Back Roads
What do we do when the day stalls out
on a back road, one you don’t at first
recognize, as if this hasn’t happened
before, but it has, and you know what
comes next. You open the hood on your
life and begin to tinker with what you
find, as if there is a simple fix to all this.
Perhaps your battery needs charging or
maybe it’s a matter of choosing the right
things to jiggle and swear at. Perhaps it’s
a matter of attitude or personal mindset,
the way you’ve been handling the day to
day. Back roads become destinations if
we let things get beyond us. Perhaps all
this stalling out is nothing more than what
happens when we slow down too much
and assume that there’s something wrong
with everything around us. It’s easy to have
things turn out not the way we wanted them.
Like now our days dress the same, and say
much the same things when questioned.
An afternoon can spend itself dealing with
the sameness of sameness, trying to buy
its way out with promises that the next time
the time will be consumed in trying to find
things that fit – and fit in with the things we
hope cover the monotony, the repetitiveness
the dull consistency that leaves us out here
stalled out on this crumbling back road.
Reading to Myself
Halfway through
I lost my way
In his poem
Became lost
In the words
A dark forest
To stumble through
A tilt of the page
And there I was
By myself
Whispering to myself
About how often
This happened
A bit of bad eyesight
If I were lucky
Or something more
Something dangerous
An unavoidable lapse
Perhaps
Or something permanent
Forever lost
In a maze of my own
Stuck in this labyrinth
Of my own making
Forever lost
In someone else’s poem
Halfway through
I may be here
From now on.
Terrorism TV
We’re learning about terrorism from
The best of ’em, the worst of ‘em
Isis, Hezbollah, and Hamas, the better
Known groups, and those smaller ones
And individuals who often claim
Responsibility for some attack, explosion
Or the assassination of some political figure
Anything to get to be part of the news on
Our various news networks, claim it and
Get the fame, the recognition they need in
The terrorist game. We watch it go on
24 hours a day, yesterday, last night, this morning.
It’s like an out of control weed, a pandemic,
A bit of climate change that is drying us out
Leaving us the shell of our former selves.
Now we have become students of death, in its
Various forms, destruction for its own sake.
We’ve become helpless talking heads that
Are watching the world come apart, and we
Are terrorizing ourselves with it.
