According to Hopeless

(This is still a work in progress)



The icecaps melt while our hearts freeze

and Global Chilling sets in.

Spotted owls are as endangered as kind words

in a forest of evergreens and bigotry.

Some souls die unsaved, but by all means

save your guns.

I’ll use the First Amendment to shoot you in the heart,

then the Second Amendment to shoot you in the head.

Strangely enough,

with all our social consciousness…

we are morally knocked out.

I would say, “Run for your life.”

But where is a poor refugee to go these days?

Walked a few blocks to the church

there on Sherman Way,

trying to find some answers.

Better answers were found across the street.

in a plate of rice and beans.

I watched my laundry spin

on the corner of Reseda and Wyandotte.

Those were my last four quarters to spend

before the Four Horsemen arrive.

The Chair

A funny thing to remember: that chair.

Squeaked and squealed

Reclined and relaxed.

Iconic really – no question

as to whose chair it was.

An odd combination of

vinyl and mechanics.

I would try it out from time to time.

Play with the knobs that started

the chair a-buzzing with that strange

vibrating massage, the large roller moving

the spine around. 

The leg rest sounded oddly like

a lawnmower

and made the feet the tingle.

My whole life

you had the exact same chair.

Working, eating, power-napping.

Coming in from driving

trucks, tractors, forklifts.

Always landing in that chair.

You were in that chair on the last day.

And when I am missing you

(which is always)

I somehow always think of

the chair.

A funny thing to remember.

Change Comes (a sestina)

Change Comes

Nothing changed while I feared what I might read

in your book.  Afraid of holding up a mirror

and seeing nothing, no one, nobody.

The wind changed from East to West,

a signal of change for this adventure.

Normally I would love windy days.

We don’t talk much, these days.

I grabbed the National Geographic and read

an article about Mongolia, an adventure

in itself.  Not unlike cocaine on a mirror.

And I sit, dreaming of the West,

knowing that I have trusted nobody.

Often times, at night, I talk when nobody

is there.  And this lasts for days.

“As far as the East is from the West…”

It sounds like something I read

once, when I wasn’t scared of the mirror.

Not always thrilling, this adventure.

Montana.  Now that sounds like adventure.

For days, riding a horse with nobody

else around.  No need for a mirror.

On my back, staring at stars, escaping for days.

Maybe then I could read

unafraid and heading west.

Lived in the East.  Lived out West.

I was excited for a new adventure.

It was nothing like I read,

and I still came to trust nobody.

In a sea of people for weeks, days

as a boat sits still on water like a mirror.

So I hold up my old shaving mirror

and send flashing signals west.

Watch out for me in the coming days.

I am starting a new adventure.

And I will rise as somebody from nobody,

like it says in the book I read.