and so did an old lady
hobbling on a bum knee
watering flowers

I can’t cuss like I used to,
or perhaps I never could;
when I speak explicitly now,
it just doesn’t sound good.

I like the sound of expletives
and wish I could make them sound convincing,
but whenever I utter one myself,
I don’t believe in what I’m saying.

My wife’s family cusses well,
and does so with conviction,
when they say damnshithell,
they mean it, no fucking fiction.

So when I cuss in poems,
the sensation is usually forced;
I try to use all words equally,
but they end up sounding cursed.

Every time I try to whiten my teeth,
I gag and wretch, feeling like
I will heave up my bowels,
but I still keep whitening my teeth,
sacrificing my bowels
in the name of science.

I love things that can be bought with change
gas station drinks being included within that range,
which though they may not taste right or be very good for you
there isn’t very much that you can do
because for something costing less than a dollar,
you’ll just about always drink it without making much of a holler.

I thought I wanted this;
I have been working toward this;
but now I stand on the cusp
of finally starting a “real” job,
and all I feel is ambivalence and fear
seeing the future stretching
indefintely out before me
into the obscured distance.
Mixed with the uncertainty
is excitement as to what might happen,
but along with the excitement
is the knowledge that
I may not like the future and that
the only constant is death.
And so from this cusp,
my only responce is paralysis,
in the contemplation of
the unknown preceding death.

I.
he won’t agree
he may even complain
but we all know
the truth speaks
for itself.

II.
as our wives looked on
disapprovingly, we waged
battle in the only way
available to civilized man.

I try to write a poem
and end up staring at the screen
focusing on the doctor or pretty much anything
wondering why the words won’t come,
where they have gone,
who has taken my words,
and who never will.

back to the girl
to love
to sex

back to an interview
to a job
to a future

back to home
to happiness
to life

as I sat on the dock
drinking beer
not catching fish,
the epiphany STRUCK!

Tomorrow I go fishing with my in-laws
which wasn’t in the marriage by-laws
but may not be so bad,
because at least there’ll be:
pipe tobacco
and
beer.

The thunder woke me up this morning,
rolling, shaking, stirring,
the kind of thunder that reverberates
through the body, through the soul.
Not Garth Brooks’ thunder either!
No, this was T.S. Eliot’s thunder,
thunder that speaks the words of God,
that speaks of salvation.

The thunder is passed now,
and the feeling grown faint;
the sun is out, birds are singing,
the world seems joyful;
the world except for I,
who hopes to hear the thunder
again, to hear God again.

I cleaned out my office today,
Putting all my paraphernalia away;
Taking everything off my wall,
Including the poster in the hall.

And as I regarded my state property stapler,
All I wanted was to steal it;
But I resisted the urge as shit,
Choosing to keep my soul in-tact.

While I do love my family,
After a long weekend of togetherness,
I love it more when they go away,
Even if it is on Mother’s Day.

On the restroom floor
lay a female student’s paper,
marked in red ink
by a female professor,
which leads me to two questions:
1) Why was the professor grading in the bathroom?
2) Why was it in the men’s bathroom?
This is that paper’s story.

On a particle-board desk,
the paper lay, reposing
and basking in the brilliance
with which it had been imbued
by the creator, Andrea.
Exhilarating was the sensation
of being full of perfection,
full of this feeling; suddenly
pain shot through the paper,
pain in the form of red ink,
red ink marking, crossing out,
writing, as Ms. Brophy lived
out her sick power complex.
As soon as it had began, it
was over; the marking had
stopped and Ms. Brophy had left,
having marked only the first page.

Knowing it must protect the rest
of its leaves, the paper quickly
formulated a plan, determining the
ultimate act of defiance, fleeing
to the one place that neither Ms.
Brophy nor Andrea would find it.
With a shaken faith in the creator
that had turned it over to the
demented Ms. Brophy, the paper
slowly made its way to the men’s
restroom, secreting itself on the
floor of one of the stalls, in that
nasty place, behind the commode.
The nasty factor was extreme, but
the paper endured, determined to
not be marked on any more; first
began the germs, gnawing away and
infiltrating the paper’s structure;
next came the fumes of urine, bringing
up dry-heaves from the paper’s non-
existent bowels, and yet the paper
stayed firm. Finally, the paper was
assaulted by the worst, most foul
enemy of all: the smell of poo. The
assault was intense, but the paper
determined never to return to Ms. Brophy,
and on that bathroom floor, the paper died,
breathing in refuse but living free.

Dr. Lanyon likes to call goose bumps incipient rigor,
I wonder what he means…

In—innumerable integers are indignant in
cip—principal because the reciprocal, participant,
ient—sentient goose bumps are resilient, lenient

Rig—and rigidly, rigorously rigged
or—according to an ordinary, ordinal ordinance.