If Beatniks Had Used Google

For yesterday's poetic exercise, I decided to employ a variation of William Burrough's cut-up technique, by typing two word search cues into Google, and copying the first four phrases that came up. The results were both poignant and hilarious.

If Beatniks Had Used Google

They are my noble masters--

They are taking the Hobbits to Isengard,

They are made of meat,

They are in Spanish.

Can I run it,

Can I stream it

Can I kick it--

Can I have your number?

I go back.

I go to seek a great perhaps.

I go crazy,

I go hard in the paint.

Why can't I own a Canadian?

Why can a ghost solve the equation?

Why can I not get a girlfriend?

Why can I see my breath?

It may be tightly coiled.

It may be spotted in a pet store.

It may get loud.

It may be found in a tank.

But she did look back;

but she is my student,

but she trippy like Nirvana,

but she sure likes the bone.

Aging Gracefully

Aging Gracefully


Put it all aside,
the past is just another
toxin to release.


Don't be surprised when
the weather is seasonal,
calmly acquiescence.

It's better that way,
your teeth will fall out slower,
you'll stand up straighter.

Everything has gone
exactly as it should
have gone, even you.

Moment of Truth

Well, I have made it to Day Five and am already sliding,more than a bit.  I figure that if I can slog along from here, I can manage to achieve at least 28 days of my 30-day vow, and perhaps I can even make up the others later.  I rather like today's offering, though, and its theme of lost love--reminding me of the adage that the opposite of love is not hatred, it's indifference.

MOMENT OF TRUTH

We sit at the table and share a plate

of nachos, because you are hungry

and have no money, and I

always end up paying for everything.

From the looks of your face

swollen and white in bar light

you haven't done much for months

except stay indoors,
while eating and sleeping

and deflecting the sun.

You swallow carefully

and avoid eye contact

and I remember another bar

only a couple of years ago

and your expression then
as I returned from the bathroom,

how much I wanted everything to quit moving

and never change again.

Your face is nothing

like it was that night, alive

and revealing much more than you intended--

now your apathy wears itself

like clothing you can't discard

as you chew slowly and say,

“These are really excellent nachos.

Thank you.”

One Not So Enchanted Evening

Day Two, and I'm still having some  trouble getting into the flow.  Finally, I decided to write a limerick about one of my husband's favorite activities.

One Not So Enchanted Evening

A silly young fellow named Russell

decided he needed to flex muscle,

A muscle did dance

in the folds of his pants

and so to his deeds he did hustle.

Four Haikus

I am participating in the www.napowrimo.net  one-poem-a-day-for-30-days challenge.  One Day One, I was feeling a bit lazy, so I decided to just write a haiku.  I wound up writing four haikus; they seem oddly linked.

Four Haikus

The heavy cold air

presses against my eardrums

Can't escape my brain.

You were in my car

slapping yourself in the face,

then your mother died.

I am not a mermaid,

when waves crawl over my deck

I'm inside, hiding.

Everybody cries,

no one wins the pony now,

turn off the TV.