“a face / from the ancient gallery”

today i got up so late i

decided to take the bus to work. a knot of people,

a white dog dim in a totebag, squint vaguely west

where the bus’ll be rolling in. a crossingguard

motions across the way: a fenced-in schoolyard. older kids

running with games or late again. chatter dins. then pipes up

a loudspeaker, megaphone. my eyes search for what my ears can’t.

laughing baritone: it intones:

the killer awoke before dawn

and i think,

music. they must have the classics on. unfazed,

the playground games continue. he put his boots on,

the pendulum swings again, and eyes at the busstop

begin to flick uneasy. he took a face

from the ancient gallery and he

walked on dooown the hall

maybe a principal. a ranter? but as if it happens every day,

they begin to line up to go inside. the voice,

smug, deft, as if quoting shakespeare. as if

for them it might as well be shakespeare. dusted off

from the shelf:

more figurine than figure.

reliable source

seven days of
work yet. rain and chill. there’s
on the news a shooting per day and yet
another trend:
why the same headlines? i remarked
last night, sleepily, to a constallation, freckles on
the boy’s back. i mean,
why are they always finding crack in babies’ cribs?
he may have found a reply, but i was already somewhere
between dreams and tall ships. there’s so many
gaps in reporting; shoddy, infuriating. but then
i never know to ask the right
questions
’til i see the photos after:
or i ask you.

get well Fidel

My online news perusal is dictated by my place of employment, while my newsprint perusal is dictated by how much I wish to spend, and how much paper waste I am willing to justify throwing away. So, typically, my day goes like this:

After logging into the network, the MSN homepage pops up. I click on any enticing headline, usually by the Associated Press or Reuters, and the network’s internet filter immediately intercepts the next page with the announcement that I will be able to look at “News and Media” for no more than 60 minutes per day. Knowing that time’s-a-wasting, I don’t bother seeking reliable, incisive news sources/stories. I am happy to get any news at all. For local news/shootings in my environs, I log into Philly.com which boasts the two-headed monster of both the Inquirer and The Daily News.

Today I learned that an ailing Fidel Casto has ceded power to his hermano menor (I found and read the Spanish language version on MSN), that a key figure in Inquirer/Daily News publishing has ceded power to a next-in-line, that Tastycake Co. may be moving out, and that it is very hot outside. I would deign to provide specifics about these stories, but to do that I would have to reread them. Unfortunately for me, my 60 minutes is/are up.

I am a huge fan of free newspapers. The Metro provides for great daily lunchtime reading. And, as it is a slender publication, less paper waste will end up in a city landfill.

receptionist schadenfreude

again the company’s

phone system choked. receptionist

schadenfreude

press to deploy

kalender

 

the year explained

i average one bitty artpiece per year. happens

in spring. maybe for a show; i wouldn’t care

otherwise. this time, i dropped a tiny plastic compass. front severed

from back, needle flew off. For it’s re-assembly, i retrofitted

the four directions in calendar fashion:

north= june

west= september

south= december

east= march

some further assembly, and an entire silver sharpie later,

i created a three-dimensional, 5″x5″-ish blueprint/model

of the turning of a year.

it progresses in a circle, counterclockwise.

while the piece itself draws favourable remarks, the logic

pinning it together (the year as a counterclockwise circle)

encourages almost universal ridicule

like a ptolemaic system

or flat-earther. i tell them, picture it

the way you observe the sun in one day:

east=morning/spring

north=noon/summer

west=evening/autumn

south=night/winter

“guitar” intro.

my mother had a guitar, dreadnought, unwieldy, coppered over with treetrunks of steel strings. it was like a piece of furniture, since it leaned on the furniture. it had four stages of life.

today philadelphia

today philadelphia

never.

explosive

 

“you’re holding an

heirloom,” busstop man

pointed, moved. “the

satchel-bombs. carried

in a bag like yours. must have been

from the second world war! you pull it

out and–

–BLAM!–

throw it into the enemy

CAMP!”

greetingcard

without you
i am
ridiculous.

parse/parsec

[in atomizing, analyzing, framing a light-year]

melt down

and after it all has melted

where would you find me again?

–i too awake each morning

grasping for a breath

afternoon in the square

a precarious chemistry:
configurations of people
who she is and

where she is,
and whether she should
or could.

afternoon in the square,
like flies in a tangent
they alight
and scatter.

broken compass

we’ll always

point at “North.”

but it won’t

be “North.”

omnivore carniverse

a fluffy display window
in the cold. i think they sold
stationery, suitcases. white quill feathers and
pseudosnow.

not where i am

not where i am is
bounding out like a dog. there’s something
animal in the wind’s flinging
of the liner from a trashcan.