"sweatpant" poems
Wanted (read the three day old paper):
yourself, position effective immediately, pay negotiable
Being in the job market for longer than I’d care to admit, I applied.
I could be a yourself.
I hoped I wouldn’t have to sit in a cubicle.
(I knew I could though, if it came right down to it).
I wore Roots sweatpants to the job interview,
It’s quirky, I thought, I am just doing me.
I envisioned my power animal: that vastly underrated emoji
(You know the one; he’s coy as ****
I was also coy as ****
Or as coy as I could ******* feel in pants whose proud purpose was to make their wearer perspire.
I bet NO ONE had thought of this.
Turns out everyone had thought of it.
****
Needless to say, I didn’t get the position; the yourself life wasn’t for me.
So I applied elsewhere.
Somewhere far away from that whole embarrassing sweatpant fiasco.
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 2:41 PM UTC
I made notes of docking posts
pointing out to murky reflections
of tourists that didn’t have time
for a souvenir mug or a picture
with a black trumpeter content with his brass,
and nothing else, blowing life into the seagull
sky, making the clouds pop and drop spray-
mist jazz, which accompanied his trumpet
with a gentle washboard scrape.
He beat his heel to the thousand pin-drops
of passerby earrings, crab sweatpant draw-
strings, and trawl nets dissolving into the sea.
Baltimore filled the margins
of a travel notebook alongside
pencil sketches of the Aquarium,
Prufrockian split claws
wrapped in algae bandages,
that homeless man weakly thumbing
through a pocket bible, the 32
cents wearing sea salt jackets,
and my cold girlfriend pulling on patron
sweaters in an art museum closet.
But it’s all a gimmick.
It’s $22 crab cakes
and paint-splatter-printed
sweatshirts that say New York
or D.C. or *Everything on a Disposable
Kodak Camera.*
Tired of the idea, I threw the page
over the edge, hoping to drown
it in green, but I never heard it hit
the water. I braced myself on a life
ring rack, leaned over,
and watched it settle into a natural
barge of dead leaves and orange peels
while sea foam circled
it like a bed skirt that’s only
noticed for the few seconds spent stripping
down before going to sleep
just to wake up to rain on the Royal Sonesta,
kids racing down the hall, the obligatory
alarm clock,
and the black trumpeter’s groove
four floors down.
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 3:29 PM UTC
My mother told me to leave my mark
wherever I went.
When I asked her what did she mean,
She told me,
How she wanted me to leave
my name and my brand
as a symbol and signature
of my 'identity'.
'Identity', how would it look like...
Will it be tall so that it can
reach success even without climbing up.
Will it be hour-glass with curves
large enough to be liked.
Will it be fair so that it can be lonely too.
Will it be rich so that it can purchase Bugatti and Bentley.
Will it be smart so that it can create its success if it is not provided with any.
Will it be beautiful so that it can make people stop and stare.
Will it be kind so that it heals and saves what has been killed.
Or will it be soft so that it weighs every word before it speaks?
But then my mother told me your identity is 'you'.
But I cannot become my identity because I am not a signature to be looked at or a mark to be left.
So when I looked up in the dictionary
I found how mark is synonymous for
1.Stain
that I got on my sweatpant this morning.
2.Bruise
that has covered my neck like a mosaic painting.
3.Scratch
that has been carved on my legs by my own hands.
4.Blemish
that I have thrown on my parent's name and 'identity'.
5.Blot
that has covered my pages and hands because my pen is broken.
6.Scar
that stays on my heart.
7.Label
that I have put on myself and let others call me by it.
8.Identity
that I do not have.
My mother told me to leave my mark wherever I went.
But, wherever I went,
I gained one.
Jul 2, 2020
Jul 2, 2020 at 2:16 AM UTC