Dead Battery

During the 2,761 seconds it took me to walk from the middle of the parking lot starting at 4:17:29 pm until I arrived at the front door of my home at 5:03:30 pm, I passed 794 individuals riding in 538 automobiles, 128 traffic lights working in concert at 8 separate intersections, 37 boxcars on a passing train, 12 fast-food restaurants, 4 dogs leashed in backyards, 3 telecommunication towers, and 2 degrees Fahrenheit stayed the temperature. I was the only 1.

Hey Neighbor

So I was holding a glass in my hand, right? Yeah, a drinking glass, and the next thing I know there’s nothing to hold, there’s nothing in my hand, but I didn’t get that rush, you know? That flash of trepidation you get when something slips out of your grasp, you know what I mean right? Yeah, that split second of fear when something that is firmly and safely in your hand suddenly is not—suddenly it's away from you and it's an object, fragile and free-falling, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s² towards a hard and indifferent surface and all you can manage to do at that point - once the physics have taken over - is freeze like some stupid deer caught in the headlights until the half-second crash course with the floor is over with, right?—No, I didn’t get that feeling at all, I just noticed the glass wasn’t in my hand anymore. So when I realized it was gone I looked to see where it went. The first direction I looked was down—pretty clever, right? Yeah, I went to college, but when I look down I don’t see it. What I see looks nothing like my glass. Not even close. So expecting to see my glass but instead seeing what I do, my mind just draws a blank. I have no idea what I’m looking at. If I had said out loud what was going through my mind at the time I would have said something like, “What am I looking at?” Real creative, right? But that’s just how much I didn’t know what it was. So I’m standing there looking at something I can't for the life of me comprehend and my poor stumped brain is whirling away, rifling through the filing cabinet trying to find a match to what it is it sees, and then it finally puts the pieces together. It’s the pieces. I am looking at pieces of my glass. Shards of what was my glass. Then good old brain finds even more pieces to add to the picture. I was drinking water see? But good old brain knew that what lay mixing with the pieces of glass wasn't matching up with it's notion of what spilt water looks like, right? Even on the floral tile my brain saw that there was too much color on the scene. Way, way much too much color. Now at this point you don’t need to be some sort of mathematician to put two and two together and figure out what had happened and even though at the time my brain was finally grasping the gravity of my situation and what I had done, I still can’t explain why—Why on earth did I squeeze that glass so hard? Why on earth did I not feel a thing? Why, when my brain finally realized what had happened, did I just stand there dribbling much too much color all over my socks and the floral tile? Anyways, can I borrow your broom for a sec? I need to sweep up the glass.

Harmony

I am alone in a room playing harmonics on a cello and I never want to leave. With calculating fingers and a delicate touch I mute the fundamental tones, pulling forth impossible hums and rings. What starts in my hand I give to the bow and what the bow has been shown it blesses the string and what the string has been blessed with it breathes into the air and what the air is alive with it invigorates the walls and the walls tremble and shake and emit their bliss and it bursts back to me and I let the accord sing it’s graceful song and I savor it’s elegant life until it’s poise is refined back into an invisible point and when the sound does finally vanish from my ears I share my hand again and again because as long as I am in this room everything is in harmony. As long as I am in this room everything I give will be given back. And it will be beautiful, and it will be beautiful.

Shift Sandwich

The worst sandwich is the shift sandwich.

It’s when you work a closing shift and then open the next morning.

Way too much stale bread and not enough good stuff in the middle.


Edit: Today I learned from the Target sales floor team that a "shift sandwich" is called "clopening": verb: 1 - the term for a turn around shift in a non-nine-to-five job. 2 - working the closing shift in the evening and then the opening shift the following morning.


I'm glad there is an established term for this. And thanks sales floor team for the sympathy and encouragement today. I'm tired.

This Is Just To Lay

William Carlos Williams was an American poet. One of his most famous poems is "This Is Just To Say". You can find it here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15535
The poem is 28 words long and there exists about 2,800 published essays analyzing them. This is my version of "This Is Just To Say".

This Is Just To Lay

I have thrown out

the eggs

that were in

the nestbox

and which you

were probably

saving for Friday.

Forgive me

they were outrageous

so blue

and so covered in poop.

46 More To Go

50 poems in one month. That’s the goal.

They can’t all be good. Or even poem like.

Wait:

I’ll start staggering

    the lines and

format it so

  there are only

          a few words

          per line.

  Now

     

                    it’s

  

                             a poem.

Sure.

Paid By The Hour

My life is paid by the hour.

The grocery store was $7.75.

Clerical work was $10.60.

Now my sales position the most—$13.85 with benefits.

But no one could pay me enough

to be without you.

Because together

time cannot find us.

Together we are free.

Purple Carrots

Purple carotene sticks with cosmic skin as thin as the hands that harvested them bunched and waiting in winter-wet wicker baskets, then off in canvas bags, under kitchen faucets, and washed roughly. Naked and orange, dirt and purple down the drain. But the farmer can not slip her secret so easily—the dirt is pressed deep into the ridges of soil stained fingers, the purple spread in patches across her long, bruised body.

The Sick Games We Play

Today I almost topped my high score. But every time I got close I ran out of life. Self-loathing is a hard game to beat. What else is there to play?