(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 3, 2019)

“Not all those who wander are lost.” -- J. R. R. Tolkien

I was an office temp for many years when I was young. All the companies: Kelly girls, Manpower, Adecco. I took innumerable tests in typing, word processing, spreadsheets.

The worst job was at a sales office for home siding. I logged complaints all day on the phone about faulty siding.

I worked at a construction site in Los Angeles, a new middle-class ghetto they were building on the Howard Hughes air strip. I worked in a trailer and had to wait until lunch break to walk a block to the bathroom in the new library.

There was one warehouse I worked in that had mice so employed a full-time cat to work alongside us. The cat left dead mice everywhere. I was always cold there.

A lot of places I was replacing someone on vacation, someone the office assumed was indispensable but there was never anything for me to do there but read. I wrote a lot of letters to pen pals and friends. Email hadn’t been invented yet. Sometimes I’d walk memos around the office. Nobody ever invited me to meetings. Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes it comes true and you end up sitting in endless meetings.

In one swanky office I prepared orders in triplicate on a typewriter. I kept messing up and having to start over. Eventually I started to enjoy this. It was a medical lab and was convinced they were doing animal testing so I left after a week.

One of my early jobs was as a receptionist in a war machine company. My contact there asked me to do “computer work” (as it was called then) but I didn’t know how to use a mac or a mouse. My contact called my agency to complain about sending out “girls without basic skills.” My agency told me not to worry about it, the war company was just trying to scam us all by paying for a receptionist to do “computer work.” So they stuck me at the switchboard up front where I found bomb-threat instructions taped under the desk.

I worked at a design store and learned a program called Word Perfect. I started typing and printing the letters to my friends. The St. Louis owner was trying to sell the company to a rich Los Angeles couple. Once, a young gay designer I admired called and referred to me as “the girl up front with the glasses.” I immediately went out and got contact lenses. Before I left, I bought a desk and a chair they were selling. Years later, I sold the desk to an Amish couple in Lititz, PA, but I still have the chair.

I once worked for a cheap couple running a plastic mold factory. The man was paranoid, cheap and houvering and I said I wouldn’t stay past two weeks. They asked me to train a new temp and I said okay. The new temp also found the owner to be paranoid, cheap and houvering and so declared to me she wouldn’t stay past the week either. She confided in me she had gotten drunk and slept with someone and was worried she was pregnant. She was freaking out because she was going through a divorce and already had two kids. I told her about the day-after-pill which she had never heard of. I don’t know if it worked because I never used it myself and I never saw her again after that to follow up.

At another office I did nothing at the front desk for three weeks, bored and reading all the Thomas Covenant novels. I would take my lunch break under a big tree to continue reading the Thomas Covenant novels.

I worked for months at a credit card company reading books and letting in visitors through the locked glass door. Week after week, the receptionist would call in sick. One young blonde woman would give me filing work. She was telling me all about her wedding she was planning which sounded pretty fun and it made me want to plan a wedding too. After a few weeks she asked me what my father did. I said he was a computer programmer. She replied that my dad sounded like somebody her dad would beat up. I was too shocked by the rudeness to say dismissively, “I seriously doubt that.” (For one, my dad wasn’t always a computer programmer.) When it became clear the woman I was replacing had abandoned her job, they asked me if I wanted to stay on. I said no, that I was moving to New York City. I wasn’t  (but I did eventually).

Some places “kept me on” like the mortgage underwriters in St. Louis. That office had permanent wood partitions between the desks, waist-high and a pretty, slight woman training to join the FBI. She fainted one day by the copier. It was there that I told my first successful joke ever. Our boss was a part-time Baptist minister and we loved him because he was able to inspire us during times of low morale. One day we saw a bug buzzing above us in a light fixture.  Before I even thought about it I said, “I guess you could say he finally saw the light.” Everybody laughed a lot and I turned bright red. I wrote my essay to Sarah Lawrence College there after hours at the one desk with a typewriter. My boss and I got laid off the same day. He helped me carry my things out to my car.

I worked at a large food company in White Plains, NY. I often came home with boxes of giveaway Capri Sun in damaged boxes. I helped a blind woman fill out her checks. She was really grouchy and I wasn’t allowed to pet her service dog. She had dusty junk all over her desk but she couldn’t see it to make it tidy. I realized then that she would never be able to use a stack of desk junk as a to-do list...because she couldn’t see it. You can’t to-do what you can’t see and how we all probably take this fact for granted with our piles of desk junk. Years later I had the same thought about to-do lists burned in phones or computer files.

They also “kept me on” at the Yonkers construction company. I was there for years. The British woman next to me was not my boss but she ordered me around a lot. She told me I looked like an old 1940s actress I had never heard of who always wore her hair in her face. I was annoyed by this compliment because when I looked the actress up on the Internet I could see it wasn’t true. At the time, everyone was just getting on the Internet and I was already addicted to eBay. I would leave meetings in the middle for three minute at a time to ****** items with my competitive late-second bids. It was my first job with email too, and I emailed many letters to all my friends all day long. One elderly man there thought it was funny to give me cigars (which I smoked socially at the time) and told me unsavory ****** facts to shock me. I thought he was harmless and funny and his attempts to unsettle me misguided because I had already grown up with two older brothers who were smelly and hellbent on unsettling me. Later the man started dating and seemed happier and I met his very nice older girlfriend at one of the laborious, day-long Christmas parties our Italian owners threw every year. Months later his girlfriend was murdered in her garage by her estranged husband. Most of the office left to go to her funeral and I felt very bad for him.

And they kept me on at the Indian arts school in Santa Fe. I loved every day I spent there, walking the halls looking at student art. I had never seen so many beautiful faces in one place. One teacher there confided in me about her troubles and I tried to be Oprah. She ended up having to take out a restraining order against a man she met online. At the trial, the man tried to attack the female judge and she awarded the teacher the longest restraining order ever awarded in Santa Fe: 100 years. He broke the restraining order one day on campus and we were all scared about where he was and if he had a gun. All around the school were rolling hills and yellow blooming chamisa and we found tarantulas in the parking lot. I was there almost a full school year until I moved away.

I was once a temp in a nursing temp office that had large oak desks and big leather chairs. The office was empty except for one other woman. The boss was on vacation and she spent all our time complaining about what an *** he was and how mistreated the nurses were. I remember feeling uncomfortable in the leather chair. The boss, who I never met, called me one day to tell me he had fired her and that I should know she was threatening to come back with a gun. When I called the agency they laughed it off. I told them I wouldn’t go back.

My favorite temp job was at a firefighting academy in rural Massachusetts. I edited training manuals along with two other temps. It was very interesting work. The academy was in the middle of the woods, down beautiful winding roads with old rock walls. Driving to work I would listen to TLC and Luther Vandross. And whenever I hear Vandross sing I still think of the Massachusetts woods. When I left, they let me have a t-shirt and I wore it for years. One of the trainers had a son who was a firefighter who asked me out on a date. I said I was moving to New York City (this time it was true) and not interested in a relationship. He insisted the date would be just as friends. He took me to Boston’s North End and we ate gnocchi while he told me how he didn’t believe it was right to hit women. This comment alarmed me. He then took me to a highrise, skyview bar downtown where he proceeded to **** my fingers. I thought about Gregg Allman and Cher’s first date where Gregg Allman ****** Cher’s fingers and how now Cher and I had something in common: the disappointment of having one’s fingers ******. My scary date didn’t want to take me home and I was living with my brother at the time, so I told him my brother was crazy and if I didn’t get back by ten o’clock my brother would freak out like a motherf&#$er. That part wasn’t true...but it worked. I made it home.

I used to be deathly afraid of talking to strangers on the phone. I used to be bored out of my mind watching the clock. I used to wish I were friends with many of the interesting people walking past my desk.

When I look back on all this and where I’ve been, it seems so random, meandering through offices in so many different cities. But it wasn’t entropy or arbitrary. I was always working on the same thing.

I was a writer.

My technology nightmare
Leaves me euphoric this morning.
Addicted, like drug trials,
I knew the risks going in,
Got hooked in The Cloud &
Now it always seems easier,
With diminished psychic chafing
Whenever I go with the flow, as the
Hipsters are saying again.
Yes, the hipsters:
Finally, some kids I can relate to.
At least on some level, their music e.g.
The first thing I did this morning,
Waiting for my laptop to boot,
Was put a CD on the stereo:
Matrix Reloaded: The Album.
I set the shuffle function,
Looping back between
Linkin Park’s Session &
Team Sleep’s Passportal.
You can tell a lot about
What kind of day it will be
By the soundtrack you choose,
Your infinite play list,
Don’t ever say these kids have no culture,
Or nothing to share with us old farts.
Old Farts: an apt, Baby Boomer term in 2015.
Kids’ music, some of it quite good,
Quite 60s-worthy if you catch my drift,
As we used to say while grazing in the grass with
Hugh Masekela & his Naai Mongoe-Swazi red,
Surfrikan homeboys & band mates, & that
ANC Kwa-Guqa Township posse,
Shadowing him since Sharpeville.
That’s right, Babaloo,
Go with the flow.
Don’t fight it. You’ve been spared the unintended
Consequences of government shenanigans &
Free market meltdowns.
Consider this a CEASE & DESIST NOTICE:
Cease swimming upstream Mr. Phelps.
Desist fighting tide & current, Michael.
A mariner’s distinction, yet serviceable &
Purposed for this narrative.
“And away we go,” croons a Gleason levitation;
Aloft we go into the wild blue yonder.
The Cloud: an exalted playground.
You are atop the slide,
Kindergarten lord of all you survey,
Sultan, Chinese Emperor & Venetian Doge,
A 90-caliber Duke of Earl,
You are euphoric, Mike.

The descent into the humanoid condition
(See Paddy Chayefsky’s Howard Beale),
Is slick and precipitous.
It begins when you first finger ****
A pocket calculator or touchtone phone,
Or use a Xerox machine.
From there it’s a quick slide down
The technology ****-shoot: video games,
Spreadsheets & word processors,
Emails, texts & tweets,
Laser projection keyboards,
Wi-Fi amplifiers,
GPS navigators, &
Apps for No-Strings *** . . .
By “****-shoot” I editorialize, of course,
In a state of future shock,
Resenting planned obsolescence,
Contemptuous of shrewd **** kids,
Wharton School sharpies,
Scoping out price curves & flowcharts,
Colluding at industry trade shows,
Powwows & confabs,
Releasing newer, more versatile
Models & spinoffs, according to a
Scheme planned three years in advance.

I salt the inevitable wounds of technology,
Taking my fight to the streets, realizing too late
My sole means of alerting the flash mob
Is by so-called smart phone,
*******!
Even the revolution has gone digital.
Poor Gil Scott Heron, dead last year at 62,
Poor Scott Heron, channeled into the
Harlem Renaissance by that loyal Chicago Defender,
Subscriber & reader, to wit: his Grandma,
A “Rainbow Conspiracy” co-conspirator,
Cooking ham hocks & collard greens for that
Mythical coalition of Young Lords,
Black Panthers & SDS.
Heron’s prognostication was wrong:
“The Revolution Will (In Fact) Be Televised!”
We’ve witnessed quite a bit of it,
Lately, prime time lately,
Live by satellite from once exotic places,
Places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria & Ferguson, MO.
I say “once exotic” because it’s hard to be
Visually intoxicated by images of screaming brown men
Sporting New York Yankee ball caps,
“Vote for Pedro” T-shirts and
$200.00 Air Jordan footwear.
Admittedly, the production values of
Revolutionary journalism have improved,
Action reported Hollywood-style,
Narrative arcs, scripted episodes,
Drive-by Potemkin villages & battle scenes,
30 or 60 or 90 day shooting schedules.
Spontaneous proletarian uprisings as Reality TV,
Riveting dramas,
High Nielsen ratings & $500K
Per minute corporate sponsors.
Let’s view the new fall line-up:
(1) “Mustafa Behaving Badly!”
(2) “Tunisian Tear Gas Talent!”
(3) “Gaddafi Gets Sodomized!”

Alex 2 breathes, stacks and unstacks papers, distantly
Alex 1, front cubicle, coughs, clicks his mouse
Eddie pulls out his drawer, pushes it back in, clicks his mouse
Alex 2, yes two Alex's, saunters up to the coffee machine
Alex 1, head down, clacking his keyboard
Mouse clicks, keyboard clicks, electricity
Monitors glow, fluorescents never flicker
Alex 1 opens a new file, two clicks of the mouse
Eddie sips his coffee, puts it down, clicks
New folder, new file, new data
Data entry, spreadsheets
Alex 1 asks did you get the email
Alex 2 has his coffee, his white shirt, under the fluorescents
Statics noise, static, mouse clicks, keyboard
Every new click, new file, new data, new folder
Data in, data out, file, click, the static electronics
Alex 2 clicks, files, new folder, new deal, new data
Eddie clears his throat, softly, the static noise, flickers,
Every new love story is a tragedy
Alex 2 opens a new folder, inputs data, spreadsheets
Numbers in, Eddie clicks his mouse twice rapidly
Stale effluvia coffee, static noise, electric light
Alex 1 sniffles, clears his throat, the clock ticks softly
Eddie opens a new file, the electric screen reflects his fixed eyes
Alex 2 sips his coffee, opens a file, clicks, keyboard clacks
Stasis, complete stasis, electricity, nodes, linear graphs
Numbers input, data, new file, file transfer
Every old tragedy is a ghost story
Alex 2 sips his coffee, breathes, clears his throat, data
Spreadsheets, monitors, electricity, static, data input, output
Every ghost story is infinite
Alex 1 gets up for a new coffee
Eddie inputs data, spreadsheet, file, new folder
Electric lights, stasis, data, file, click, file, input exp..

i still think the oceans are insulators of tectonic plate movements, constant and endless vibrations represented by waves, these vibrations, when translated on dry land, movements of crumbling buildings, rigidity as testimony to the insulating fluidity of water; it's like those nuclear power plants, you use water to cool things down, or as in the case of oceans and tectonic plates, insulate volatility... well, radioactivity in the opposite scenario of nuclear power plants... oh look, a rhyming couplet - now that's how you understand things, if not reveal them, find complimentary rhymes on a grander scale than the casual technique in poetry, so over-used and overrated.*

i guess so, monsters bedded, big and small,
an old granny without a family member
to accompany her, harrowed by
charity groups who ask for money
more for the bureaucracy of its workers than
aiding actual victims - someone has to
look pretty, writing solemn letters and
filing in the spreadsheets -
by the way, how's that advent of the grand
timings working, find the hyphen,
the comma, the colon and semi-colon on the clock?
well, there ain't a full stop on there, i'm sure,
hard to decide on encoding time of a 100m
sprint, or a formula 1 thousandth of a second.
so this angel of euthanasia comes along,
a cruel case they say, while years later
a man suffering motor neurone disease
pleads for a change of law, according to switzerland,
he wants it bad, real real bad, he's no longer
even stoic about death, the disease didn't
rob him of expressing tears, and he's pleading
for it, a death sequence, he too knows
a drop in an ocean has no ripple effect,
humanity is the ocean, waves and waves of it,
always dynamic, never still like a lake or mirror,
either the ocean, or the river;
so this angel of euthanasia is there, kills
about 100 grannies, and guess what,
he hangs himself in prison, so that his widow
can receive his pension salary of £100,000,
odd, isn't it? i mean, why would a supposed
"serial killer" wait in prison, hang himself
just after he was eligible for a general practitioner's
pension, just so his wife could have it?
all those old grannies probably lived
on the state pension of one hundred
and twenty quid, not one hundred thousand, i'm sure.
well the guy suffering from motor neuron disease,
oh crap, i wish i could remember that philosopher's
name, parmenides? zeno? can't remember,
yeah, forced himself to suffocate,
without water and without a pillow; yep,
just sat there and held his breath.

Skyward glints,
another hint from another sun,
London runs down,
daily commute over and out.

And how the weekday work is
coming to an end,
but what do they work on whilst 5 in the evening?
Spreadsheets saved in significant folders,
word documents in for a week on Monday,
presentation notes to be written, rehearsed, re-wrote and printed?

‘Beds, beds, beds,
prime town centre property To Let’
Broken brick buildings sit, they belong
to internet auction sites and in estate agent windows.
There’s no flow in this town no more.
Whatever river of commerce that once ran through here
has moved onto, and into, another course,
oxbow lake suburb by Government force.

It rains in the North.
Jewels in the tarmac,
rings in the walls,
stars behind the factory noise,
sound hidden behind an all-car-call.

My broken skin, my broken hide,
months of thought, a hunger for home.
Far flung, further thrown,
back to the up-north-hometown,
hometown of the known.

The onion doesn't have layers
it has panels
nailed to its skin.

On occasions
he goes back to the warehouse
where he stores broken typewriters,
unfinished narratives of the campaign,
unexploded bombs.
sellotaped wires.

He audits his feelings
keeps them neatly arranged
on shelves and spreadsheets and

he examines them against the light
and is pleased with his investigations.

Write lyrics like spreadsheets with number crunching
Calculate the isotopes
numerical accuracy in the vein of vain attempts to overcome
the show off tendencies of artist who exhibit flow to illicit
concern about existence beyond what they can see of pedagogical poetry
more concerned with numbers and patterns
who gives a **** what the stress is on the vowel in the third stanza  
lyrically despondent personal correspondents for a publication that says
more about what you know than what you feel
and who you are
computer says no, statistically impossible, synaptic haiku
five seven five
musical ronin
go go gadget of talent
extend-o-pole and flying nimbus as you train like son-goku
hyperbolic chamber where time is an illusion only to collapse
true Saiyans are warriors from the womb until death and after
over nine thousand and the scanner short circuits
write on the clouds with light so hot that it burns on thought
not contact
no constants, just variables, electron microscopes to try and hear the angels sing.
Large Hadrons small dreams, no love, just roman numerals
XIV, ***, Blood transfusions in the realm of “O Positive” and you're just a pessimist, negative Nancy at the end of evolution
Flesh and bone as a tent in your double helix of a genome,
flesh like clay in the hands of some master
but you know no master
no nations, under no gods but Darwin
all 23 chromosome pairs making 46 parts of your brain
screaming neurons fire
WRITE
WHAT
YOU
ARE
If you should so choose as to end not with a bang but a whimper
then your memory is forfeit
contribute in some meaningful semblance of sarcasm and sinsethesia with anesthetic medications of pop remedies and voided memories
of sinthesisia
Smell the colours and taste the sounds of pen on paper
when you never own a pen or a pad
just a bright white rectangle you stare at for hours on end
No thoughts just Digg and Reddit
your only contributions a thumbs up or a red thumbs down
like buttons
but no dislike, because if you've got nothing nice to say
then say nothing
unless you're outrage and full of spite
and morose
at the state of human nature
beauty and song thrown out in an effort to leave nobody behind
and so we have a generation coming in
at the age of 5, who are told new math
new science
wrote memorization of equations
no thought process, no argument about relation
theory of relativity, the genious mind just numbers and letters on a page with squiggles and lines that don't have to mean anything more than they mean on the book
we have a generation with no lust, no hope
Do they dream in black and white?
do they dream at all?
is the consequence of IQ tests and graded paper intelligence
the thirst for knowledge and creativity?
WE HAVE TO SCREAM
at the injustice
Burn it to the bricks and ashes
we hurl through the windows
in the streets and in the parks
car radios and clock towers sold
for cheap homemade *****
dance around the fire like the wild things are
LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN
but then we're still hollow
no happy medium, just excess
in the pursuit of Dionysus, trepination,
demon possession is illegal in the eyes of the police and federal law
spread your legs and lean against the car
as they frisk you and plant the seed
of doubt
in the cuffs of your jeans
You have the right to remain silent
but I hope you don't
refuse
question
resist

I woke up on Tuesday and I was older by the calendar and the law and I said “hey that’s grand”. When I woke up on Tuesday I was also older by the symbolism and I sat wide-eyed between suitjackets on the 7:45, coffee half-down and a brand new watch on the left-wrist. I made spreadsheets. I shook hands. I was The City when I took my first swallow on the rooftop. I couldn’t see the Empire through the cold-May-fog but I could see it in the mirror and on his knuckles and in his eyes. When I woke up on Wednesday I made more spreadsheets. I made more coffee. Then I was home early and Connecticut again. But Friday was the best ******* day. The sun beat me to good-morning and my favorite gone friend ate a gyro with me and another chugalugged to 42nd street on the bright red leather across the aisle. My favorite hand to touch was there for the second drink too, and I loved my job because I admitted that I hated it, and that’s okay. And he was there again on the cusp of days, and he’s there now still between my ears, and Friday melted to the next good-morning and I’m here now, city-drunk and sky-drunk and *******-I’m-so-lucky- and wine-drunk, and dizzy on the rooftops I’m imagining are better than the ones I rule, and Sunday’s coming and I will sleep for ages and hey that’s grand.

7/12/12   16:25pm

At what price does man find favour with God?
Down through the roiling clouds, from heavenly heights to earthly clay,
where scribes had written scrolls of doctrines;
down through old crumbling architraves, temples of cold ideals,
 man spawned the Vengeful Word.
With rage of angels,
like effigies of gods, there sprang forth lords and hypocrites;
all claimed to speak for God. 
Then, in the maelstrom,
came genocide of innocents, and hellfire fell like rain.

When does a tower become too tall for God?
Out of a clear blue sky came silver harbingers of doom,
where men were writing drafts and spreadsheets;
now crumbling down around them, swathed in hate-begotten fire;
spawned from a vengeful god.
No mortal angels
could save the ones who perished, caught above the line of flame;
while some below survived.
Yet, in the chaos,
sworn enemies in faith came out to save each other's fall.

At what price can man enter Paradise?
High above the minarets, the veiled dome of the sky
students look up with wistful longing;
yearning to be good radicals and cross the lines of fire
to reap heaven's reward.
Hate's vengeful angels
pretenders to the throne of God take many shapes and forms,
while moderates stay quiet;
and with their silence
give passive leave for lunatics to prate at heaven's door.

We wish you good macro results,
We wish you good macro results,
We wish you good macro results…
And lots of them too.

To count them we’ll use spreadsheets,
To count them we’ll use spreadsheets,
To count them we’ll use spreadsheets...
For every season.

Good macros we count,
Stoneflies and mites
Good snails and mayfies
We all have to count.

We counted a lot of macros,
We counted a lot of macros,
We counted a lot of macros...
And have lots more to go!

Our minds can’t simply take it,
Our minds can’t simply take it,
Our minds can’t simply take it…
There’s just too much to count!

Misty Morning, tunnel exit
Radio blaring. Yet more Brexit
Shipyards looming in the mist
Coffee. Top of this checklist

Distantly spied, Golden Arches glisten
Dumbly calling those who listen
Desperate homeless huddled outside
Callous addiction stealing his pride

Inside the feckless locals gather
Of nameless baby dads they caw & blather
No sign of insight, syns nor points
Weight of burgers on their joints

Red-eyed middle management jostle for WiFi
Ketchup spilt upon his tie
Spreadsheets, targets, bonuses forgotten
Awareness at last. This lunch is rotten

Light bursting inside his head
Realising how easily he's been led
A new day. A Golden New Dawn
A middle-management minion reborn

Now with joy. Now with flourish
New skills, his mind does nourish
Never Stop. Ignore what they say
And make this day. Make this day. Make this the day.

I've tried to record
The way your name falls out of my mouth
When I drop glass onto the floor
Like my mothers list of forbidden words
In spreadsheets
Counting with fingers and letters
Every time I pass a red pushpin in a map
Of where you told me
"You're so young and immature"
Like a compliment traced with
Sobriety and melatonin
I've picked up pencils
That end up in pieces
After scrawling your dialogues
Onto "it's your own fault" paper
I've scrubbed myself raw
With people who wont
Look me in the eyes anymore
With your goodbye words
With the flashbacks of
Your hands manifesting
The uncharted areas
Of my brittle hips
How my ****** syllables were
Dinner party jokes
There's nothing that can hurt
A god of power
And business suits
Someone who's never told no
Holds a child
In a way that erases the thought of comfort
And now
I lack the maturity to refuse requests
And you tell me
I'd make a good corpse
At a funeral catered towards
Twenty-nine year old men
Who never learned the difference
Between property and personality
And my promises
Tighten around my throat
Gratefully
Like your hands
Fostering the
Aurora Borealis of love
In a way that
Makes me choke on
The things you've shown me
The things you've ruined for me
The words I will never get back
And I sit
With you surrounding me
In and out of every crevice of my body
You've claimed for yourself
Helpless
And defeated
Like a child
Just how you like me

this perpetual pattern. a thousand spreadsheets of the thing, draped unceremoniously about the furnishings of my mind. digits and symbols tapped into a machine to keep every schtick continually whirring. rare concessions of dumbfounded dazzle, no time or place for wonder. untidy notes, impure thoughts, callings from the mud--the whole deal, and yet i still hold my fancies. with careful introductions i can shut the monster down. it has dreams of its own, collected in dust, and when the time comes to sit out defeat they unfold in my lap like grotesque paper flowers

i’ve always been on a
mission to reinvent myself

a mission expressed through
spreadsheets, guitars
powerpoints, paintbrushes
fabric, calculator buttons
bright colors of yarn
coffee and flowers
smiles at strangers
and always words

here and there
then and again
i’ve found myself satisfied
with who i found myself
to be at the end
of the week

i thought things were
on the upswing
thought that i had
almost made it
for two months this year
i was satisfied

with fifty six hour work weeks
and the bright blue blanket
forming under my fingers
the feeling of hope
brewing when i looked in
my bank account and thought
about him
about the home
that wasn’t ours yet but
would be soon

and then it began
to crumble
a brick or two at
a time until a whole
piece of the picture
tumbled out

and my weeks were reduced
to thirty five hours and
a crippling sense of
impending disaster
even though everything else
was still looking up

now that i have a
bit of extra time i find
myself low on motivation
and wondering
if it’s time to build
a new version of myself

but i’ve reinvented myself
so many times
i don’t have the energy
to do it again

i just want to
exist

just want to fall
asleep in bed at the
end of the day and
not wake up in the morning
wanting to sleep
for the rest of the day

to enjoy moving
my body
the way the
seasons change
and how the stars
look at night

i’ve always been good
at staying
you just keep doing
what you’ve been doing
let your routines pull
you along with them

but now i’m learning
the art of leaving
and i’m finding its not
as hard as i thought it was

in fact you might
even think
of it as almost
freeing

the leaving
behind of what’s
gotten too
familiar
the option to
reinvent

past leavings
have hurt
left me reeling
on cold floors
fighting to get air
into my lungs

but this time
the leaving is
quiet
barely noticeable
in the chilly
morning dew
as i let myself
slip away
under the gray sky
that hasn’t yet
realized it’s hanging
over a lost town

and i don’t feel pain
only the slightest
twinge of
bittersweet nostalgia

i’m not going
to reinvent myself
this time
i’m going to
exist
and somewhere
along the line
i think maybe
it’s myself
that i’ll find

for Wallace Stevens*

1.
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make data, so the self-same sounds
Of a CEO’s fingers make me a data, too.

Thus it is the spirit that feels,
Here in this cubicle, desiring—through
Excel spreadsheets, email, a deadline—

Itself.

2.
In the pale glow of a Xerox machine
The body stood.
It sought
The hum of Nature,
But, finding only synthetics,
Sighed with demur,
So barren grew its mood.

3.
They wondered why the invisible child wept
In a security without which Death’s adept;
It could not say,
So convinced were they,
Safety was the dream of a Happiness that slept.

"ehem"
we all hear it
the voice of the once-feeble boy
whom we always assumed would
end up in some shabby office job
typing away schedules and making spreadsheets
avoiding fellow humans and drinking coffee– black

the voice that seemed so small to us then
now seems impossibilly loud–
ridiculously honest, and tragically sad

and no trace of anger or shame
or anything that bears resemblance to
the last picture of the boy
you carry in your minds

important people, marked by name-tags
and good posture–
nice suits
surround him

it's all very intimidating
all of you hoping
he makes no mention
of you, or you, or you

and the wait, for him to speak
is nerve-wracking and
feels remarkably long
with people tapping their feet
impatiently, and readjusting their ties

until finally he clears his voice once more
and addresses the crowd
the audience exchanges expressions
of amazement, wonder

his voice is strong and reaches you
though you're hiding in the very last row
and you can't bear to meet his eyes
or return his flashy smile

he makes a speech
and you settle into your seat
as you forget your own presence

all seems well
until
he stops mid-word
and meets your stare

and

all of a sudden it's 1979 again
and you're back in that playground
and you have a bat in your hand
and he has fear in his eyes
and he's crying
and begging you to let go
but something in you snaps
and you hit him
right across the nose
before you could stop– and then you sprint

it sinks in when you're halfway home
and you stop and hesitate
feel the guilt
but shrug it off
and walk the rest of the way back

the roles are reversed now
and he is clearly the bigger man
and you are small, and weak
and petty

a playground bully is your only claim to fame
while he is the president of this ******* country.

he starts again
and you feel worse than you would had he
given you the punishment you deserved

nope, this boy ain't angry- or ashamed,
only hurt, and blatantly sad.
so, so sad.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 26, 2019)

There can only be so many recipes for success.
There can only be so many recipes for meatloaf.
There can only be so many recipes for a hit single.
There can only be so many poems about dogs, breakups and trips to Italy.
There can only be so many biographies about Marilyn Monroe.
There can only be so many blues riffs, jazz interludes, and country songs invoking old cars.
There can only be so many widgets and thingamajigs.
There can only be so many eye creams, lipsticks and color-sensitive shampoos.
There can only be so many plastic bags, trampolines and podcasts.
There can only be so many versions.
I can only tell so many new bosses the ropes.
There can only be so many children’s books.
There can only be so many best-selling mystery authors.
There can only be so many brands of soft drink.
There can only be so many brands of liquor.
There can only be so many brands of water.
There can only be so many window frames, iframes and frames of reference.
There can only be so many fireplace repairmen.
There can only be so many times I redo this correction in this spreadsheet.
There can only be so many creation theories with their evangelists on street corners.
There can only be so many arguments I have with my terrier.
There can only be so many poems.
But no, spreadsheets and billboards proliferate like clover
and hypocrites are as bottomless as all the leaves of forever
and poems and recipes and pop songs are the infinite hives of a trillion bees.

I would hope
that no one would read my mind
or hold on to a grudge
But what is left
not in final meaning
but in my explanation
of my open wounds
My heart floats
on ice
in hills
Basking on spreadsheets
And analysis
I am not wanted
Knowing that
Something
Ominous
Hangs  
above me,
and confides in me
I am unattached
Just like death  
Or when autumn
Dies quickly
Or your soul
stays around
Without warning
my hands held
to open skies
I turn and walk away
soaked in my own memory

you have to remind yourself that it won't always be like this. that someday approaches (probably faster than you think) and when it arrives, it will wake you up at 6:00 a.m for work you could do better at 9. hopefully, you'll enjoy it. someday will keep you fastened to a desk and cramped in a cubicle, your fingers typing out memos and emails and spreadsheets quicker than your legs ever carried you during your middle school mile. someday might chase away the little things that nudge you in the back of your brain when you remember that there is a world outside your window. someday will make you wish you had the luxury of being nineteen on summer break and calling yourself bored. and someday will come. maybe tomorrow or maybe a few years from now, when you trade in your textbooks for road maps and your goals for yesterdays.

but right now, here you are, calling yourself bored. you are not bored. how can you be, when you are nineteen on summer break with cinnamon hair that has just been kissed lighter by the sun? when you still have fictional characters to cry over or philosophical paradoxes to ponder or world hunger to solve or even just a heart that is still in need of breaking by a boy across the sea. you can't stop someday from stealing peter pan away from your bedroom window and diminishing neverland into a castle of ashes, but you can remind yourself that it's just some day. and right now, you have an infinite number of them in front of you, just waiting to be seized.

i. right before you fall asleep, there's a twitch in your shoulder like you're actually falling--your face turns up into a goofy grin that lets me know you're gone, and the lucky ones who get to see you are those in your dreams.

(i'll see you in mine.)

ii. radiohead. pink floyd. chromeo. a drum set that echoes through an empty house but the neighbors haven't moved in yet so you have your one man band until the rooms fill up with furniture and the only echo left is the soft plucking of your guitar at midnight.

(there are certain types of songs i can't listen to without thinking about you.)

iii. how could you be so heartless? we'd start our day at noon and wouldn't end it until three in the morning and kanye would be our soundtrack as we trekked across the city we love--

(and fell in love).

iv. your smile. your lips. each curve in your back. the sound of your laugh. your eyes. your walk (your posture, your stance, your aura). the flip of your hair. the way your hand searches for mine--

(and maybe one day we'll find our way back to each other like the way my hand always finds yours).

v. my inner monologue every time i see you: what a wonderful person, and how lucky am i to have met you. thank you for helping sunflowers grow inside of me.

(i'm sorry i can't be your person but when you find her one day, i hope you'll plant a whole garden for her.)

vi. we were made up of bad jokes, song lyrics, good beer, fireworks, movie nights, outdoor concerts, tacos, spreadsheets, *******, "you've made me the happiest i've ever been", "we're really good together", sing-alongs, belly ripping laughter and hearts full of love in the heat of a texas summer. we're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.

vii. i swiped right on the one that got away.

filaments burst into
eveningsong

deepthroated embers
the spreadsheets are tender
gestured compliance

(redwhite&blue glare; 10 storeys below ; and we are not safe)

          'just get done with it'
insincerity is requisite -
forced insouciance

          'we need to go, we are not safe'
rottten dignity can only be stomached for too long
but his sister is only twelve.

deceit, dulcet, you have gone wild
better you, just not the child -
'babe, wait, I’m coming'

tears tickle the back of the tongue
mellifluous moan regurgitated in turn.

filaments burst into
eveningsong -
- the police is coming, the police is coming.

Went to bed and dreamed of getting my *** kicked by the Queen of Earthquakes.
Six hours later and I'm waking up with a headache.
Hid from the sun beneath sweaty sheets.
The only thing that gets cold here is the space in our chest.

Road the bus with a load of automatons withered with rust.
Scanning the seats with dead-beat eyes.
Hey, would you mind if we traded places?
I like the window seat best.

Paperclip trebuchets wage war in front of ignored spreadsheets.
Just another day in paradise,
but now I think I feel a stirring between my legs.
Here we sit waiting on a disaster to speed up our slow demise.

But all that aside, the thing is that when I stare into her eyes I can feel my feet sliding -
Carrying me toward the tittles in the middle with a gliding force that can't be avoided.

i think i might like her a little.

She smokes,
Pall Mall Menthols
She smokes and she drinks
and she swears
She puts on a cool face
handles conversation well
She's hilarious and clumsy
and easily entertained
She's graceful sometimes
but more often not
She's into finances
business proposals
and spreadsheets
She's smart, but
She's lazy
that's something
She's working on
She's trying to
live more in the present
but keep the future
in mind
She wears jeans
and t-shirts
baggy sweaters
and slouchy hats
She wears glasses
but only if
She has to
She liked to use
her nails
She arches her back
and gasps and makes
just the tiniest of moans
when touched just right
She has posture problems
She'll grab her shoulders
and forcibly drag them back
She writes poems
something she doesn't
take too much pride in
She's flawed and flawless
and the best thing about her?
She's mine.

Wednesday 18th:
Should I be working?
University at 25 seems
so redundant when I stare
at the soft skinned babes,
who skirt the car park
in drunken bliss.

Should I quit?
Get a job? Maybe retail or
office work.
Some say I could seek stability
between the pages of spreadsheets,
sipping coffee with Susan on the
9-5.

Should I marry?
Set a date? They're all engaged.
Stones glaring back at me
like Polydectes eyes
from Facebook pages.
25 is the 'right age',
or so I've been told.

Should I?
I suppose I could.
Maybe I should. Or I could
perhaps
just do something else.

1

The personal is boring
as are my ruminations on the war.
What I need to do I can't try:
wander without shelter in the backcountry.
Or go deeper into the polity,
join a committee or a party.

Minute by minute and season to season
I like my life but what does it add up to, what reason
to go on? No better than a squirrel
or a spider. Spreadsheets, fake books, girls
I want too mildly, modestly or morally to have.
Can the economy and community be called love?

You can be killed and buried in gravel
Your children can be failed at school and marched to war
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it
And there's nothing you can do about it.
Will we find the universe not large enough to hold us?
Will planet after planet be too old for us?

If you were president, what would your program be?
What one question is the key
to another's truth. How do you spend your money?
Do you believe in a god who can see
all and understand? Or is he
unable to care, a different species.

2

We take the long view
that as individuals drop
from sight, new enthusiasts
will associate. Legs
give out, lungs collapse,
but we do not let the circle lapse.

For every Aristotle
there are a million toddlers
who will advance no memorable
theories. But the mist
on trees and mountains,
sunrise over desert, are for

every merchant, traveler.
My sons will take on cares,
which toys are theirs,
as their parents grow
older. Slowness brings us
to our goal: do one thing well.

By that what is meant?
Don't be a dilettante.
Not having found the greatness
of a single, clear description,
definition, the greatness comes in
doing everyday what's known.

There are opportunities, from time to time, to see and meet influential people here at Yale - leaders in their fields. I write a little, so I started going to see the writers when they did readings and interviews. The writers I’ve seen so far are Ada Limón, Vijay Seshadri, Terrance Hayes, Alison Bechdel, Roxanne Gaye, Sheila Heady, Natasha Trethewey, Dasha Nekrasova and more.

Before I kick this rat's nest let me say that I’m not an English Literature major. I haven’t done “close readings” of these authors' works or performed any literary analysis. What follows are just my opinions or what I’ve overheard (and much of that I disagree with).

After the readings and greetings, I hang back in the crowd to hear reactions. Many of the Yale students attending these events want to seem intellectual and subversive - at the same time, they don’t want to be polarizing or say things that their peers will disagree with. I’m appalled at how little credit is given to writers for their earlier, groundbreaking work.

Some crowd reactions included: Roxanne Gaye “is so 2016,” Ada Limón’s presentation seemed “sanitized and censored.” Jia Tolentino, “no longer staking out controversial spaces.” Much of the criticism was that these authors were freer, as nobodies in their basements, to rage against the system but they’ve since been corrupted, tamed and rendered vapid, as it were, by the financial ties of fame.

At a reading by Terrance Hayes, he discussed the criticism that the “classics” represent the “white cannon” and don’t include alternative perspectives. Terrance Hayes argued that the “classics” are such because they present universal truths and that, like science, you don’t have to erase things to include new things.

I’ll cut to the chase - here are the three authors whose events impressed me the most:

Sheila Heady
Sheila Heady did a talk on her creative process. Which normally I’m pretty skeptical of because I’ve seen some vague, wishy-washy answers - but Sheila shared it all. She had spreadsheets detailing the time she spent writing, graphs on time spent researching, and even pictures of her desktop arrangement (which says a lot about someone). She was so open and vulnerable - almost indifferent to judgment - it was refreshing, honest and endearing.

Some days she would write for 2 minutes and on others for 10 hours. I think it showed that the creative process can be messy and we’re not failures if we don’t set out writing time every day.

Natasha Trethewey
I have a complicated response when listening to people read aloud about terrible things that happened to them - I question their motives, purposes and intentions. Natasha Trethewey however, used it as background for a discussion of her relationship to poetry and writing. It was beautiful to be in that room, it was inspiring rather than being provocative.

Dasha Nekrasova
On the flipside I absolutely loved Dasha Nekrasova who’s all about being a provocateur. Her event was chaotic and crazy. It was a Yale Political Union (YPU) event, and I don’t know what those people are on, but there was yelling, objections, people getting up, she was skipping around the stage. At first, I didn’t realize it was a debate because it had a freeform look and I came in a minute late, from chemistry class - but I liked her a lot in the debate format. I plan to attend more YPU events in the future.

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The undeniable truth
Is that I feel I'm the only one
In this questionable relationship
Really trying to make something work
I've been more heartache
So any excuse that you've been hurt
Wont affect me
I've been used just for ***
Played with and dragged along
Rag doll to her pretty little fingertips
The truth is I dont see us together
Much longer if we're together now
Ever if we're not
I see me getting hurt again
Being used and mislead
I see me just getting snagged
In your trap you call eyes
Its only me in this
I dont know about you
But I learned to dance with another person
Or ever danced at all when I was alone
The truth, you wanted it
Me and you would be pointless
You doubted me to begin with
I doubted myself then
Here I go again
Doing it all over
Just on repeat
Because I'm too scared to tell you myself
But what's to stop me from
Telling everyone here
The truth **** it
Is that I'm madly in love with you
States away and I'm trying
The fears and realizations
Factors and data
Spreadsheets and diagrams
How the hell am I supposed to believe it
That I'm losing the only ******* thing
That's ever meant something to me
I can't take this
Scars are reopening
Liver is getting abused
Lungs suffocating
I dont know what to do
I dont know how to react
What the **** is the point of trying
When everything seems to just fail
I am insane
I am ******* crazy
But **** it I dont need a reminder
I draw pictures for you
You haunt my mental state all hours of the day
Yet I dont want to be the one to only say
Good morning
Goodnight sweet dreams
I love you
I'll just go back to talking to myself
Ridding myself of all these emotions
Become a shell that doesn't give a ****
The truth my love
Is that everything seems pointless
And you can't put it in perspective
For me to understand
I try telling you
What's wrong with me
Why I'm so short with you
Why I'm distant for no apparent reason
This is why
Its all to no avail
But of course you'll never care
You'll never change
I'm the zero in your equation
Completely redundant and pointless
All I wanted was a life with you
A future that I could be proud of
Where you wont feel fear
Only know love and compassion
But now I see if all fading
That's expected when its only one person
Holding hands with his shadow
Just to find love that he shows

The special
Agent Fat lip
The Happy Man
1-2-3-4 Cut huge
Lip- 4 Action

TVor RV trailers
Gold finger on his
dinners set
((Step Beyond))
Honeymooners

((Chippendale -Moonshiners))

X-men slip up lip
Love their
ladies lips
4-Max I phone
Late bloomers
Bunked into
God  Amen
Like a rich soul
Tentative I millions

The curiosity
killed the
Old Meiser Goat $
He had
Italian horns
Maxine's lips burned

The Will-Smith
Wild West
College girls
of Sorority

Love of
the Venus
I beg you to
make money
Maxine's lips
of Men to charge
Of Mars money
turned minus
Varsity loves Visa

Max is the man
Going once to
Bottom lip
ten million
Mona Lisa
Multitasking
Never smiling
Secret lips slant
Italiano Piza

So why would she
even
shred his French
lady onions?
The British tea
party
Alice went
money maddocks
Bitcoins bird flocks

Mr. Smart money hand
Why the wrong man
Getting Stuck
Mr. ******* Buck
The Agent double
007
Agency lifted
money 666
Smiles of
sanity  
No-one was pure_
((Olive Oil))
Minds 14 karats
money or nothing

Pots and pans
Chicks 4 free
The Millions of madmen
Cigarette lady revenge
Maxine's lips
was counterfeit
Her biggest fan the
Pure one virginity

Gave her most
freedom serenity  
Dutchess master plan
Gucci men lips
found guilty
Red be hearted
fanlight

Max I-million wanted
to get out of the heat__$$$

His stubborn
partner
in crime big loss
Her vivacious  lips
Tangled web trillions
He was ******
I cannot believe
it's not butter
Spreadsheets

The maid's swept
up the cash
millions went in
her mother's trash

Maximum
Overdrive
Belle Sacrifice
yourself
Respect
yourself
Ringing the
Ben Frankin
singing bell
Aretha
Max line 4 Bella
The lip sign summit
Nickname ****
The Darkman
yellow taxi
Max, I million ended
up in Hawaii
To the max extinct
Nowhere near
basic instinct
Lips leopard impact
Cigarette lady making
Diamond rounds
Bulletproof purse

Max, I million
Explosive words
Is she and his
money
flames

I’m not bitter in this depression. No, I am more thankful for what I have got, to cushion my fall from the bridge. It’s mostly fabrication, this depression – I know it. It comes from a half-lifetime of neurotic deities, spinning their indie white boy musings around as echoes in my head. I convinced myself that sorrow was the only way to feel the soul.

Some people take pills for their ills. They pop them like sugar cubes into their mouths – gaping at their daily escape to sanity. They heave sanity like a boulder each day, just to feign animation. Others will talk on and on about their issues, leaving the rest of us in blearing boredom; but at least they’re feeling okay. The remainders take to sweet surrender, nourishing panic attacks with red wine and ****** paintings.

Nothing matters anymore. Not the Damascus Road to scaly eyes and computer screens; or giving your life to spreadsheets for the boss with his eyes on your skirt. I see no God up in the sky now, as the adverts pollute the stars, and I see no science in all of this self-pity; as a white guy has very little to complain about.

Everyone is just a representation of a memory now. Each conversation feels like an abstraction from some ancient, fevered dream. They criss-cross my life in every decreasing patterns – old friends now nothing but a passing, reluctant nod. Family spin yarn around me, and let me laze on the couch, but never can I tell them of the places I have found myself in. Trust is blankness. I’ll give you all of it now, because there’s nothing left to hurt.

What happens when we suddenly realize that our life isn’t meant to be lived in sync with the sunrise,
rotating clockwise,
ticking in unison to the heartbeat of the masses,
carefully outlined on spreadsheets govern by assumptions,
jumping to conclusions,
never leaving room for options.
When we realize that sometimes life takes you by surprise,
on a magic carpet ride where eyelids are lifted,
where clouds part, revealing blue skies,
a new high, uncovering lies,
where stars seem incredibly near and dreams so tangible so real so close to reality you want to jump right in.
Where clouds beg to be painted
And reaching for the moon is habitual almost spiritual.
And worries are perishable and words ever-so lyrical flowing together effortlessly. Where laughs are celebrated and intellect rewarded.
Where moving counterclockwise is normal.
Life gently moving by at your own pace giving you time to embrace the sea the mountains the streams, to snorkel, have a look at the coral.
To watch sunsets and sunrises.
To be excited about building new connections,
learning new lessons,
asking more questions.
Scraping perfection and embracing human faults.
Because there is no such thing as the end of learning,
nor is there such a thing as settling.  
Here we welcome opportunities, greet ideas, acknowledge change.  
Recognizing that our limits are further than we think
And our potential extending beyond the horizon.
Set no limits
Settle for nothing
Radiate sunshine, love, and intellect.
And never forget,
You are more than you perceive.