Sunday, May 1, 2011

Some Poems

Not offered the job
I lay on my office floor
and slept two hours a day
amid boxes destined for storage
dreamless as cardboard.

*
The girl who helps my filing
wore a loose fitting jersey
collar hacked away
I admired her mocha brown
tits from a distance
built of age, reticence, fear
contented myself to resign her breasts
to metaphor of the death
of the pale white lynching
American dream.

*
I drop my son off at the middle school basketball courts
He saunters to a car filled with teenagers
drives off toward some fueled future
while I return to eternal questions:
Why does my porch sag
why can't they invent impermeable paint
wallpaper adhesive as the soul?
And why is there never sufficient fecund money?
I trail his car until it turns off
to the next town over
& middle age becomes the road
where there are no turnoffs
no second chances.
Drive home.

*
O god of no do-overs, WHY?
& strange that WHY and JAHWH
are so closely intertwined
like vines of doubt
& why can't I ask these questions
face to ineffable face
What am I afraid of?


*
Thomas Merton called to god
by a fan with faulty wiring in Tibet.
If god is present in faulty wiring
then my house is a cathedral
where the toaster oven and the microwave
won't run at the same time
without tripping some holy fuse
& god says I am here
among the confusion
& the killing sparks.

*
On overnight TV mesothliama
ads. You too could be entitled to
compensation. In America death
is money & cancer an endless
game show. The winners dance
their skeleton dance and howl
triumph over the rest of us
poor losers.

*
At 4:00 AM
filled with I-don't-give-a-shit
drugs, I write poetry
which brings no
money. Meanwhile
my kids are going to college
my sisters are rich
The early spring sunlight on treetops
is some irreproducible
amalgam of green and yellow
momentary hope.
Such shit. There is no god
where there is no money
only a backyard giving in
to weeds, my neighbors treetops
glimpsed golden above the garage.
The drugs are doing their work.
Te deum.

*
The kids are asleep.
The wife, cold ridden, is comatose.
Sunrise. Maybe the papers are here.
Small hope, small promises:
maybe the Red Sox won.
Amen.

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