questioning my core competency
_________


man or woman, an irrelevancy,
we all believe that we possess
certain core competencies that
reflect our managerial skills, the
hows of how we organize and smooth
the daily mishmash of our otherwise
would-be-totally-hellish-lives

minor stuff, that have the risk potency
of the skinny tail of the curve, where the
highly improbable
seems to happen as if regularly scheduled.
let the gas tank go to E, worse, unnoticeably,
but on a small isle, with no AAA, a single gas station,
in howling wind, and summer rain mael-strom,
forced to risk a brief trip over hilly terrain, fearful of
being gas poor on the stuck-side of the road, with
no one to call, no savior to summon, and my sense
of self, now shattered-glass on the side of the road.

did I mention that the night prior when the situation
was yellow lit to get my immediate attention, I had
forgotten my instrumental human connectivity, my
Inshallah cell phone (1), at our dining out restaraunt,
making necessary a seven point four mile R/T detour,
to preserve my integrity, pride, communicability, and
the few(er) left, shards of my lesser antilles’ ego and pride.

turns out that even on E, for long periods, you still
can go some distance for the car designers, all liars,
to nice people like me, leave a gallon reserve undisclosed,
for the vain and statically stupid of which I am a member.
more details of my ineptness, shameful, shall not be herein revealed, but when we meet, gladly be disclosed over alcohol.

but it is now between the hours of nine and ten AM, and despite
imbibing 22.5. ozs. of Jamaican coffee, I return to bed,
having made it to the local station with gnawed knuckles,
and chewed lower lip,
lower the shades, announce to no one in particular, hello,
do not disturb, for-up-all-night-poet-ite, is exhausted the
exhaust of depression, for his core competencies have
been renamed, now and forever, his
gored incompetencies!

p.s. E, having consulted the owner’s manual,
stands for more precisely ,
Empty Headed