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”My Son Procrastinates on a Poetry Assignment
He’s working on it now, suffering
the classic symptoms of writer’s block,
or more likely a keener interest in Team Fortress II
I’ve inspired him with these great one-liners:
It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, but it does have to be in Monday, buddy.
Try writing a poem about writing a poem*
and that ever-helpful
Just write what you know.
*making this a poem about writing a poem about writing a poem?
Morphine Dreams
in my dreams I was always walking somewhere
half-aware even in my dreams
I wasn’t walking anywhere
not for the time
being I’d had an accident in one
I stood behind a man speaking
on a podium he was leaning back
against me a heavy
weight a marching band advancing
everyone on their feet a
strange rhythm made musical
by repetition
muffled drums and low brass.
I half-woke hearing the solenoids of
some hospital bedside machine
clacking the music I’d heard.
My Uncle Was a Policeman
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
from Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
In the faded Polaroid colors of the early 1970s
he sat quietly eating at the Thanksgiving table.
The guests hadn’t arrived.
My aunt called from the kitchen,
sounding concerned, because he wasn’t –
asking for the third time if he wanted coffee.
“It’ll just keep me awake,” he said.
“I’ll see everyone tomorrow morning.”
There is no dramatic turning to this story,
no subsequent events to make it tragic,
and I doubt anyone else remembers.
Why I Keep Stopping
I sorted reeds today. No, really,
who would make up a thing like that?
Outlook has a nifty to-do list feature
and mine’s been scrolling off
monitors of increasing size since Windows 98.
About the reeds – some dated back to 1962
and were 25 cents apiece. Their faded
purple boxes spoke of bands long ago.
They’ve been waiting in boxes
since before I was born, waiting
for me to get to them.
Sestina: Wile E. Coyote
Permit me to introduce myself. Wile E. Coyote, genius.
I first see the roadrunner
on a sepia-painted morning in the desert.
Some might see an odd bird; I think he is the perfect
prey – in a land of shifting sand, a rock.
When I see him, I learn hunger.
I start by exploiting his hunger.
It is a stroke of genius;
At dawn, I hang a rock
over some seed I set out for the roadrunner.
He falls for it; the timing of the trap is perfect.
I cut the rope. Blackness covers the desert.
I Have Time to Write Because There’s Nothing Else to Do
I can see clear space at the bottom of my Outlook inbox.
My Task List starts with tomorrow.
My gmail is temporarily cleared of advertisements.
I’m waiting on a reply from my boss on fifteen different matters
of the utmost importance.
A Term of Art of War at an Organ Recital
The phrase has pleasing (even pious)
Connotations, like Arbeit Macht Frei,
“Molotov Cocktail,” and Enola Gay.
– From Formal Application, Donald W. Baker (1923-2002)
Deep in meditation by the end of an hour of organ music
in an old church pockmarked by manhole-size plaques
To the Glory of God commemorating rich men’s sons
blown into the next life on the winds of war,
I note the last piece:
Carillion-Sortie – Henri Mulet (1878-1967)
Continue reading “A Term of Art of War at an Organ Recital”Tracking
The new UPS driver looks like he’s been working his way down the corporate ladder.
I think he looks too old for a package car and he looks like he’s about my age
and finally: I’ve seen him looking younger.
It was 1982.
He hung an offensive nickname on me
that spoke of something I’d never even seen, much less done,
and I wore it like the proverbial badge marked Chicken Inspector
or I Felta Thi. How mightily
we called it out when pinching female freshmen’s bottoms.
What cards we were. What utter shits.
The Dream of My Grandfather’s Return
My grandfather at the dinner table of his son-in-law’s farmhouse:
Saltines, sardines, turkey sandwiches, potato salad, jello molds.
The progressive potluck of his hardtack life, coming as it did
toward something like luxury.
The luxury was to sit down – all of his sons and daughters
under the roof, everyone getting along. My father telling
a story about the 1950s that everyone there
except the grandchildren lived through. Laughter.
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