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Ron Androla |
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life as a poet i'm growing my gray goatee back, shaved outline just this morning. nets of mucky lard hang under my chin, seep old age. a goatee is a good disguise. a poem hides like a flea in my moustache yellowed by nicotine smoke. i'm not sure who i am this is a poem so i'm a poet albeit fair to be adjectival this is a fucking poem so i'm a fucking poet. be creative. reader, you, have more validity to punctuate to emphasize the poem & the poet. i'm just here waving my tree-branch arms in the wind of yr eyes. yesterday needed essentials. woke at 1:30 in the afternoon from graveyard shift shit without coffee in the house. gathered my senses in an orange pill: sunlight. all these cars are like eggs with wheels, i thought, driving to quality market in our square red jeep. got a cart & started shopping. i got all kinds of groceries including a dried pig's-ear for the dog. saw first-shift boss we both quickly sd hey howya doin' i still remember when i first started that job on 2nd shift & he was in charge. he slammed me & slammed on the worst jobs & actually had me reaching over hissing steam-lines removing the molded gray ring of a part with a pencil-tip. i was on probation so thusly fucked. i got us 2 porterhouse steaks for weekend grilling i got us toothpaste toilet paper frozen bag of corn cat-litter 20 pounds of dog-food chips trail mix butter 3-pack of mini-bics i filled the goddamned cart full. it was after 4 when i pushed my shit out into the freshly-paved parkinglot, loaded back of the jeep up. across the street the state store. that's what they call liquor stores in pennsylvania since booze is run by the state. got us a fifth of beam. a fifth of russian vodka. a bottle of rice alcohol that was on sale -- everything on the label written in korean. figured what the fuck. by the time i got back home it was almost time ann wld return from work. she was miserable & mean, just starting her period. i poured her a few shots of russian vodka medicine. i worked all last night. don't go back into the shop until tuesday night. my right arm is aching & i really need the 4-day break like i really need jim beam, prophetically already procured, waiting to be cracked. enemies each of us has enemies some people we don't even know are enemies from a distance behind our back scowl, make a face or smile right in our eyes while they think i hate you motherfucker you disgust them enrage their fires love sours there's that sharp edge of pre-divorce confusion angers everyone it's true my resentment has softened enormously & my ex-wife is ok now she surely chuckles she was married to a poet if not our ex's as enemies then gone-bad friendships a kid you teased in grade-school has erased it all he's dead a ghost of no luck who did you ever kill abortion in yr past seed of a brain mashed maybe someone fucked yr lover maybe someone beat the shit out of you maybe someone stole from yr belongings maybe someone can't stand reading yr poems scope of enemies is very wide definition shifts into the mist of strangers crowds in malls congregations amerikans are basically glum there's all that razzle-dazzle consumerism but the interest- rate is 21% fuck you amerikans have been pounded down gong of souls echoes mourn- fully we're fed slow poisons our brains are big dumb sponges cultural mayhem band-wagon theatrics who might stop me from writing poems & why fuck the thought of god there'll be secret chemicals awash inside yr head you'll see light you'll be light what's light? fuck light there's vast darkness self-conscious i'm not admitting everything in cyberspace poems. a poem is a poet talking to him or her self altho a poet talking to him or her self is not necessarily a poem. granite sands wash like a shore around the top of my brain. peckinpah is mild. a man is shackled, nude, girl underwear over his head. & some fuck is snapping a photograph. allah is all dreamy. all day gray clouds have covered the sun. don't look at me. thinking thinking of calling in my last vacation day tonight. i cld call out 8 hours sick but we need money, must stretch what food we have until next pay-day next week, this week's 40 hours. last weekend memorial day i had 4 nights off but it was a pretty horrible weekend. it was plain fucked up, so i was almost glad to run a dinosaur machine tuesday night, back into the swing of things. swing of things, that's it, or swings of things, robin-shit on a swing-seat, swinging the fists of my eyes at things swinging harder bone, bigger stones, longer telephone poles. well, we're swinging with a break of a smile couple of mona lisa's. that's good. what's not is my asshole factory job -- this morning the shift is brought into the front office because there's a real threat out there: india & china are now producing some of our products & selling 25% less than we charge. we must all produce better. the business climate does not look good. our side hedges really need trimmed. first i have to buy an electric hedge-trimmer. our grandson is 5 in a few days, need to get that gift too. i think about losing my job to workers in india & china. it's a real threat, is repeated & repeated. we're broke. in debt. that's the way it's always been. windfalls of money have never swung here, it's paycheck to paycheck dream to the real world: everything spills out of our hands. |