The man in black walked along the highway
swinging his black cane with each step,
not for stability but for style,
searching for what had not yet been found
along busy highways, possessing only
haste, pollution, and trash,
feeling the hot sun furiously
beating down on his black, leather jacket.

One day out, and I’m still amazed
that at Costco one (meaning I)
can buy a case of good beer,
24 that is (including new belgium beer)
for 24 dollars or less,
less than a dollar a beer,
meaning that beer is in my future
despite (or because of) my poverty.

I watch a lot of foodnetwork
a channel that often emphasizes
the presentation and beauty of food
however, today the epiphany struck hard
that no matter how good a piece of food looks
the next day inevitably it looks the same
dirtying the waters of my toilet bowl
floating/sinking     liquid/solid
black, filthy, wretched poo

Grease, hot porky grease
splattering, popping, flying,
landing on my breast,
bared and shirtless,
burning, scalding, scarring
all in the name of
ham and cheese omelettes.

It might be nice to be 30,
or older, so that my
feelings would not be hurt so
when both Uzbek and American
students label me as such;
or I could admit to myself
that my premature male-pattern-
baldness could be read as a
symbol of having lived 30+ years.
However, I choose to believe that
my baldness isn’t that bad,
and it won’t be for the next
three years, four months, and seventeen days.

One of my students today,
asked if I was in a band
with a very lame name
that I have already forgotten.
And while I would have liked
to have obliged, I couldn’t
quite fit the 30-something
age requirement of being the
person for which I was mistaken.

is also what’s wrong with me,
when I fear the embarrassment
of a bum asking me for money
without considering the embarrassment
of asking for money

How can we commune
when my twilight is your daylight
my sunset, your sunrise
my ending, your beginning?

I work in order to be at my leisure
but I am not at my leisure because I work;

this sick circle takes me around
and around and around yet again
with no exit in sight until the
ripe age of 65. 62 if I’m lucky.
59 1/2 if I’m ridiculously lucky.
Lucky thing that I married money,
(which hasn’t paid off yet
but may before I’m 59 1/2,
if I’m not dead by then,
or maimed, or paralyzed,
either physically or mentally
by the stultifying effects of life)
as a means of saving my zest for life.

I consider myself to be a normal boy
(perhaps even a normal man)
with normal likes and dislikes
(such as apple pie and country music),
but then I question all this
when I find myself liking the smell of my own farts
rating the quality of each I release.

oh sweet refuse, filling the air
byproduct of my own waste,
handiwork of my own bowels.

Summoning all my courage and reciting
the Bene Gesserit litany against fear
I plunged my hand beneath the water
grasping the cardboard
with which in my stupidity
I had clogged the toilet

Riding off into the sunset
isn’t as glamorous as in the movies;
in stead of being triumphant,
really it’s just a lot of squinting
and wishing for sunglasses.

I love my new dvr
taping everything near and far
making me wonder how I went through life
devoid of this key to ending strife.

I hate employers that do not
call you back to crush your
dreams and turn you down
because not knowing is
the hardest thing.

I sit here, planning out my students’
future for the next 6 weeks;
it’s strange to exercise this power
over what fifty people will be
reading, thinking, and doing;
power to mark and label each person as
failures, slackers, average, good, or excellent;
power to influence what opportunities will be open
to each of my students for their futures;
I am not only the master of their future
for the next six weeks, but I am the master
of their futures for the rest of their lives,
in which every moment will be influenced
by what I do in the next six weeks.
Do I feel exhilerated or scared by this?
Mostly just unprepared.

The boxes stacked 
everywhere beg to
be unpacked but d
o not tell me whe
re to place their
contents, so they
stay stacked in t
he corners and em
pty rooms, making
me feel that my l
ife is a messsss.

that in the last eight years
I have not lived
in the same place
for more than two years;
college station
amarillo
bryan
tashkent
fort worth
bryan again;
1 dorm room
1 duplex
2 houses
3 apartments;
I’ve lived in it all
but never known
a place called home
a place to call home;
a place where the years
accumulate along with
the moss and ivy
on the walls;
a place where memories
are able to attach to
tangible object;
so now I move again
to another stopping point
along the way.

Boxes fill the back of my room
making me wonder how
I have gotten to own this
much stuff when at one time
I could fit all my belongings
in just two suitcases.

don’t panic
DON’T PANIC!
DON’T PANIC!!!

those words,
though said in
mantra verse,
lose their
reassuring value
when not
accompanied by:
glittering letters
on a shiny
red background