Author: Roger Mugs

if you give a man independence

poetry

if you give a man independence
he’s going to buy a motorcycle
he’ll cruise the world for days
perhaps months
then he’s going to want someone
to share it with

if you give a man a woman
he’ll take her with him and they’ll
build shared experience in some of the
craziest places on earth
then he’ll fall in love with her

if you give a man a wife
they’ll fall more in love
and soon they’ll want someone
to make their love a family
and they’ll begin to think about little
ones

if you give a man a child
he’ll ball his eyes out at first
glimpse of the miracle he helped
to produce and love it watch it grow
until it can run around and eat on it’s
own then he’ll want some more

if you give a man a family
he’s going to become addicted
to being a father and husband
and find a satisfaction in life he
never knew. but then one night
he’ll be sharing a beer with a single
friend who owns a motorcycle
and he’ll begin thinking

i wonder what it would be like
to have independence?

ah.

poetry

the power went out
and for twenty whole minutes
we faced the thought of no
computers
internet
or even the ability to read
in our candleless
flashlightless
preparedless
world of electricity
and i was shocked
at how dark dark gets

i thought it poetic
but don’t own a non-electric
way to express what i thought

it doesn’t so much matter what you think if there is an absolute truth then thats just whats true and there isn’t any way around it, some things are subjective like whether or not you like olives, one day you don’t like them and then you try them in gin martinis and you’re like ‘holy crap, this is delicious’ so the next thing you know you love them. well some things may be like that, but most are not. most are just the way things are and the way they’re not and you’re going to have live with the decisions you’ve made, but sometimes you also have to live with the decisions others have made for you. some of those were made thousands and thousands of years ago and may be the reason you have to wear glasses to see the chalk board starting in seventh grade and then progress into needing them all the time except during ultimate frisbee when you seem to be able to see okay because a frisbee is larger than a ball, large enough in fact that even without corrective lenses you can see, but it all points to something doesn’t it? does’t it point to something like a problem with how we came out? but we seem so unbelievably well polished and complex, how can the whole system work but little things be broken? where was the line drawn and why? these are just the beginnings of my ponderings and should you have made it this far, could you bear through just a few more? this time in verse.

poetry

guppies are just like fish
but smaller
and your hand in mine
just like mine
though i’m taller and
you’re softer

but thoughts like these
are not more quiet
or more gentle
against the skin
inside my head
pressing to my skull

telling me that this design
is flawed from some ancient
ancestor

who was smaller
just like me
but smarter
and made mistakes much
bigger

the mountains to come

poetry

we could live in fields of green
if we believed this was all there was
we could run in forests, climb hills
take in mountains
if this was all there was
better air could be breathed and
lives would matter so much less we
would enjoy them differently
if this is all there was

but if we believe there’s something more
life might look strange to those
if they believe this is all there is

i could word it better

poetry

if you are happy and you are aware of it put your hands together
if you are happy and you are aware of it put your hands together
if you are happy and you are yourself aware of it
and you are desiring to have someone with whom
you can share it with
if you are happy and you yourself are quite aware of it then quit
standing around and put your hands together in a noise making
fashion

this will demonstrate your happiness

hot pants like these

poetry

a thief broke through
my truck window
when the door was unlocked
and that hole where the lock
would have been

(came out on a first date
i walked up to the door and
put my key to open it for you
proud of my chivalry i shuddered
when the lock came out of the door
stuck to my key)

could have been opened just
by sticking your finger
through the hole and pushing
down

but you shattered my window
ripped off my dashboard and stole
the stereo you sold to me (probably already
stolen)
you told me it was one brand and gave me
another a week later.

you liar. signed the waver “p. diddy”

so here i stand in a junk yard
pulling apart pre-’85 chevy trucks
and removing windows then doors
then dashboards and discussing the price
of a car which runs but is worth very little
more than the $125 you get for turning
it into a box of scrapped metal

and i feel at home in your junk yard
across the street from where they’ll
open the wal-mart next week if everything
goes to plan and

the world (and your shack of a house) slowly moves
out of focus as i realize

your hot pants dont make me feel awkward
in the least

back when we owned it

poetry

on hedges where the green
grows so short it’s truly a green

and while

we dont play golf but we pursue
peruse the grounds smoking cigars
wearing jackets and beards we look
back on in our later lives
and think

“i have a mancrush on me in former
days. damn i looked good”

and we smoke ourselves into the floor
because thats what we do
we pursue excess as we peruseOURworld

reconnaissance as a mission

poetry

cartoons folk sneeze when
they shuldn’t (when all shuld be cwaiet)

i lack control of an altogether
different orifice
but volume a pitch
i alone control
behind my enemy’s lines

bombs aren’t meant to be dropped
in mere scouting

i’m not meant to be on
mere scouting