"workday" poems
Machine ground days
Somehow survived by clinging to precarious plans
Die for those.
For proles are stuck in a televised gleam
but I’m barred from distractions
I’m a man of action
Spring healing:
I found a new hope to get through the day
It has a name and it’s you
Workday: animistic curses
against people and their systems and products
except animals would escape forever
as soon as they open the cage
but we stay
The beastly gnashings of overworked merchandisers
for invisible self pocket stuffers
The competition's getting to us, comrades
I feel swindled out of my labor
I was pregnant
but they sold my child before
I woke up
Addressing the solipsism of my rehab circle:
I’m Kagey, and my life is hazy
but, blunted or no, let’s get this clear:
don’t trust your senses
and that goes for all my human peers
Body is a cage full of defenses
Still, I’m suspicious of reality
whether it’s façade society
or the wooden chair in front of me
Still, I enjoy the virtual scenery
I ain’t talking about on the T.V. or phone screen
I mean the willows, buildings, and faces
But all these mushy green acres are fakers
blobs without our eyesight
Still tho,
me and the universe are tight.
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 8:00 AM UTC
typewriter rhythm
clacking away new beats
tempo exchanges
computer lab concerto
fair-weather phonetics
hunt and peck symphony
symbolic of the system
poking at inmates
pecking at the enforcers
attempting to gain an education --
floating above the ruckus
offering research aid
I sit at the desk seeking only to enlighten
service work for those
suffering servitude
serfdom
post-modern slavery
complete with subsidies
scamming the con-men --
white house looks best
through prison barred windows
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 5:59 PM UTC
Five hours left
in today's workday.
Five hours,
and I simultaneously
don't think I can make it,
but also know I have to.
Five hours is so little,
such a small amount of time.
So I'll watch the clock,
witness the dwindling.
I know I'll be fine,
after all,
it's just five hours.
Plus I'm off tomorrow,
and I have grand plans
for a day of wallowing
in bed, my mind set
on accomplishing
absolutely nothing.
Hurry up, seven o'clock.
Four and a half hours now.
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 6:34 PM UTC
Dedicated to John and Bob
From first flesh we move down widening halls
That lead to lives of wondrous walls.
Our spidered fingers gripped walls of brick,
Cruets, cups and candle sticks.
Incense clouded open graves
When we too believed we too were saved.
Between Annex walls we learned our phonics,
On tin-roofed walls we lived our comics.
Garage walls scaled showed different views,
Kitchen walls steamed with soups and stews.
Our school yard walls tallied pitches
That marked our summers of youth and wishes.
Now lift memory's pane and go back
To the white-framed walls of a secret shack.
There, in confusion we would cling
To the unknown wonders girls would bring.
These young boys' walls we both outgrew;
Now new walls sprang, as we did too.
Coffee House walls offered something new.
Wet kisses lingered near shadowy walls,
We heard poetry read in a backroom stall.
Recreationals made our new skin crawl.
Cliff walls were breached by stairs of clay,
Carved by Incas on a turquoise day.
Tent walls echoed with impish fray,
Green walls beckoned at the end of day.
These walls gave rise to hot desires,
Like Vikings planning funeral pyres.
New music, cheers and weekend guests
Stood us ***** to pound our chests.
Those walls no longer ring our shores;
Time swept us forward with worldly lures.
We doffed our coats of suede and frills,
And donned new clothes and workday skills.
The walls of work are a rocky climb,
Stones laid by us, for yours and mine.
Such towers & turrets of heart & hearth
Guard all we know of any worth.
I see distant walls on cliffs, in fields;
Where do they lead? What will they yield?
Yet, there three friends climb one more hill,
Climb one more wall. Then all is still.
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 2:58 PM UTC
Hope is the morning sun
Peering in through my kitchen window
As I sip fresh steaming coffee alone.
Hope is the last workday before
My next day off, when I’m happy
For once, to wish away the hours.
Hope is awkward like a high school dance,
Like two virgins kissing
Beneath the gymnasium bleachers.
Hope is a grocery list fastened
To my refrigerator with a free magnet
Advertising a divorce lawyer.
Hope is a cracked wine glass, packed away
In a moving box that traveled from Kentucky to Illinois –
Just another casualty of the long journey.
Jul 1, 2015
Jul 1, 2015 at 11:24 PM UTC
you, you little
lighthouse of love
your gap-toothed smile
sent out over a bowl of
brown butter porridge
guides me away from
the reef of workday despair.
your hand in mine
so small trusting
and divine
brings me back
to the path
and
out of the dark woods
your cheery wave goodbye
keeps me swimming
through the murk of
the tedious day
and that welcome cuddle
at the end of the day
brings me back to my
home harbour...
you, you little
lighthouse of love
my bearings
my light on the hill
shine on, shine on
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 6:15 PM UTC
It takes forty sap gall0ns
to 'still one gallon of maple syrup,
boiled down by the sun stored in firewood.
I remember well, my aunt Florence
feeding the boilers in the hill orchard sugar house,
wearing an old going-to-church dress,
that had, some years back, been handed down to workday chores
and on top covered over by uncle Fred's red and black mackinaw.
"Stand back," she said as she opened the boiler door
first the roar, then a bank of fire that painted
her from kerchief to boots flaming red,
her eyeglasses, two pools of glowing magma,
and everything above was steam and rising vapors.
In my mind's eye then and now when I read Dante
I'll think of her, she was and is, the very vision of a devil tender.
Jan 3, 2011
Jan 3, 2011 at 6:04 AM UTC
See see Papa Trench Bottom
dig in the mines happily, laugh ha ha happily
and drink at night and hear him
snore before the day
happy happy Papa Trench Bottom
he he he he he ha ha happy happy
at home and at work
See see Mama Big Bottom
she she she he he ha ha happy
Dance happily Cook with joy
toss with levity
and puts dishes aplenty on the table
for all in the family to eat and be merry
See see Teenage Tough Dude
he he he happily walks in the streets
Cool at school
Very Pop with the babes
and eating lots at home, with gravity
very serious in look, sparse in his words
but loves his mom, dad and sis
deep deep within, ha ha happily happily
Happy Happy Teenage Cool Dude
And see Sister Barbie Doll Pretty
Curls and dimples and cute smiles all
Happy hours in the ha ha bathroom
many more hours texting and chatting
and lots and lots of FaceTime
Happy happy walking ****
all the way to work
and chirping all day like a Paradise Bird
at work at the Rainbow Fast Food Outlet
happy happy talking talking all workday
Ah See Happy happy he he he
she she she happy happy Family
Trench Bottom family he he he
and she she she all day and night
Happy happy Trench Bottoms
Happy happy he he ha ha Happy Family always
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 3:12 PM UTC
If the workday
went by as fast
as my cigarette
breaks
All my bills
would be paid
and the Cancer
would take me
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 5:21 PM UTC
the markerboard on the fridge read:
sleep tonight.
the only thing i promised myself i'd do.
the day went something like this:
i woke up thirty minutes late,
i made do with only washing my hair,
ate an apple, yogurt, drank a cup,
****** myself to clear my head,
ignored the neighbor as i stepped out the door.
went to a dead-end, data-entry job,
where the girls aren't pretty, nobody is funny,
because everybody is a CPA and i'm not pleasant because i
don't give a good ******* about the
world of finance.
the highlight of the workday (as it is everyday),
was the break room chatter during lunch.
the earth-shattering conversations
revolved around:
*how good the nutrisystem desserts taste,
how there was low voter-turnout in the midterm,
and how that one girl is a lesbian*.
i got off work,
ate a sandwich, a banana,
put on sweatpants and a thrift store t-shirt.
i wrapped some fitness contraption around
my belly, whose sole purpose is to make
my abdomen sweat profusely.
no pretty girls at the fitness center.
i got back to my apartment.
wrote some phony poetry full
of half-baked sentiment
for no worthwhile reason.
i smoked.
i watched a foreign film, but couldn't find my glasses.
meaning: *i have no ******* clue what the plot was about*.
i went to the gas station.
made small talk with the long haired indian man.
i bought two smirnoff 40s.
something about smirnoff gives me really cohesive dreams.
my roommate tried to give me a lecture.
i told him christ was a myth.
a simple summation of earlier religious figures.
slammed the door,
lit some incense called *****
i fell asleep, woke up an hour later in a fright.
turned on the fan,
lit some more *****
closed my eyes,
and dreamt a complex novel,
containing:
*me missing church,
my mom calling me,
getting lost in canada,
finding my way back to
my hometown only to find
two dudes with heavy machine guns
killing everyone in the cozy, local shops,
then somehow i got a line in a movie
directed by none other than keanu reeves*.
at least i finally got some sleep.
Jul 28, 2010
Jul 28, 2010 at 6:21 PM UTC
I have to make him a turkey sandwich,
crusts cut off, mayo on the left piece of bread,
in two triangle halves every single night
before he goes to sleep on the right side of the bed
with two pillows, fluffed twice each, slippers
tucked neatly underneath the bed skirt.
And every night I wonder
what would happen if I forgot the pickle on the side,
like the one time
we ran out of cheese and my car had a flat tire
and the supermarket was so far, but boy
did he give it to me. I’ve never seen someone count
to one-hundred so fast with their finger taps
before the table flipped. Never have I seen
someone clean up glass so slowly, each piece
thrown in the trash individually
just like my pieces
that have been carved away year after year,
loaf after loaf, as my eyes droop backwards
and rest on his haircut that I give
every six weeks on a Wednesday. Sometimes,
I try to kiss his neck when I let the scissors slip,
but he always reminds me that this slot
is “haircut time” and there’s no necessity in kissing
anyway. And I’ve tried to respect
his attic closet compartments with the key
that had gone missing when he was fifteen,
and I’ve tried to wish on misshapen pieces of cereal
in my bowl because I’m that desperate for a miracle.
Do you know?
Do you know how hard it is to lie next to someone
who you know doesn’t dream of you, not because he doesn’t
want to, but because he can’t. He can’t
do so many things and sometimes I’ll lay out a green tie
on a workday instead of blue just to watch him blow up
because at least that’s a feeling. At least that’s not white walls
and another **** turkey sandwich. And I know that’s sinful,
and I also know that I fold my hands wrong when I pray,
but I’ve tried to shape him for years and all I’ve gotten
is a cast with nothing to fill the mold. And I know my suitcase
has been packed for weeks, but. . . Dear God, you know I’ll never leave.
I save my laundry for Saturdays, don’t tell him why I’m crying
myself back to sleep, and check the fridge one last time
for the right deli meat.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 4:14 PM UTC
To read or watch movies, that is the question.
When tired at workday's end, depressed about death's
certainty and my recent surgery
unable to contribute purpose
i.e., figure out whether to bomb Iran
or worship Krshna
and other gods such as Homer gives us in the Iliad
I lack vision therefore I choose television.
Chemistry text, bifurcated plant key
esp. grasses, intro to calculus, physics
unopened time slides by inexorably.
That's the dilemma with no resolution,
drooping rachis, striations on the lemma.
Dying chooses you. You don't choose dying.
So go slow as the day will allow.
The cancer patient's real work is facing
harsh realities and making adjustments:
getting the most out of life, considering
what his children will need after he's gone,
preparing his wife, parents, colleagues and friends,
and completing important professional tasks.
Get the most out of life. That's all God asks.
In Life of Pi the tiger is tiresome, short-sighted
eating everything in sight today, no plan for tomorrow.
The boy, however, is beautiful, reading
the lifeboat manual, building a resting place on the ocean
from oars and life vests, writing about his emotions,
loneliness and observations. The tiger's obsession
with killing keeps our boy alive with fear,
an aphrodisiac, a distraction from any hint
of hopelessness. And then there is the ultimate unknown,
the boy's conversations with Krshna which explain
the innumerable stars and their gentle glow.
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 7:47 AM UTC
People don't love the way they used to. My mom taught me that. You taught me everything else. We, in a state of mock individuality, look for the good part of ourselves in others so we have a good reason to love them better than we hate ourselves, because we are too afraid to admit that we aren't terrible things. So I keep checking my yard to see if you had been asleep when you crashed into my lawn (but that is never the case). And it's not even because I'm looking for the good parts of myself in you, it's because I'm just looking for someone who doesn't care that there is no good part of myself to look for. No matter where I sit, my feet always dangle off the ground. And that's what life is like : an infinite state of dangling; a throne of questions, and we never quite touch the ground.
Summer doesn't feel like freedom when you've spent the whole winter in love. Buried beneath the crushing weight of my own frozen apologies and punching my feelings into deaf ears like the clock on a workday, I keep twirling in circles, trying to check the serial number on the back of my neck in vain. I am falling, but not into you and so it is more of a fast crash in slow motion that nobody can feel but me. I'm tired of spinning. I'm tired of digging for reasons like a stick in the ground. I know I'm not a dog, but I never learn. Oh my God, I never learn. And neither do you.
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 11:12 PM UTC
Dos cervezas por favor in De K’ffe,
Cold bite of the first beer refreshes.
Una mas and workday fades to dull,
The night feels bright and hopeful,
The Palitos de pollo satisfies hunger.
Conversation flows to Cepas de Altura,
Three bottles later the stories repeat,
Groundhog day of interesting lives,
With eternal friendship in every bottle.
Six corks line up like truth bullets,
In an aggression of arguments,
Maybe he has just said too much,
Friendship of an unremembered hug,
Next day sorry and failings forgotten.
Dec 29, 2010
Dec 29, 2010 at 9:24 AM UTC
Precise scaffold silhouette
slants sharply across smoothed
cement. Narrow shadow shaft bisects
unfinished window, points
toward glowing sunlit
sliver of grey wall. Mundane
beauty, workday
glory unwitnessed.
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 9:49 AM UTC
Sitting in a Starbucks sipping a needlessly costly dark roast,
wondering if I've solved life, or if I'll break apart soon enough.
A tightening sensation.
I could get a ****** cup of coffee at both ends
of this ****** workday, and it'd be lovely.
Just having a sense of time,
even if it's just to **** time away.
**** everything away.
Aug 15, 2014
Aug 15, 2014 at 10:51 PM UTC
Dead-eyed through drenched days
spent seeping through blank space
to spill another swollen week out
on a crumpled page
I'm young, but not that young
grown up and dumbed down
so I'll drag one more punchline day out
'til a year's ground down
Face the wall...
Aimed at the door...
But we're still here and so
I suggest that we share this bar...
Stumble out
regain my feet
and pluck my keys from the gutter. I've
been dancing with defeat and, now, I'm
driving on the borderline
between familiar haunts
and same old foes that I conjure--
Now I start to realize that, like you,
they've got my number.
They've got my number.
Rhombuses of light
separate us--not by much
but these
square miles of concrete
will divide us just enough
Deadpan Friday nights
space out workday lifelines
until another starving paycheck
grounds another flight
Your time spent so costly
the bill's due, your words freeze
a season's regrets regressed. Empty
bottles taken out.
Besieged by walls
Afraid of doors
the nights leak in, you turn
the lights out, choking down one more
Waking up,
you find your breath
you find your feet and your reasons. You
have found your boots and keys and lost your
fear of the season's size.
Between the years and months
you've been a ***** and a miser
when the skyline creaks and sighs, remember
you've got my number
And I've got your number
The world's got our number--
--it's okay to come over
We can laugh at the night
at sunrise, we'll run for cover
'til the season is over
now, just run for cover...
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 6:34 PM UTC
When I was just a child, they were just a married couple;
Older, middle-aged, nothing distinguishing about them at all.
I loved swimming in their swimming pool,
Until they upsized, to a glitzy neighborhood of rambling,
Ranch-style houses.
And they upscaled, to exotic, foreign vacations.
Brought me back a Hawaiian volcanic stone, with emerald flecks,
A salt and pepper shaker set from Israel.
She was a clothes horse, always kept her figure,
Dressed slinky but classy, for an old babe;
Visibly stood taller, if another woman
Ever complimented her clothing or style-
And they invariably did.
My dad said that when alone with her husband,
That man would brag about daily ********
From his office receptionist, at the end of the workday
Before going home. I was older then, tried to imagine
How the shared exchange could have furthered
Some ancient, nightly excavated ambition?
Alone with her once, my dad said he made an innuendo,
Some playful joke which he had since forgotten the point of,
Probably due to the more stunning reaction it caused.
He had always loved teasing with words,
But he said that she had dropped all suggestion of pretense,
And she had told him then, You couldn't handle it..
He still chuckled about it, long after the fact.
Funny how for all those years, what I remembered seeing
Was a mostly colorless couple
Who always drove large Cadillacs.
And how in the later years, he could only move
While tethered to his oxygen tank,
Though it never hindered his smoking.
Aug 23, 2010
Aug 23, 2010 at 12:11 PM UTC
I look outside and wonder
when will time fly faster,
(only when I want it to, of course)
so I can be released from this cage
and roam free across the plain of grass
that gives me surface from the gravity
that in and of itself keeps me grounded
because without it I would be lost
and floating without direction;
out of this world and into a place
that welcomes my existence
with dark open arms
but terminates my life
and suffocates my breathing calm
because oxygen is absent
and breathing is a healthy habit,
so I must relax and take a breath
to get through this day of madness.
Aug 20, 2010
Aug 20, 2010 at 10:43 AM UTC
(An exercise to write a sonnet in iambic pentameter)
With heavy heart, I offer my remorse,
for I'm too tired to dance this weary eve.
The echoes of my workday's tireless chores
linger, leaving naught but fatigue's relief.
Oh, believe me, I hate to disappoint,
for the music tempts me to sway and dance.
But the hours I've toiled, each task and each point,
have drained me to a tired nudnik, perchance.
My spirit, once bright, now longs for respite,
to find solace in rest and heal my self.
Though my love for dance burns hot like cordite,
exhaustion demands I stay on the shelf.
Forgive me, my friend, tonight I must rest,
but once refreshed, we’ll fete and dance with zest.
Jun 27, 2023
Jun 27, 2023 at 9:41 PM UTC
Jane's sick, just a common flu
Nothing she can't handle
Another workday
Same as any other
She blows her nose right before work
Tosses the tissue in to a bin
Grabs the doorhandle and walks in
George is just on time for work
Maybe today will be the day
Maybe Jane will see him today
He grabs the doorhandle
And as he walks in
He wipes the raindrops off his lips
The virus works its way in him
Just like Jane's rejection
It's like he's not good enough
But he's a good man
He knows that
Okay maybe not the best guy ever
Maybe he thinks too much of himself
Perhaps she's known better
I'm not good enough
But he knows she likes him back
she can get better
Well she's not that great either
Much does he know
That in order to be able
To cast blame on others
We must have an understanding
Of what we are blaming them for
And that can only be identified within us
Do we not have to understand
A concept before we teach it
Sure enough we must understand
What it means to not be good enough
Before we teach others to feel that way
Congrats George you passed
Jane was taught she wasn't good enough
And now George has identified with that
And George will teach it to Melissa
Who is secretly casting
Her adimiring, loving looks at him
And when George is done with Melissa
Melissa will teach it to James
And James will enforce that within Jane
May 31, 2015
May 31, 2015 at 1:21 PM UTC
stove juts out
stuns in sixty-year-old kitchen
shiny, electric,
everyone marvels
so much better than the gas stove
as if the functions are not the same.
I, misled, maybe
have no newfound love
for false hearths
and work dens masquerading as homes.
we never knew food
just kosher salt, pepper, ketchup
a dash of rosemary
yet our curves labored, steamed hours
heaped over knotted heels
at the end of the workday
you were so tired
and we ate whatever you could manage.
I desired to taste liberty,
imagined I had it on a slow burner
simmering with
coriander seeds, cumin, cinnamon
chili powder bleeding into broth
parsley finely cut
into slivers for garnish grew
dry in my hands,
waiting.
Somehow I ended up
back in that same kitchen
a dream at my lips,
hungrier than before.
Aug 6, 2020
Aug 6, 2020 at 8:23 AM UTC
Feeling the rain more than hearing it
6:24 dark and threatening
It’s so cold in this ******* basement
2 hours and 36 minutes away
Crouching in plain sight
The work day.
Delivering food for the food bank, which is punk as **** frankly,
It’s a wasteland out here
And people need to eat
(A human right, if I understand the constitution correctly. Happiness is a lost pursuit in a body that’s hungry. You say food is a privilege <yes, you said it and believed it>, I say it’s life and liberty.)
Two 15 pound bags at a time
In exchange for baggage a mile high
Stacking cred against labor to build tone in your thighs
My joints wonder how young I think I am
Remembering the time my leg seized up and that old man just stared until I saw him see me and I smiled, I’m so silly
Hurry before all this pain ripens to taste
Slug it down like tequila
Try not to make a face
Born at the finish line, running in place.
2 hours and 26 minutes to make the coffee and absorb the caffeine
While I’m still me
And there’s nothing else to be
Dec 6, 2021
Dec 6, 2021 at 6:50 AM UTC
I heard birds chirping this morning.
I wondered if birds conduct sonnets to other birds in their little bird languages.
Maybe there is a bird tongue considered "French" of bird tongues.
All romance and delight and cheese and devoid of home.
They speak soft when chirping of flights South
and loud of thawing North.
Are they dissatisfied?
Does flight seem like walking?
On the bus I hear chatter.
The workday not over. Wake up
get back to work. If you pause
remember you are a failure.
If you invest, call it working.
Unless it is French, do not pronounce anything that is not English correctly.
Condemn those who make mistakes at what you do not know how to do.
Say it is easy. Say you could do it better.
Don't try.
Fly South for the winter. Eat cheese by the fire. Pay a thousand dollars to hunt pheasants in an enclosure.
Give your son a hundred dollars.
Tell him to take her "somewhere nice."
Kick him out when he takes him "somewhere nice."
Watch people swoon at your feet; hate you; want to be you.
Hate people who want nothing you offer to give them.
Act as if the offer is a debt.
Give gifts and ask for a return on your investment.
Are your hands soft?
Are your wings weak?
Is there anything else you need
Dec 6, 2012
Dec 6, 2012 at 7:23 PM UTC