writing about technology, and vice-versa.
She woke up choking on it
the seed still stuck in her throat
hungover from drugged sleep
and a dream of seven mad kings.
An apple martini, a song beat cue,
everything leading to a man.
She found her dress on the floor
and her purse missing $20
but the keys intact.
Without preamble
as to why I haven’t been doing it
I begin to wonder if I can walk again.
The details come back to me in retrospect:
an accident, perhaps a wheelchair,
perhaps an eternal afternoon on a couch.
But I can stand,
I reason to myself, and
the memory is equally clear
standing up to shave, or speak.
The mundane reality of the afterworld,
of life after the thing that happened.
When I was in the hospital I dreamed simply
of walking, waking to find myself on fire
with pain, tied down with tubes.
I wake needing to urinate.
I stumble to the bathroom
before realizing the mundane reality.
I didn’t post in the entire month of April. You know – poetry month. I suck. But I’m still alive and will be back at it.
Kind of a sad topic for my 100th post, but I guess it’s fitting that one milestone is marked by another. The Zeugma Workshop (www.zpoems.net) is no more, at least for now. Continue reading “Zeugma Workshop defunct”
The deepest dream is of mad governors,
Down, down we feel it, till the very crust
Of the world cracks, and where there was no dust,
Atoms of ruin rise.
– The Deepest Dream – Mark Van Doren (1894-1972)
He appears, inexplicably,
on a panel talking about the death of JFK,
the day after, late in life, surely years after
he wrote The Deepest Dream.
Here
some famous people lived
before they were famous
or for a brief period
where they hid out from fame
and did ordinary things:
dishes
a slow dance to the radio
taxes
each other
A bus rumbles by each day
on the last leg of a crosstown journey
stops before getting to Walgreens
a man picks up his backpack
which rested against the sign.
nothing can ever taste
as good as the smell
pavlovian anticipation
of red flashing neon
green glass
and white counters
I wish I could say I thought of this, but you can’t make this sort of thing up.
for M.B.
A handwritten note I found
that had nothing to do with me
and wasn’t particularly wrenching
or well-enjambed
still startled me
because the handwriting,
the blue lines and charcoal grey
reminded me of days in school
when you would write to me
thinking about me instead of
world geography.
Not sure I’m ready to write poetry about it yet, but I’ve been working 60 hour weeks on a software project at work – installing some new software. One of the recurring themes with the software, and one that’s taking many people at work a great deal to get used to, is the fact that the software now touches on every department of the company, whereas the old accounting software just did the billing and purchase orders after everyone got through pushing the product around the building.
Continue reading “Dreaming About the Software”
poetrytech 