writing about technology, and vice-versa.
A bit out of sequence, but… this is from a somewhat neglected collection that I need to get back to work on.
Christ calls Peter
We cleaned nets which stank from a long night
of nothing and mended them where the sea
snagged and tore them. He wanted to talk.
Not to me, but to the mob coming with him,
a rabble that made me and James look
like tax men. Continue reading “Christ Calls Peter”
It hurt worse than expected,
feeling my soul pulling free,
like meat off a bone, like arriving
when she told me Joseph died—
I knew, but now I Know.
Drunk with pain, down to go deeper,
to get under all of it, down under
the staggering load.
It was hard to be there for it, hard
to see her seeing all of this, hard
to explain, even if I could have,
that it was all merely a stage,
the necessary pain, evil, darkness,
delusion.
And then it began.
I designated a driver: myself
because I wanted to arrive alive
with a family of work-relations
who wanted to continue the wake
for our co-worker who’s still
sending out auto-replies. Continue reading “In Vino Veritas”
You’ll be coming off three days on the night shift
when you realize there was no sugar
in the bottom of the cup, no bottom
of the cup for that matter. Sometime
after your last 12-step meeting
you’ll know you’ll always walk wounded,
limp home. Those wounds in your hands
won’t heal; they’ll be a sign to all,
especially you. You’ll walk around clean,
feeling the hole in your own side,
wondering if this was the glorious
resurrection promised.
published around 2005 in the now defunct web journal, The New Pantagruel
Sestina: Blue’s Clues
What the past three years have been I don’t remember,
only that the now is taken up with Steve and a dog, Blue,
a sort of surrogate mother for our children, who look for clues
while Mommy, like me, is busy doing something. Think
though we might, we won’t recall that something later.
But Steve is kind, assuring them they can be anything
that they want to be. Continue reading “Sestina: Blues Clues”
Dad pulls up in the Rambler, and
we see the sign first: POOL – COLOR TV.
Darkness fills the edges of the parking lot.
My brother and I plan to live up
to the promise of that sign. No trunks,
but some shorts Mom had packed for the next day.
She wearily agrees. Later, from the zero gravity
of turquoise-lit night water, I see Dad’s
cigarette lit like an orange rocket as he blows
white smoke skyward, sitting slumped in a plastic chair.
The Dream[1] of Watching The Social Network with Mark Zuckerberg
He grimaces at the opening scene
A little too close to home he admits
but the girlfriend[2] isn’t real; an amalgam
of various tropes and a wish-fulfillment
curse placed on him by a few ex-friends,
although there really is a Facebook profile of her
public figure, and only created after the movie came out.
Continue reading “The Dream of Watching The Social Network with Mark Zuckerberg”
In keeping with the “and vice-versa” part of my tagline, I give you
a spreadsheet which sequences your words in the textbook sestina order. I used it to write the previous poem. Feel free to distribute.
The decision as to what your career is to be is a very deep and important one,
and it has to do with something like a spiritual requirement and commitment.
– Joseph Campbell
As I grow older, I see this as his greatest feat:
balancing the day job with his career as superhero.
[W]e’re sort of shortening and simplifying the backstory so that new readers can jump in and understand what’s going on from the very first issue. – Jim Lee, DC Comics, in an NPR interview about starting several of the issues over.
It’s an understandable sentiment
wanting to start all over again
when you’re painted into a corner
and the story has gotten too complex.
poetrytech 