ThirtyEight

I would like to see

The year 1998

From where I am now

37:2

right in front of me

i watched a man pull pepsi;

half drank; from garbage.

 

 

and i thought how we think we’ve all been there.

to justify the sight of melancholy.

 

half smoked butts, or bowls,

or a pair of jeans all week:

for week on week on week.

or hoping things are better today.

walking to the store,

“for health”,

with no money for gas.

or preferring black coffee:

haven’t fit milk in the budget for months.

 

pretending you can

sympathize with other lives

that face true hardship.

 

or watching the birds of the balcony,

seeing things are better today.

 

 

haiku: 36 (unconventional haiku 1)

like a junkie

all my energy leaves me

3 hours after I wake.

Seventeen Syllables Just Aren’t Enough

Far too loquacious
to ever be able to
write a good haiku.

haiku: 35

a semi-certain

sort of attitude only

results in question

Haiku: 34

I want to go to

Pennsylvania to find the

knowledge of truck stops.

Drive North on 95, Over the Merrimack, Leaving Newburyport. Watch All The Steel Ships Float.

I’m not exceptionally old,

but I feel like I’ve met all the types

of people there are to meet.

I sit in this training room and

look around at all these faces

I’ve seen before. There’s the loud Italian

girl, she has so much to say, the young wanna-be druggie boy

(oh he’s just so mysterious), a mother beyond

her prime, an elder who should just retire,

a man roaring about his joyous divorce,

two gossipers at my table – trying to figure out

why I didn’t talk for the first week but now choose to

ask and prod at topics less discussed (I might be at this job

longer than I hoped), a girl with a pinched nose whose mother

never yelled at her, another with tattoos and opinions because

she “sometimes goes out for drinks with friends” and other times

makes comments just to look out the corner of her eye to see if

anyone still cares, and of course someone gives her that attention she craves,

there’s a man with a bald head, quite but pretentious, another with military boots

who drives his motorcycle into work and talks about

how he was a barber, one trainer loud and old and

counting the minutes until her smoke break,

another loud and young, who “hates having the serious talks,

but they have to be had,” and a little queer human resources

man who doesn’t come around much, an old mail room man,

who I’ve never heard spoke, a security guard who focused too much on what

you see above the desk line, and all

their doubles and triples, and me – watching and biding my time.

—————————————-

Old trees and iron,

Take me where you took them all,

I’ll breathe in and love.

For the Old Man Retired in a Nursing Home Doing His Own Thing (inspiration)

Old man sitting out
On beautiful summer day
Relaxed just because

Haiku: 32

complex decisions.

I just want to take you there,

we can watch the birds.

 

Haiku: 31

robins watch from trees.

I’m watching from my window.

tomorrow, we’ll switch.