poemS of the day 09.03.10

the end of an Era might possibly be here today. if all goes well
i will be purchasing a new PC this week, and putting this old
battlehorse to rest. of course, knowing my luck, the new PC
won't work well, and i'll be spending the rest of the weekend fighting
with some tech person on the phone. all the same, if things go
the way they should, this marks the final writing morning between
me and this machine. a lot of poems and a lot of storieson here.

so two poems about the machine that i wrote over a year ago.

adios, old friend

paper and a pen

i say what am i going to do now
with the computer down and out?

well, she says, you always say that all
you ever need to write is paper and a pen.

but that was years ago, before the machine,
before hundreds of documents and thousands
of pages at my fingertips.

it’s still the same.

yes, but....

...but hopefully you’ll have the computer back
by the end of the week.

i hope the cleaning works.

me too.

thousands of pages of immortal poems
and some decent prose hang in the balance.

and many pictures from our vacations
and holidays too.

yes...and them.

so what are you going to do?

finish this drink. go to bed.
lay restless while the cat spits up hairballs
on the floor before she lays next to me for the remainder
of the night.

and then?

then hopefully i’ll wake to the ugly sun
grab some paper and a pen
and reinvent the wheel before it’s time
to go to work.

07.07.09



new kinds of love

i left the computer repair shop
after the tech gave me
instructions
about how to back-up my system
should a virus
hit my machine again

i was listening to him
well
half-listening
really i kept glancing
over at the machine
sitting on a bin with a white tag
on it
it looked cleaner on the outside
wiped off with care
like an old battle horse
that had been given a bath
and a chance to rest

i thought of all we’d gone through
together in five years
the immortal words
the embarrassing prose
the mornings and nights battling
hangovers and the shits
the depression and anxieties
the rejections and small successes
the heartache, the failures,
and the joy

i looked at that machine
and i welled up, man,
while the tech printed up my receipt
and handed it over to me to sign.
he looked up at me like i might be a little bit mad
but i didn’t care.
i handed him his pen back
and grabbed my machine off the bin
as if it were a best friend that i was saving
no, my child
no, my lover

when i finally
got outside
i held it up
all gray and black plastic
with usb ports and plugs
along its metal back

i held that machine up to the sun
staring at it for a moment
before planting a big kiss
on its side
and then moving on down the street
past people who kept looking at me
who wouldn’t know
what that kind of love meant
even if i spent all day
explaining it to them.

07.10.09