An Economic Breach

Contracts class was cancelled this morning,

so I took my coffee to the porch, where

I smoked fine North Carolinian tobacco

out of a hand-made maple pipe and watched

the sun rise over the cement factory, a train

rolled by, tooting its horn -- a 19th Century

industrialist would stare at this site in marvel,

finding a certain beauty in American industry, but

now . . . hell, even now there's a certain beauty

in the way the sun reflects off those metal chimneys . . .

a bird builds her nest in a tree in the front yard

and the children hustle down the street headed

for school, and I guess I should too for a meeting

of the minds. But this exchange of time in class

for time on the porch was time well spent. Now,

that's consideration.

Raleigh,

3-27-2012

I'm judging you too

When you see me walk out of the 24-hour

pharmacy with a bottle of wine and a bag of coffee

I hope you think, such an efficient young man.

He doesn't waste his time.

Redlands, CA

March 7, 2011

I must have fallen asleep (and now I'm awake again)

The hairs on my cheeks are longer,

my finger nails are twice their size

and there is a large crane

towering over downtown in my hometown.

Fine things that I thought were fine

are not fine to me anymore. Young woman

look much too young, uninteresting and boring.

Booze sometimes seems fine

but sometimes it seems like the worst

like a train sitting idle in central Wichita.

I can see my-self now in Kansas, living quietly,

where I used to only see Los Angeles

or another major American city. They seem crowded,

like the hallways of my old high school.

The only things that keep me young now

are the California coastline and the California desert

and sometimes words arranged in the right order

will get me excited enough to read them straight

for hours a sitting. Blue is my color, but red

means passion and I'm no stranger, but

I must have fallen asleep, because I need

coffee, coffee cake and I have coffee eyes.

Redlands, CA

10/14/10