.

A preconceived notion

Is a universe of one,

An inescapable aloneness,

A road to death

Constructed with every thought.

Forced Fun

The sales girls were cute

And the Budweiser was cheap in the package store.

The Cooper River Bridge was longer,

Folly Beach or Isle of Palms were longer

And the Atlantic surf breaking on the sand

Went on forever and stood up

Four or six feet easy

On a regular basis.

Our visits were regular, too

The summer the brass decided, service wide,

The enlisted ranks were out of shape

And instituted “Forced Fun.”

We, the seaman gang, enlisted the help

Of an amenable petty officer,

And signed up for swimming.

Every morning after checking in at the office

And the package store, we hit the beach,

Which was usually a metaphor for liberty,

But that summer the phrase was literal

And, technically, we were still on duty

As we lay there drinking Bud,

Ogling the tail walking by,

And working on the darkest tans of our lives.  

Another Reason Terrorists Suck

I got carried away by lines on a map,

By irregular contours going round and round,

Calculating mileage and routes,

First east, 400 miles, then south,

Back north-west 600,

About eight hundred miles in between,

Of mountain roads, mountain towns, mountain people.

Magic places to set up a tent,

Maybe drop a line of my own on one of the blue spots

Through West Virginia, Kentucky,

North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia,

Waylaid by a waking dream

In compensation for an expired passport

I need to get into Canada

To drive around the big lake.

Grit

I remember the whole of Peoria street

Sitting out on sweltering nights,

Sweat trickling down the nubs on my back,

Gritty city baking into my bones.

It was never quiet those nights,

Most of my ma’s side on the front porch

Telling stories of their wild days,

Mostly before me and my cousins memories

Got under foot with our curious ears.

The rest of the block hummed and bounced, too,

In the heat, with the occasional domestic dispute,

Or unruly child taken brusquely to task.

Grit does describe it best,

Cinder dust churned up all day

In the truck lot across the street,

And the static charge infused into the air

By the scrap metal yard’s electro-magnet

Suspended from a crane picking up scrap

Like a praying mantis going over

The desiccated parts of other monsters

Besides the human ones prowling the dark city nights

While the rest of us simmered mostly unaware

On our front porches, before sputnik,

When I thought you could tell the bad guys

By their black hats. 

Brink

We’re on the brink,

Ready to fall off the edge

Or soar up over it.

Ideas from science fiction past

Have hurled us into the future

And have become the present.

Like all tech,

There are good and bad applications.

Promise and peril exists side by side.

Everyone makes mistakes.

We can be Luddites

And pretend we know what God intended,

Or engage in the process,

Join the discussion about where we want to go?

Silence is abdication.

Silence is giving the world away

To the highest bidder,

Acquiescing to the idea it is for sale,

That we are for sale.

We were given a voice to use it.

We were given a voice

To speak for those who don’t know they have one.

The Problem with Art Today

In fifteenth century Florence, The Renascence

Was fueled by Florentine bankers.

They didn’t do things much different than bankers today,

Profiting off wars and calamity,

Buying cheap and selling dear,

All the usual despicable things, but,

Living in a god fearing society,

Going to hell scared the crap out of them,

And, even though buying indulgences does not work,

They tried to buy their way into God’s graces

By commissioning religious paintings and statues and whatnot.

They became patrons of the arts out of fear.

Today, it seems, they’ve lost their incentive.

They’re not worried about going to hell anymore.

If tanking the world economy and profiting off its bones

Doesn’t put the fear into you, nothing will.

I don’t know.

Maybe they’ve made one of those Faustian bargains?

Maybe it’s just business as usual

And they’ve had to trim a little fat?

Or maybe they’ve got the artists

Squirreled away in some dungeon producing just for them,

Applying thumb screws to get the kind of art they want?

All Ye Who Enter Here

I hate to abandon hope,

But when it becomes obvious

What I am hoping for

Is not going to happen,

Maybe the hope is misguided

And giving up is the right thing to do.

Still, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth,

Letting a dream die,

To turn my back on its wimpering.

But isn’t that what I’m supposed to do

When I am misguided in my beliefs,

When I’ve placed my hope in the wrong thing?

Isn’t turning around the thing to do,

Look for hope in another direction?

Enough

Somewhere down the line

It all becomes due,

Every slight,

Every shady wink,

Every good old boy smarmy smile

Looking the other way,

Every tear piled up.

Everything breaks,

Has enough.

Deception’s End

Charlatans are slippery creatures,

Good at the game they play,

Living behind their many masks.

Their mechanizations know no limits,

Freewheeling justifications

Bending around impossible turns,

Judgment to suit their need of the moment.

Bitterness and envy devour them like worms.

Fear of discovery fuels their deceptions.

They are too busy figuring out their next move

To see anybody but their own false image.

Their real selves are somewhere near,

Hiding in a dark corner

Where they can’t be seen.

Reaction Time

I haven’t poemed about my technophobia

Which is the real reason for my blog glitch,

Not using a browser compatible

With Blogger’s new protocols,

But since I tend not to be compatible

With newer protocols in pretty much any platform,

Except those made out of wood,

It’s no surprise I was uninformed

About the update to Blogger’s systems.

Updates to my systems,

I am pretty much informed of painful glitches

When I try and stand up or sit down,

Or outright walk into things,

Like the unfortunate incident between

The lumber rack and my forehead;

I knew there was something wrong almost immediately.

And, in case you were wondering,

Poemed has been added to the lexicon:

Poemed, verb, to poem.

Auditions

What is the story?

Who are the characters?

I am definitely one of them.

The rest is conjecture.

It is yet to be determined

Whether there is a hero or a fall guy,

Or if they are one and the same?

There is a fall guy,

Or, to be more precise, a fall segment,

A portion that has been written off.

It is possible to turn the tables,

For the collective fall guy

To become the collective hero.

The designated role can be refused.

The characters can write themselves back in.

For some, of course, the solution

Is only a metaphor.

It should be noted

The role of the evil villain
Has already been taken.

What I’m Waiting For

I’m in the not-all-the-way-awake place,

Just enough over the borderline to type,

String words together in a semi coherent sense,

Trying not to fall off a cliff

And crash into nonsense,

But looking for the magic in between,

Hoping some of it got dragged across,

And I can find it before it snaps back

Where it’s safe from the logic

Of those people who are always saying

Magic and mystery make no sense, and

Where would we be if everybody thought like that? Or

It’s time to grow up and be responsible.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t had coffee yet.

Something from Nothing

I seem to have nothing.

I was waiting for an idea

To lift my head out of its stupor,

To start my fingers

Stumbling across the keyboard,

Rubbing the half formed

Words out of their eyes,

Except they’re more blind worms

Coming up out of the darkness,

Sniffing their way,

Scratching my beard,

As if maybe they’ll find a poem there.

Holding On

Inside me head is a broken record,

Need work, need work, need work.

I keep hearing things are getting better,

But I keep hearing things are getting worse, too.

I would like to get the record fixed,

But it seems they don’t make them anymore.

Everything has gone digital

And the glitch in my head is something new,

Some way things work I don’t understand any more.

Maybe Alvin was right.

Maybe everything is too fast now.

Were all on a merry-go-round gone berserk,

It’s made it near imposable to grab the brass ring.

I remember that old song maybe,

“Stop the world. I want to get off.”

It’s different now.

If you don’t hold on tight enough

The centrifugal force will hurl you into space. 

Know-It-Alls

Molecules sound like their moving around

Like little planets with their own little people

That no one knows about except Seuss.

He knew a lot of things

Nobody else knows about,

Not even that Hawking guy

Who has decided God is impossible,

But who listens to a mister-know-it-all anyway?

Nobody in the bar really liked Cliff.

They couldn't tell you that on the show.

Oh sure, they knew his name but,

All of them couldn't wait until the show ended

And they were off camera

Were they could talk about how they really felt.

An Unlikely Call

“I know,” is not a Christian concept.

To live by faith one can only say, “I believe.”

There is no surety other than hope.

This is not for the faint of heart.

There are angels, but there are demons, too.

It is a rough-and-tumble game

Filled with wild characters of clashing natures,

Personalities large and small.

We are an unharmonious bunch

Brought together by an unlikely call,

To take no prisoners,

But to seek them out and free them.

Who Shall Know?

If I am unwilling to consider another’s opinion,

The notion I wish to communicate is absurd.

Being wedded to my own opinion excludes all others

And any form of connection to another is illusion.

If my goal is to categorize, name, or figure out,

It is only my own opinion I see.

If I am sure I know another, it is sure I don’t.

Another is infinite in complexity and nuance.

It is maybe this way we are made in the image of God,

Unknowable in the figuring out sense of the word.

To want to know another is a lifelong quest of discovery.

To assume you do know another,

Like claiming to know the mind of God,

Is the ultimate form of hubris and narcissism.

Thoughts BC

I can hear the traffic on the highway,

Like an undulating sea,

Like the hiss of time,

The mournful cry of creatures in chains,

The hiss of stone over sand,

Slaves building the pyramids.

I suppose I don’t really know

If their building something that substantial

Or if planed obsolesces has become universal

And everything is breaking down on schedule?

Maybe that’s why I can’t figure out

What the worlds coming to,

Or how to be who I am,

Maybe I’m just getting too old

And it’s my turn now?

But then again,

Maybe its I haven’t had my coffee yet?

Independence from What?

Due to a change in policy,

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Have been marked up

To defray the cost

Of current economic structures

Brought about behind closed doors

High above your pay grade.

We are happy to announce

The fall in real estate

Has provided an enormous opportunity

For a select few to rescue these holdings

For the betterment of all

Who’s qualifications meet the

Requirements of the institutions of lending.

We are pleased to announce the reduction

Of the cost of labor

As the growth in the number applicants

Has offset the demand for increased wages.

We sincerely regret the difficulties

Arising from measures we deem necessary

To secure what providence has provided

And we promise to do our utmost

To maintain order and prosperity

For our generations to come.

Thank you for your patience.

Before

I remember the rain coming down in sheets

Before they paved the road to the farm.

The road was all red dust before the rain

Turned your front yard into a shallow sea

Under the tire swing hung from a rope

In the sandy soil surrounding your rickety house

With the rain drumming the tin roof,

And the mosquitoes days after, as thick as the rain,

But right after the rain, its sudden stopping,

Big drops falling like an engine winding down,

And everything like it was before there was a road

To drive our Chevy over

So it could die in the dirt drive

Like the rotting broken down old wagon,

Weed covered, in the field behind the barn.

Struggles With Catholic Puberty

A twelve-year-old's impure desires

Led me down dream's labyrinth,

Through looming dark shapes,

To the red glow of hell

Where I battled the devil for your immortal soul.

Armed with a crude wooden sword

Against his terrible gleaming blade

We fought through the night.

Towering above me he glared down

With condemnation’s eyes laughing at my folly.

He struck down with all his fiery terror,

Striking blow after blow,

Ringing off my garbage can lid shield.

I recognized your hair, your blonde scalp

Fastened to my tin lid like a banner,

Then it was I knew

It was both our fates I fought for.

I must have vanquished the devil that night

As I found my way somehow back up to bed.

I saw you the next day at school

And could not stop stealing glances

At your budding body with your hair,

Flowing like a banner, making me tremble.

I heard the clang of battle

And knew the struggle had only begun.

The Perils of Unsupervised Beings

She never went upstairs to see

The mess we were making,

The things we brought up there

Or what we did.

Sometimes she would yell

From the bottom of the stairs,

“Don’t make me come up there.”

She never did.

We wandered where we would,

Entertained unsavory characters,

Entertained a good many things

Unwary of consequences.

Things often went astray leading to tears.

We discovered many things

Best left undiscovered.

Danger has its appeal.

But, like opening Pandora’s Box,

It was too late to put them back,

We often played on the dark side of our rooms.

Some of us managed to find our way

Back downstairs.

No one survived unscathed.

Memories trail behind us like chains,

Haunt us like ghosts.