Author: Roger Mugs

a helper stands at the front asking what you need and making certain all your papers are in line and ready before you’re herded to a small computer designed and built and researched for much more than it’s being used for now. for a mere number to be printed, a touch screen with one button, because this is really the best we can do.

poetry

have we really come to this point?
is this really the best we can do?
line standing reduced to numbers
handed out on small printed papers
views from games we spent too much
of our valuable time playing now
burned in the backs of eyelids
clear as the sky when we close our eyes
when we try to sleep
when we wake and find
we’re still standing, waiting for our
number to be called and wondering
is this really the best we can do?

poetry

a seashell on a wooden table
inland
so inland you’d never buy sea food here
and you hold it to your ear
because you’ve never been to the sea
and don’t know a clam shell holds
no sound
and wonder at the sand
you’ve heard is like your dirt
but finer
cleaner
less dead-moth-ridden

the caliber of people under God’s authority consistently blows my mind

poetry

kingdom shakers
fumble when they shake your hand
their mouths don’t work quite
right, nor their memories
and despite their high level of
education they keep copious
notes because of an accident
they had in a car riding off the
side of a mountain 15 years ago
(and incident they don’t recall
personally at all, only what they
‘ve been told)
which left them with a perpetual
at-best three months of memory
but yet they shake
the kingdom at its foundations
and to have stood in the same
room with these people
(let alone to shook hand with them,
or worshipped alongside of them)
never fails to humble me.

if it weren’t obvious already, you may think yourself important, but there are those out there with power to make you eat shit and smile and pay for it

poetry

some folks get all the attention
and some folks brew coffee
some folks go live on television at 9
some folks take out the trash at the tv station

some folks, they say, long to not be known
they sit in their cubicles, wait tables, laminate construction paper,
all for the greater good
and some, i hear, desire nothing more than a great name.
famous cubicle sitter, waitress extraordinaire, or THE construction paper laminator.

some folks get all the attention
but some folks just brew your coffee
or grow it
or produce the fecal matter with which your coffee is fertilized.

some folks get all the attention
but other folks have all the power

smoke from a pipe
from a chimney
smoke from your mouth
up through your nose
into your lungs
from a pipe
from a cigar
from a cigarette
smoke
in this house as
we run screaming
from the fire
fire in your pipe bowl
wrinkling your thumb
as your cover the top
yellowing your thumb
from the fire
fire in your pipe bowl
fire in your heart
fire in the house
we run
fire in your heart
you run
fire in your pipe bowl
as we sit in the snow
bundled in warmth
warmth from the fire
as we sweat and run
from the smoke coming
down the halls at full
speed
as we sit and stare
fully relaxed at the smoke
in our mouths
the fire under our thumbs
the burning in our hearts

poetry

经济危机

poetry

the cranes are still here but
the people have gone
and this place feels alone
but i still walk along

this crack-ridden sidewalk
deserted and grey
the prices were rising
then fell fast one day

and i run past these things with my eyes closed and music on blaring to drown out the silence of the people who left and left me here staying in a city of so many, but none of them living.

Thomas C. and Steve J. accredited (even if inappropriately) for significant inventions of life-altering magnitude

poetry

my lack of need for pen and paper to compose
has removed the problem i’ve had with
the roundness of my legs.
no flat surface is now—
no problem.
more and more writing can be done
whilst otherwise occupied upon porcelain.

certainly technology has more to be praised than this. but right now, there is little for which i am more thankful

Journey

poetry

10 hours from now I’ll be in the air
still agonizing over the length of the road ahead of me
14 hours from now I’ll be on the ground sprinting between man-made obstacles to prove I’m not a terrorist
15 hours from now I’ll be in the air
19 hours from now I’ll still be
24 hours from now I’ll be questioning my mental sanity, my own stamina, life.
26 hours from now I’ll again be on the ground between pain, but in a country where everything works right. It will be relaxing. There will be a meal consumed.
28 hours from now I’ll again be in the air
35 hours from now, for the first time in six months, I’ll be home.

flight, not much stresses me out, but a few years ago i had a couple of horrible experiences in airports and I have never recovered; man those folks made some bad decisions, but I’m still grateful they turned out the way they did. that be the case or not, i still panic before flying, what if our 1:25 minutes isn’t long enough between flights? what if we dont make it? what if that delays us several days? am i going to arrive mentally whole? i tend to panic. panic. panic and shake.

poetry

there are always things to worry about
there is never good reason to worry
and yet here i am quivering in my shoes
attempting to control my blood sugar
so my brain chemistry maintains itself
drinking my last beer for days
before my mind allows my body to shut down
panic, fear, more quivering.
there are always things to worry about
there is never good reason to worry
“behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened
that it cannot save
or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;”
i ask
i fear
i am not heard
there are always things to worry about
there is never good reason to worry

padded walls

poetry

cradling man-sized ladybugs
and climbing lived-in trees
this is the education we give our children
then we wonder at why they leaveith not the house at 18
“in childhood things were softer,” they say innocently enough, “foam enforced, carpeted, with padded walls.”
the real world they fought over patterned flowers on their mall floors and argued over who could jump to the next butterfly
they cradled themselves in tunnels of plastic, sterile, blue, climbing stairs and exiting slides
we taught life would be easy ups and slippery downs
we taught life lessons when we thought we were encouraging play time
taught padded walls as we cemented the forest
introduced easy-together legos in our rusting, over-heating, perishable, use-by-thursday world
and yet we wonder
we ponder
scratching our heads
eating smooth peanut butter on wonderbread and drinking pulp-free juice from disposable cups

lessons i hoped you would consider over a glass of wine, or perhaps a bottle. often lowered inhibitions is exactly what the psychiatrist ordered

poetry

a leap for life
for some is a literal
bullet dodged, or a grenade avoided

but for you a leap for life
is a mere plane flight.
a ticket purchased
such that life blood can stop being
clotted at the source

and with new oxygen flowing to the brain
hope arrives and strikes you
startling you like the bullet would
had it made an impact on the other
for whom that life-giving leap was not metaphorical
and struck by hope, you’re taken aback
and furious that you stalled — knowing the steps required for forward momentum, for life, and not taking them.

new life, a change, bought cheap, rearranged;
sometimes one leap’s too short for “in”, but never-wager folks don’t win

fog rolled in today

poetry

the muffling of sound
the sun hidden behind the white engulfing the trees
and the constant reminder of our
forced submission to nature
our true blindness
able to overcome polio, leprosy, even tuberculosis
but unable to see down the street
past the corner with the 10 car pile-up soon to be 11
because of the way the sun is hidden behind the white engulfing the trees
and the fully muffled….
the silence.

some blood better left outjected

poetry

i’ve fished for fresh blood
for flesh and blood
blood, the non-stagnant type
to bring life to this flatlining
place so many of us call home

we’ve received some applicants
blood that wants in
but we must check blood type
and confirm it is virus free.

worse than life-bringing blood is the type that looks like such but when the gates are opened and the fresh let in the body rejects it and spits it out where it is then of no use to anyone at tall.