stairs

_______________

we took stairs
to the rust-glow sundown roof
and cigarette end of a crystal Age.
there, held close against summer's evening chill
i whisper your lost eternities--
it's all chipped-side, inside, every side cracked up,
our bunker-down answers empty, shrill--
rubbing afternoon sleep-caked eyes,
a weather-beat child coming to realize
your cheek is the best part of sunsets.
at Age's end the sun slinks down
fog-slow, a lover's gentle hands upon the sky,
groggy floor-strewn nap interrupted.
there is such death in making love;
so goes the world,
closing our clear-brilliant Age.
amidst brick chimneys four floors up
we watch our neighbors' turgid lives
cheek to cheek,
standing together at the end, love.
we stand together, each
deep-alone eternal moment
stair-dropped into the next
cheek to cheek.




July 2010

Preach it, I guess

    "You say the same dumb shit.  Every time."
    We closed at 9:30 PM and it is 9:54 PM now.  I am in the Accounting Department looking lost, looking for something.  There is an inbox labeled, "End of Shift Reports."  I rifle through it.  I cannot find Alina's report, the one with the missing check, the check that came in after she left before I left.  The check is in an envelope labeled "Alina B, Check for $375 Driver's Ed, I don't know where this goes," and there is a corresponding receipt inside with the check.  There is a safe where we always put the money.  I fumble with its drop-in door, stub my fingers, let the blackness swallow envelope and check.
    "Every time.  The same--dumb--shit."
    I am walking home.  I am passing a group of people on the patio at the 61c Café having coffee and conversation at 10:13 PM.  I am passing some kids in a small corner park; I stop because my shoe has worked itself untied.  I say "park" but it is basically four trees planted in concrete and some concrete flowerboxes and there are some concrete benches the kids are sitting on.  It is park-ish.  One of the kids is complaining about orientation: he learned nothing, it was useless.  I suppose he is right.  I am done tying my shoe; I am moving on; the girls listening to him seem interested.
    Half of about everyone is interested in fighting the machine: skip your orientation, put your papers out of order, live off your parents' income, try to be a rockstar.  Or an actress.  The other half of about everyone is completely one hundred percent absolutely working the machine.  Working it, working for it.  Study hard in school and get eight hours of sleep a night and be a dick to everyone.  Use your connections to get a job you don't deserve.  Sacrifice a friend to earn a promotion.  Etc.  So that's two halves of about everyone: black and white, more or less, I think.  There are girls to be had in either direction, too, by the way.  Nobody does anything for "the girls" because they're everywhere.  Really everywhere.
    "I swear to God.  Every time."
    I am a little further down Murray Avenue and I am passing a pizza shop and there is a man outside sitting at a table with a menu in his right hand and a cell phone in his left hand.  The cell phone is what keeps saying the same dumb shit, every time, he swears to God.  I agree with him silently.  I really do say the same dumb shit every time.  Most of us do, I suppose, but particularly me.  Any time I argue with anyone it is the same dumb words coming out of my mouth.  Every time.  Preach it.  Every time.
    When I pass Starbucks I notice there are only two girls there.  I remember there was only one girl at the Crazy Mocha some ways back up Murray.  Where are all the girls?  Must be Guys Night Out for Coffee.  Either that, or all the girls are clustered at 61c.  Or they are all at bars getting drinks for free from gents (who aren't gentlemen at all) who are either fighting or using the machine.  Done both, myself, but it never got me any girls really.
    First I was a machinist, first class.  Followed rules, or at least insisted Everyone Else follow the rules.  For real.  I told a cop to stop smoking when I was five: he thought it was cute, but really I was telling him because (a) he is a cop, and therefore Ought To Be an example of rule-following, model citizenship, law-abidingness, and (b) he was walking through the Non-Smoking section of the restaurant.  I'm serious.  The sign was right over his head.  Idiot.
    Pretty quickly I realized I didn't fit into the machine super good.  I never got hardcore about it--really I lived pretty tame--but I made my subtle, ironic strikes.  Examples: I went to a very proper, conservative college.  While I was president of the Honors Student Council, I got hauled in by the campus security for: Inciting Mob Behavior, Breaking and Entering, Curfew Violation(s), and Illegal Manipulation of Traffic Control Device(s).  Next year, as the very important editor of the campus newspaper, I changed the paper's name to the "School Censored Newspaper" for one day in February to protest administration's censorship.  I got fired.  People heard about it.  (As a footnote, the administration was rocked by a scandal in the following year and most of them got fired too, so maybe I was right, but maybe not).  Then in grad school I refused to get a job for the purpose of experiencing poverty.  I did it.  It was because I wanted to live outside the machine.  I was reading Orwell's "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" annually, and I would quote it to myself.  In retrospect, it is not a very great book.
    But: you can't fight the machine when you get married.  Found out.  I got married in 2008 and I got a cheap full-time job with someone my dad knew.  I didn't deserve the job.  Muddled through, had an office and a desk and I wore a tie.  You can see me capitulating right there from the get-go.  Use or get used.  Or both. 
    We got an apartment, nice side of town, two cats.  Then I finished my degree at the same time my boss had to downsize, and I became unemployed and overqualified in May.  Still that way.  Work front desk at a gym now.  See what I mean: can't fight it when you get married.  Got to pay rent, buy lettuce, stuff like that.  Electric bills.
    Someone left a beer can in my mailbox and I find it when I finally get home.  Look at it for a second, carry it to the dumpster out back, chuck it in; stand there thinking with both hands pocketed.  Cheap beer.  Empty.  Odd place for it.  Although, to be honest, I myself have seriously considered leaving trash in my mailbox before.  It's very convenient if you're going out and have something in your hand, like a yogurt, or a beer.  Never done it though.  Too scared of the machine, I guess.
    She won't be home: I unlock the door, step in; floor creaks, I turn on some light.  She isn't home.  I cross the apartment, sit down.  It is hot.  Kind of expensive to run the air conditioning. 
    Right now she is at a party with some work friends.  This happened before, it happens occasionally.  I wrote a poem about it one time, a super awful terrible poem with the lines "i will be at home writing this / you will be at a party with your enemies / celebrating your defeat."  Doesn't mean anything I understand except: (1) she is partying with friends, (2) I am home late from work wondering (a) if I can just eat chips for dinner, and (b) if she is fun to be around at parties.
    Later, we could argue about it.  When she gets home, or tomorrow morning, or both.  But we won't argue because I always say the same dumb shit, every time, he swears to God.  Preach it, I guess.



 
August 2010