poem of the day 05.30.14

thursday afternoon

there are five of them

waiting on the platform at 20^th avenue

two girls and three boys

when they get on the train, loud and vicious

they split up

the girls go toward one end

the boys sit next to me

they give the girls a chance to sit down

and then smallest one

(isn’t it always the smallest one)

starts

he cups his mouth

he shouts, ya’ll a bunch a pussies

ya’ll cunts

lydia….cunt

you too, maria

ya’ll a bunch a pussies, he repeats

so that only the deaf and the dead haven’t heard him

no one responds to the kid

not even the girls

maybe we’ve all grown too accustomed to this shit

or we just want to get the hell home

christ, he’s not even that old

leaning more toward thirteen than a young man

up with fellas

down with ugly bitches, he shouts

and it echoes through the train like a cannon shot

then the boys slap each other five and laugh

they are all dressed the same

in clothing telling them to OBEY

well, i guess they’re off to a great start in this country

i look down toward the girls

they are laughing and playing music

if the boys have gotten to them you’d never know

but girls have to learn early here

they have to learn to scrape indignity off with a smile

bitch whore cunt pussies

at 61^st street the little boy rises with me to leave

but not before getting in one more shot

ya’ll is ugly pussy bitch, he shouts

then he gets off the train laughing

but it doesn’t last too long

his face turns into a permanent smirk

i look at him

i wonder what it would take to grab him in the station

right here

right now

put the fear of god in the little punk

tell him if i ever catch you talking to women like that again….

this strutting piece of american privilege

on a thursday afternoon

he wouldn’t listen to me anyway

i’d be another pussy

so i let him go toward his connecting train

and i go off toward mine

doing my part to let the misogyny perpetuate

wondering what in the world  i’ll say about this

to my wife

our mothers

your sisters

to everyone’s niece.

poem of the day 05.29.14

when old friends become devoutly religious

at first there is some shock

or it is like watching a bad horror film

or there is no shock and it was always inevitable

but there is a hollow sadness

not unlike standing around someone’s wake

and you wonder if there was anything

that you could’ve done to save them

maybe called more

invited them out for a beer and some conversation

been the one to lend an ear and offer advice

instead of spending years stuck in your own malaise

looking for the kind of answers

that only come through bathing in fire

still you can’t believe that this is the guy

yes, that one posting photos of church breakfasts online

telling everyone that his favorite book is the bible

was once the dude who screwed everything that walked

behind his wife’s back

or how that one is now this foreign specimen

who enjoys christian rock and no longer drinks alcohol

was the one who used to beat his woman for no reason

or he was the one who always went to strip clubs with you

the one who got drunk in bars

and then made you spend hours casing downtown

looking for whores

it’s hard to look at these transformed hypocrites

dressed in their sunday best with their lifeless families

praising jesus, jesus, always jesus

hating gays and immigrants and all other enemies of the state

when you were once with them

swinging baseball bats at senior citizens

on snowy highways caught in a sweaty speed pill fervor

stealing tip money and dumping beer

on drunk girls in even drunker bars

listening with jealous glee as they told you blow job stories

done in church parking lots on the cheap

or how you sat idly in parks on humid summer nights

as they molested underage girls on clay tennis courts

you wonder what it was that caused them to fall so badly

to take up such a fragile and transparent yoke as organized religion

age or boredom or both?

and what kind of seething, perverted rage

still exists deep within the well of them

when it could come out to shine anew

you hope to hell that this is just temporary

but deep down you know that the religion trap lasts forever

and that there is nothing else to do for these lost souls

but close the internet browser on them

don’t answer the emails and never pick up the phone

when they call

mourn their memory until the pain no longer exists

get on with the living

instead of becoming as they have

just another one

of the walking dead

waiting on the afterlife.

                                                

poem of the day 05.28.14

smart phone users at the

sigmar polke exhibit 05.24.14

sigmar polke worked across all mediums

painting, photography, film, drawing

prints, and sculpture

but i can’t seem to get across one gallery of this retrospective

without some asshole stopping

to check their smart phone

or i have to weave around some bored

twentysomething thumb-humping their gadget

for the status update of the latest facebook bore

maybe you’re just too diverse for these folks, sigmar

for the girl tweeting about her times square lunch

for the boy playing candy crunch on a bench

for the woman posting pictures from the top of rockefeller center

maybe nine galleries of experimental german art

has taken these poor fools to the brink

of their ability to process information

like the lady over there by your prints

of homeless men on the bowery

the one buying shoes on amazon

or the guy in the old navy american flag t-shirt

the one who looked like he stumbled in here accidentally

while on his way to snap a photo of starry night

can we really blame him for checking the atlanta braves score

while propped up next to your four paintings of strings?

the old man next to your potato fortress

for writing an online complaint letter to our commie president

for letting art like this slip inside our precious borders?

even i’m having a little bit of trouble here, sigmar

i’ll admit to it

and i like your stuff

you’re kind of like the missing link for me

between the way they used to do art

and these asshole who call themselves painters and sculptors now

someone for whom the function of art still mattered

but i’ve been watching this video of you placing orange peels

on some woman’s camel toe for five minutes now

and i still don’t see the meaning behind it

other than maybe the effect of boredom on that day

or how you were just a bad flirt

but your painting of a dozen supermen

crowding the aisles inside a supermarket

that got me

it was quite a riot

i mean if i had a smart phone

maybe i’d take a picture of it

and put it all over the social networks, my friend

give this exhibit a little boost

although more than likely i’d just tweet

about how many fucking tourists there are in this museum

stinking up another saturday for us locals

here in good ol’ new york, new york.

                                                

poem of the day 05.27.14

ring tones

it’s an outdated complaint

but i can’t stand ringtones on cell phones

it’s like everyone is a star

with their own soundtrack

everyone is a celebrity

more like game show hosts

as if the music on these devices isn’t bad enough

it’s the attitude that comes with it

how the offending moron just sits there

and lets the phone ring

so that the rest of us know

what kind of bad music the asshole listens to

and then it’s always

oh, is that for me?

before they finally lean over and pick up

to then shout some banality

at the infinitely important person on the other end

i sound like a relic complaining about this, i know

and it’s only going to get worse

but it drives me mad

on buses on subways or in the grocery store

as someone’s phone blasts star wars music

because their wife called to remind them

to pick up a can of peas

or the beatles because the old man forgot his wallet again

i wish we had ringtones for important things

like ones to announce our deaths

or when someone that you don’t want to see

might be rounding the corner

instead of ringtones blaring to let amber know

that britney is calling about her new nail color

then maybe i could find some usefulness in them

i mean it might be nice to hear

tchaikovsky’s piano concerto #1 right before i bite it

a clapton riff when i’m coming up on traffic

or the stones’ gimme shelter sounding out

just to give me fair warning

that you’re standing there waiting on me

only one block away

                                                

"best of" poem of the day 05.26.14

memorial day

i told her we should

go to the park and have

a picnic.

she told me i hated picnics,

which is true.

picnics and parades

and kids and dogs

and disney and

the 4^th of july and

football sundays

and people who talk to me

in bars when all i want is

a drink.

but it was worth a shot.

the summer was coming

already the cats were laying

on the linoleum in a heat-induced

coma.

it was getting harder to fuck,

burning and sweating until

we had to pour water on each

other’s assholes just to

settle down.

in a month the apartment

would be unbearable.

we had to get out and do something

now, i thought.

maybe we could just walk up

and down elmwood avenue,

going only into the air conditioned shops

but you hate people and shopping too, she said.

which was also correct.

so we opened up a couple of bottles

of cheap wine,

then the 12 pack of yuengling,

pulled down the shades,

and didn’t answer the phone.

we watched a couple of bad movies,

and fell asleep before the sun went down.

it was a good holiday

                        05.30.06

poem of the day 05.23.14

fleet week

the three of them

were sitting at the end of the bar

in their starched white uniforms

like returning heroes

like princes of new york

christ, they all looked like sunburnt popeyes

drunk and liberated from their duty

waiting to go back aboard their ship

to shower with each other again

we were drinking nearby

drunk and liberated from our jobs

waiting to back to our apartment

to shower with each other again

when one of the little soldier boys asked me

is that you’re wife?

well, not yet, i said

which i thought was good enough conversation

but the jerky little g.i. joe

kept staring at me

kept staring at my woman

like he needed to get something out

the other two in their starched whites

just kept looking around

waiting for another drunk patriot to buy them

a congratulatory drink

or for someone to pat them on the back

and say, hell of a job, soldier

when he said to me, they must be fun

what do you mean? i asked

well, he started laughing

then he put his hands toward his breasts

like he was holding two balloons

i’m not too quick

especially when i’m drinking

but i think i understood what he was talking about

you know what i mean? he said

you know?  you know?

finally i leaned over and said to the other two swabs

you better watch him in here

this is a communist bar

when they saw what he was doing

they tried putting his hands down

but then he fell off of his stool anyway

another brave soldier gone down

we’re sorry, one of the sailors said to me

but i wasn’t buying it

we’d been watching clowns like these

harass women all week in the city

like conquering titans

like golden gods

so i finished my beer

then my fiancé and i got up to leave

i felt drunk and liberated

by never becoming just another

misogynistic, volunteer asshole with a gun

it’s all right, i told them

maybe we’ll all get lucky in the end

and he’ll get his balls shot off

when you boys sail back to iraq

                                                           

poem of the day 05.21.14

blomfield

blomfield always comes in

when there’s five minutes left in the day

when i think i’m just about done

with the pain and the agony

of public servitude

there comes blomfield right through my doors

he’s always dressed the same

no matter the weather

black skull cap

diarrhea green army field jacket

baggy jeans that look like he crapped himself

sparkling white sneakers

yes, i’ve examined blomfield from head to toe

because some hatreds must be

engrained in the memory to truly blossom

he always wants something from me

a newspaper that’s a week old

a phone number to be looked up

keys to use the bathroom until the very last minute

to peruse the magazine racks

or just to walk around the building for the final five

i used to think they were up to something

that the big wigs sent blomfield down here

like some sort of secret shopper

now i just think he’s deranged

the rest of my co-workers are scared of him

it’s understandable when blomfield is wearing

his heavy army jacket in eighty-degree heat

we’ve been trained in america

to hate what we don’t know

what he can’t understand

but i don’t hate blomfield for his coat

or his skull cap or his jeans or his sneakers

for the fact that he never seems to labor or sweat

i hate him simply because he’s the last impediment

in the way of me getting back to my life

he’s the train or bus that i’ll miss

he’s the drink that i’ll have five minutes later or the couch

he’s the meal that i’ll burn thinking about how bad i hate him

the restless sleep that i’ll have

blomfield

standing there reading fliers

for kid’s magic shows and free math tutoring

at one minute til the hour

checking his watch until the very last second

that he knows we’re open

before he exits the doors

to stand outside looking both ways

scanning the street for a block party

or a community board meeting

wondering whom in the hell to torture

next.

                                                

poem of the day 05.20.14

worst fight ever

it should seems strange

paying twenty-five dollars a ticket

to watch a field full of millionaires shag fly balls

it is a touch strange, i guess

what with all of the war and famine

although some people in this place

are paying in the thousands

to sit and watch the game

still there is more enthusiasm

in the hot dog and beer lines

then there is here in section 412

most of the people around me

are checking their phones anyway

hoping to be entertained by something better

but then the seats become alive when they start

two drunks

one in a NASCAR jacket

and the other wearing a hat telling me to OBEY

who knows what started it

but there they are shouting and pointing

then pushing and shoving

tackling each other like two tranquilized bears

right onto the concrete steps

no one is throwing a punch anywhere that counts

the two fighters look as though

more caught up in a love embrace

now the crowd around me is going mad

some are booing and some are cheering

a section full of cro-magnons are chanting

worst fight ever

as the two drunks continue to roll around

as security steps around them

trying to figure out how to break it up

the cro-magnons look sad

because they have not been chosen to put

flesh to bone and blood

and it may be the worst fight ever

but it is more exciting

than watching another millionaire

go down on strikes

or trot the bases on another solo home run

it is visceral and of the moment

and when security hauls the two bruisers away

they both give the crowd the finger

and when we all stand and chant

assholes!

assholes!

i sort of feel a part of something in this country

i think maybe i feel like the rest of you do every day

but then the inning ends

with another millionaire popping up to third

and when we all rise again

to sing god bless america

i suddenly remember where it is i am

so i leave the stands

to go and get a beer or a hot dog

to take a piss

to try to recapture a little bit of magic.

                                               

poem of the day 05.19.14

informed

she tells me

she has lived with criminals

she tells me

she has lived with hasidic jews

and fundamentalists too

she says

she has apartments in vienna and paris

she tell me

she has lived many years in spain

she asks me

if i know what’s in the bottled water

that i’m drinking

if i know what’s in the air and in the soil

she says

she has lived with blacks and whites

and has been left lacking from both

she says

that being drunk with germans is the best

but sober…

she asks me

what i think about climate change

and mother russia

she says

you seem like a very wise man

but that’s only because i don’t talk

when she tells me

about syria and iraq

about how the taliban will retake afghanistan

once the united states leaves

she asks me

what i think about pakistan and the bomb

she says

all anyone in america can do is watch sports

and television and play on their phone

she says

everyone in america is obsessed

with their looks and their clothing and their money

then she says

you know, you could be a very handsome man

if you’d just shave your beard

and get rid of all that gray.

                                  

poem of the day 05.15.14

confession

it would have to be on the honor system

catholicism being what it was

but we were all going to tell the priest

in the confessional room the same thing

that we were excessive masturbators

it beat telling the priest that we swore and stole

or snuck smokes on basketball courts

that we were mean to our parents and fellow man

when i went in the confessional room

the priest was sitting in a chair facing the wall

my chair was to the back of him

hello, he said.

hey, i said

we waited

oh, yeah, it’s been some months since my last confession

then we waited again

you may begin at any time, the priest finally said

so i started telling him

but instead of the masturbation i started telling him

about ripping off baseball cards and snuff from thrift drug

how i stole some of my old man’s kools

hmmm, the priest said

he looked at his watch

it was boring shit

so i got with the program

father, i said

i also like to play with myself

uh, hmmmm, he said.  he perked right up

i can’t stop, i continued

exercise shows, sitcom moms, movie starlets,

blonde evening news anchors on channel 11,

my neighbor who never wears a bra,

my old man’s playboys, batgirl, wonder woman,

and cher in that black leather outfit that showed her…

okay, the priest said.  i think i understand

what’s going on here

he started craning his neck

trying to get a look at me

if he craned left, i went right

he sighed

if we’d done our jobs correctly

he’d heard this story a lot

except cher

i added cher on my own

the priest didn’t even offer any words of encouragement

he made me do the act of contrition

which i forgot midway through

just go out and say five hail mary’s, he told me

when i got up the poor fool

had his head resting in his hands

he had another three of us to go before

he could seek the solace of release

when i got back into the main area

calvin deflino was waiting to go in

what did you do? he said

i added cher, i told him

then he gave me a wink and a high five

before going in to say his peace

and receive such immaculate absolution.

                                                                        

poem of the day 05.14.14

facere et docere (to do and to teach)

the catholic school dance had ended

and we were waiting for my old man to pick us up

but he never showed

when we were the last ones left in the lot

calvin said to me, what do we do now?

i shrugged because i didn’t know

i had images of car wrecks and home invasions

but the chances were good my old man

had just fallen asleep on the couch again

we’d been less than a month in this school

the big, catholic high school in pittsburgh

taught by the christian brothers

danny said, maybe we should go and knock

on the brother’s door

it seemed like a good idea

all of the lights were on in the brother’s house

they probably had a phone

they were our teachers our spiritual guides

there was no way they’d refuse to help

three fourteen year-old boys

it took a while but one of the brothers finally opened up

he was still in his garments

the black pants and black shirt like a priest

a little while collar instead of a tab

what do you want? he said

my dad never showed, i told him

and that’s my problem how? he said

well, i was stumped on that one

to be honest i didn’t expect that kind of treatment

can we use your phone? danny said

the brother’s home is closed, he said

the school is closed too

then he smiled and shut the door in our faces

i think he teaches religion class, calvin said

we went searching for a pay phone

our high school was in a college part of the city

so there were packs of drunk students on the street howling

a coed fell over and couple of guys picked her up

and dragged her away

we got about two blocks from the school

when a carload of pink-faced frat boys

threw their crushed beer cans at us

assholes, danny shouted

but then the car stopped and flew into reverse

we ran back the two blocks

back to the catholic school lot

we hid behind bushes but the car never came for us

there was nothing to do

so we sat on the school lawn

i watched the lights go out in the school

and the janitor go to his car humming

i watched the lights in the brother’s home burn

almost every single one was on

i thought of how comfortable and secure those guys were

safe to watch tv or read or to pray to jesus

or jack-off to images of fourteen year-old boys

like we all knew they were doing

close to midnight

my old man crept into the parking lot

i fell asleep, he said

as me and calvin and danny got into the car

i took one last look at that brother’s home

all lit up like the fourth of july

i thought about the brother at the door

the one who smiled and then slammed it in our faces

and i finally understood

all i ever needed to know about catholicism

the truth about everything

they’d always taught me to believe.

                                                           

poem of the day 05.13.14

corn muffins

not all cops are assholes

i mean i’m sure there are

one or two good ones out there

anything is possible

the one here in the bagel store

standing midway down the line

blocking progress and playing on his gadget

while the rest of us fools line up behind him

and out the door

he’s definitely an asshole

eight in the morning on a sunday

with a hangover and the inability to sleep

all i want is a corn muffin

to go home and scald my tongue on coffee

laugh with the new york times

but it seems like everyone working here

is waiting on this cop

one of them is making his coffee

one of them is frying his eggs and nuking his bacon

one of them is toasting his everything bagel

he’s getting the full treatment

while the rest of us proles are getting leg cramps

and one of them is saying, yes, officer

and one of them is saying, sure, officer

and one of them is saying, whatever you need, officer

is your coffee all right, officer?

can the staff scratch your ass while you wait?

i wonder what the cop would do

if i vomited right on the bagel store floor

the baby faced prick

would probably arrest me

for disturbing the peace

or he’d take a picture of me with his phone

to show the other dickheads back at the precinct

and i can just see those corn muffins

sitting there encases in glass

i’m wondering why one of us just doesn’t

walk around him and demand service

why none of us will revolt

christ, the average citizen is even scared of the police

while trying to get breakfast

then i start thinking

maybe i don’t need a corn muffin

maybe today i’ll just take the hangover and the coffee

and all of the misery the new york times has to offer

but the cop finally gets his order

the entire bagel shop staff gather around

to hand him his coffee and his sandwich

officer friendly doesn’t even look up from his phone

he just takes his bag and leaves

with his cop pants wedged right up his cop ass

new york’s finest for sure

as the rest of us robots move up in the queue

to finally order all of those delicious things

we’ve waited so long for

everything that’ll just turn into shit

by the end of the day.

                                              

poem of the day 05.12.14

05/12/14

6:50 in the morning

he is parked across the street

from my living room window

blasting a pop song so loud

it feels as if coming from my own stereo

this american abomination

thumbing through his cell phone

as if it’s nothing

as if this world exists at his whim

before the sun is fully in the sky

while i

racing around the apartment in blind anger

grabbing shorts and a shirt

my keys and maybe a sharp knife for good measure

now finally and fully understand how

a man can commit murder

i think

well, this is how it’ll end for both of us

as i bend to put my shoes on by the window

watching as he fiddles with his convertible rag top

oblivious and dull

a true patriot of the work week

and as i race to the front door

i hear tires screech and a last blast of music

pollute the air

and then he is gone

leaving the street as it was before

quiet and periwinkle in the dawn

until that goddamned dog next door

starts barking away at a thin breeze

at really nothing at all.

                                  

poem of the day 05.09.14

ode to a poetry editor

you have taken

at least four or five of my poems

over the years

thank you

we’ve always had a good thing between us

at least i thought

we exchanged a few jokes in acceptance emails

you said a few consoling words in the rejections

to calm my ever-fragile poet’s ego

at least you’ve never called me a bukowski rip-off

like those boys in london did once

but i have to tell you

that i don’t understand this latest email from you

it was a rejection this time

which i’m not mad about

they were shit poems that i sent to you

and would be used as kindling if i had a fireplace

but it was the way that you berated me this time

for not sounding like pablo neruda of all people

you wrote, mr. grochalski, our readers

prefer poets like pablo neruda, not writing like this

whatever this means in italics

but pablo neruda?

to be honest, i don’t think that i’ve read

more than three of the man’s poems in my lifetime

an ode to this and an ode to that

and i was pretty much set on his oeuvre

if i can ask

what made you think that i sounded like neruda in the past?

when did i stop sounding like him now?

i’m confused and it’s the morning

and i don’t know where to begin again with the word

how to sound like neruda or not

or maybe thoman mcgrath or seamus heaney

or some other dead bore who appeals to the three people

reading your magazine on its quarterly basis

so i settled on this gem

well, just the title anyway

it’s not really like pablo neruda this time

or, rather, again, in your opinion of me

but it’s certainly influenced by him

and you, kind sir

which i think you’ll understand

when i send it to you next month

along with four others

that sound like the usual shit that i always write.

                                                           

poem of the day 05.08.14

to a cousin

my only real memory of you

was from when i was five or six

i’d just been to my first pirates game

and you were at the front door the next day

spying those golden bill madlock wristbands

that my old man had bought me

you asked me if you could have one

and without hesitation i gave it

even when sammy kozub’s cousin

flipped you on your back on the pavement

i never thought of taking it back

because you were defending me

and this is the first thing that i thought about

when my old man called and told me

that you were gone at only forty-one years old

suffocating on your own vomit

like some kind of rock star

i hoped whatever it was that took you wasn’t genetic

because most days i love this life too much to leave it

and i’m scared shitless of doctors and hospitals

i thought about violence and baseball and biology

on the day that you died

instead of how you simply weren’t here anymore

but time has been cruel to us both

family, i mean what can you say?

in some lines blood just doesn’t run thicker than water

it trickles from a rusty pipe

and we never really knew each other

so i probably have no business trying to eulogize you

especially in something as cheap as a poem

because you could’ve been any face on the street to me

you virtual stranger

but maybe there would’ve been something in the eyes

that would’ve caught us both

some resemblance or the mention of an old baseball hero

kid stuff to spark some kind of reminiscence

but that chance has passed us by, cousin

we’re distant stars burning out

and now we’ll just have to wait for something else

                                                           

poem of the day 05.07.14

a simple life

writers write about writing

when they have nothing left in the tank

well, that’s me this morning

sitting here with chapped, itchy legs

a hangover and the shits

more death and sports on the morning radio

than i can stomach

i’m sitting here wondering why

i do this in the first place

at forty years-old it’s no longer for the glory

for myself or otherwise

to be honest, hauling my ass out of bed

before the sun rises

to throw some words down

seems rote and tired to me more than inspired

i think of all of those people who are still in bed

while i’m stuck stringing sentences together

the ones who will rise without thought

get showered, get dressed

get stuck in traffic and go to a job

for which they will give no honest effort

fill their bellies and spend their evening watching television

or playing on the computer until they pass out

the ones who’ll never have a suicidal thought

over what they’re leaving behind

what artless bliss these beasts must exist in

i really don’t know how this happened to me

in the first place

for i was once some kid in some neighborhood

a baseball bat and a glove

the television on to my fat contentment

hurling words at people like bombs

meant to disappear without thought

and not set down on paper

carving for myself a simple life

and not fooling myself with the pale glow

of self-righteousness

or god awful immortality.

poem of the day 05.06.14

some notes on american art

in the twenty-first century

we’ve been in the museum for over an hour

and i don’t understand a thing in this exhibit

it’s the usual shit that has passed for art

ever since christ left chicago

paintings with no definition or structure

sculptures that look more like sex toys

video monitors splattered with paint

featuring images of women being assaulted

in one room an artist has depictions of violence on the wall

while on the floor he has sex dolls in various positions

their plastic vaginas gaping and filled with newspaper headlines

it must be me

everyone else looks so enthralled with what they’re seeing

people are taking pictures and scribbling their thoughts

while i’m walking around looking at photographs of penises

and women being finger-fucked by someone off-camera

while i’m walking around wondering what’s for lunch

the biographies of the artists pasted to the wall

are almost novel-sized in their length

because they’ve been tasked with explaining the art

because no one understands what they’re really doing now

one artist is obsessed with crisscross patterns

another artists just loves making shapes and lines

i wish there was a painting of a cityscape or a portrait here

something worth the twenty-bucks it took to get in

something a guy like me could understand

but instead i’m treated to a painting of oblong shapes

mounted on glossy wood with heavy-duty string

because the artist spent fifteen years

trying to figure out how to mix

painting and sculpture together

well…congratulations

i think, so this is what it is now

american art in the twenty-first century

where the method of madness

has completely overshadowed the end result

imagine if van gogh were alive!

maybe i should get on board with this wave

i mean just like the art here this poem wasn’t much to read

but it was written on

an HP AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 830 processor 2.80 GHz

with a 64-bit operating system

using windows 7 home premium

with one terabyte of memory

in its internal hard drive

and maybe that’s what really matters now.

                                                                        

poem of the day 05.05.14

the bee

there is a bee
trapped in a spider web
covering one of the security cameras
they’ve installed in this place

it’s enlarged on a huge LED television
flapping its wings

it looks frantic

this bee is one more thing
trapped within the cog of all existence

bees have been put through enough shit on this planet

and he is sitting next to me laughing at it
as if watching a great slapstick comedy

soon others join him to watch

the bee shows up every third frame or so
its life force being sucked out slowly
for the amusement of the earth’s master species

i can’t help but feel bad for the bee

i feel like it most days myself
trapped on the train to work or in lines at the grocery
waiting to cross an intersection during the morning rush
or at the workplace watching such cruelty

i too am trapped within the cog of all existence
only my suffering is rarely magnified to this degree

i’m rooting for the bee to break away
from this hold and sting the living shit out of that spider

and for these people to disperse
to go back to whatever triviality
held their attention before this

or for them to wise up
and let this poor creature die with some dignity

shut the cameras off until the deed has been done
instead of standing there with their mouths agape

the occasional cackle
roaring out of their mouths
like canned sitcom laughter

with each ever-slowing flap
of those regal translucent wings.

poem of the day 05.02.14

like movie stars

i feel like a movie star

feel like a walking, talking piece of shit

because there are cameras

everywhere that i seem to move

huge television screens

reflecting common dullard moments back at me

at jobs and on street corners

in the aisle of the grocery store

while i’m trying to figure out what sort of dead flesh

to fry and shove down my throat

there are cameras in the park and on public transportation

telephones that can be plugged into computers

to trace my calls and your calls to me

because i’m not alone in this

you’re all movie stars too

filmed walking down the street

picking your nose and scratching your ass

oscar winners are we

so important living our humdrum lives

that these mendacious pricks

are recording our inane phone calls

mining the data for random product placement

or turning it over to the government for posterity

why in the hell have we become so interesting

to the corporate interest?

to the workplace surveillance boys

with their high-tech boners?

to the politicians who only need our vote

once every so many years?

when did this happen?

if you’re going to record our every move, folks

maybe you should wine and dine us first

use the camera to seduce us and make us feel special

so we don’t feel like such whores

in the wake of all of your shadowing

so we don’t feel so hunted down just trying to buy a sandwich

come on, big brother

make us feel like movie stars

strolling along this big film set that you’ve created

this paranoid paradise of the damned

posing for a shot on the red carpet

before you film us walking all the way home

and while we’re probably sleeping too.