Saturday, July 24, 2010

meaningless

i drove past your house at midnight last night.
the road was dark, and my headlights swept over the black pavement, barely reaching far enough ahead for me to avoid the next bend.
(that is a metaphor.)
i really did drive past your house at midnight last night. funny, everything looked normal.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

when it's over

i felt a certain sadness as i closed the latest chapter in the book of my life. but i was sadder at the fact that i had reached the end than i was at the way that it ended.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

today is funny

drizzle is funny - it's sort of a mix
of raindrops and gumdrops and Twizzlers and Twix
which sort of remind me of stop signs and ducks
and crayons and cell phones and big pickup trucks
but anyway, drizzle's like rain without drops -
this poem is nonsense.
i think i will stop.

Monday, July 12, 2010

boulevard of broken dreams

I am not a very patient person, but I was determined to wait for those stupid chickens. A few weeks ago I lined the long, dark hallway with fluorescent red light strips and brought in cases and cases of bright white eggs. I laid the eggs on the floor, blanketing the concrete from wall to wall with little white orbs of expectation. I didn't count those eggs. I was waiting until they hatched.
For weeks I sat in the long, dark hallway watching those little white eggs do nothing. Their shells glowed red in the eerie incubating light, and sometimes I thought I saw them wriggle, but for the most part they were pretty quiet. It certainly wasn't a job for the impatient at heart, but I was very determined. I would not count those eggs.
Finally, one morning I woke up to a faint, hesitant sound. tap, tap tap (pause) tap, tap, tap. I opened my eyes to find a little yellow head with black beady eyes poking out of the reddish-hued egg next to my left ear. In about an hour, a wet, tired, and really very ugly chick was lying on the floor next to me, panting from its recent adventure. It peeped a few times before closing its eyes and falling asleep on the floor, still breathing heavily. I looked. I smiled. And then I counted.
One.
Soon the long, dark hallway was a chorus of tap, tap, taps and gentle peeping. I raced around the red-hued room, counting each shining body that lay on the concrete floor.
Two!
Three!
Four!
Five!
More taps, more peeps, more breaths, more chickens. I ran frantically from chick to chick, from tap to tap, counting, counting, always counting.
Thirty-five!
Thirty-six!
Thirty-seven!
Hurry, hurry, count the chickens. Don't miss any, don't miss one! The day you have waited for for so long - oh, so long - has come! They are hatching! They are here!
I was counting.
One hundred!
One-oh-one!
One-oh-two!
One-oh-three!
One-oh-four!
One-oh... Ouch!
Wait...
What?
Where am I?
My world was dark. I could feel a large lump forming on my forehead. I opened my eyes. My bruised head was resting on one of the concrete walls, the lights still casting their eerie red light on the long, dark hallway. How did I get here? I shook my head gently, trying to make sense of the bump, the wall, the egg shells at my feet.
What? Egg shells? Oh, right. One-oh-four.
I turned around from the wall, ready to resume my counting which had been so rudely interrupted. But as I faced the long, dark hallway, I was met with a very different sight than I expected. All around me, shattered eggs littered the floor. Yolks and whites spilled out of the shells and onto the concrete. There was not a chicken to be seen.
It had been a dream. A cruelly wonderful dream. A racing, counting, exhilarating dream. And in my sleepy excitement to count those dream chickens, as I sleepwalked from chick to chick, I had crushed all the eggs for which I'd been so determined to wait.
The bump on my forehead throbbed where I'd run into the wall.
One-oh-four. There had been one-oh-four. And now only egg shells covered the floor from lamp-covered wall to lamp-covered wall. All those chickens - all those hopes - were shattered.
i don't feel like writing.