Who would want to read the poem that I wrote?

Might it be that man in the red party hat...

(And don't ask me what a red party hat looks like

It's just something I made up and I'm not even

Sure

If it's a party hat that's red or a hat for a red party.)

So really who would want to read the poem that I wrote?

Maybe that woman I saw running in six-inch-high heels in the morning

And then ambling in tennis shoes in the evening

And actually I never have seen a woman like that

But if she does exist

Maybe she would want to read the poem that I wrote.

We got out of the car and went to a field that I oddly thought might have made a good place to play baseball or football or soccer even though I never play sports anymore or never really did even as a kid.

I sat on my haunches and...
wondered what was I going to say to her in that long thick silence.

It was night and I heard no cries or calls of animals or machines.

I hoped that Gina wondered the same thing.

I remembered as a boy getting so bored I’d dig a hole that looked something like this         and then I would fill it up again so it looked somethinglikethis just for something to do.

I wondered if Gina had ever dug a hole in her life.

Admittedly, it was a strange thing to wonder.

We live in a town with an Indian name
An Indian name from a language that's no longer spoken
An Indian name from a people who may no longer exist

Sometimes someone will say what the name of our town means in the Indian language
And we'll marvel at that
More likely we'll just laugh

Because our town is nothing like the way the Indians said it is
It's a place with a lot of fast-food restaurants
And it's a place with a lot of sit-down restaurants where you can't buy anything that costs less than $40

If we leave this town
Sometimes we'll talk about how we're from this town
Or how we're going back to this town
And then when we get back there maybe
We'll get a call from a telemarketer who can't pronounce the name of our town
That's not how you say it we'll say
It's...

And that will be one of the only times that a word from this Indian language is ever said

I'm happy to have a fulfilling job
The only time I'm not happy
Is when I consider how so many
Have unfulfilling jobs to
Support my fulfilling job

Like for instance
There's the guy who shines my shoes twice a day
That's because I have to kick things
And I need good-looking shoes for that
He shines my shoes with a smile
On his face or somewhere on his body
But I can't believe he finds his job as fulfilling as I find my job
When I get to kick something

There's also the guy who looks after my health
At first he was just my taster
Making sure no one poisons me
But then his duties were extended
Up to including reading
The Possible Side Effects
Of all my medications

And there he saw it one day:
And said
“It says here that one possible side effect of this medicine is the delusion that you have a fulfilling job when you don't have such a fulfilling job.”
And then it all went ****

And I found myself back to working an unfulfilling job
Now I just hope I can remember how to do it
Because a long line of angry customers is forming somewhere in relation to where I am positioned now

There was one window
On about the seventh floor
Of the abandoned paperboard factory

Every window had been broken so far
Danny broke three
Clay two
Me one
Eric eight
But for that one window
On the seventh floor
Glaring at us
Daring us

Eric pitched a no-hitter
Against the Sievewright Sifters
Danny caught a foul at a Patrones game
Clay won a huge Bugs Bunny at the fair
(I was cut from the school's team but kept that to myself)

Still that window
Hovered
Unbroken
Spotless perhaps
Giving views
Of a muddy river
And sagging city
(Or would have
If anyone still worked there)

Then one day
We were walking
Just four kids
Walking
Where a crowd of a thousand
Would once mob
Each day at eight
Then at three
Then at eleven
But now never again

And that window was broken
Left with an open jagged entryway
About a foot in diameter
Just a little bit of each corner remaining
The northeast in dangling pieces
And I saw what did it
But didn't say
A dead pigeon lay near the empty Dumpster

I let them marvel
At whatever transient hobo hitchhiker
Might have come by
With a throwing arm
Like Nolan Ryan's

I was trying to impress Ella at the art reception
Telling her a fishing and then a hunting and then a garage saling story
When I notice her looking over my right shoulder
At

A non-descript male
Who like me
Wore no rings
Had his hair combed to the side

And made a somewhat believable attempt to understand
What was mounted on the east-side wall
I dreamed that night of a mob
Me allied with 10 tall strong men

Or at least taller and stronger than him
Tall and strong enough
To corner him at the cliff
by the site of the forgotten Revolutionary war skirmish

As we stood facing him
Trying to think of what we would do to hurt him
When suddenly the ground we stand on collapses and we go tumbling down
Limbs hitting limbs

Torsos slamming torsos
Until we're in a moaning pile
And what does the nondescript man noticed by Ella do
but throw us a rope or some kind of lifeline and pulls us up

And in gratitude I grab him by the hand
And pull
He tumbles
Laughing

And I walked away
Knowing he was okay down there below

Looking out the call-
center window I see blue
jays and cardinals