|
two poems
WARM DAY IN
SPRING
The bodies
from the war
Lying in state
Police board the train today
It’s a good day for a war
It’s a good day for a train
I’m making plans for my garden
Digging the dirt
Throwing a 40 pound bag of top soil
I go to Home Depot
I’m a happy man
All those garden supplies and power tools
Somewhere else is a war
There’s always a war somewhere to fuck everything up
You hear about it on the news
It messes up the Oscars
It messes up feel good billboards
How you going to enjoy mindless entertainment
When there’s something to think about?
Life and death
Matters of grave import
Not just which cola do I buy
Don’t get me wrong
I want to buy cola
I want to quietly propagate
Teach my children which gameshow to watch
This is my raison d etre
This is my $64,000 question
I will ask myself in a very small focus group consisting of me
I will break the bonds of this interminable tragedy
Bombs falling while I smoke another Marlboro red
But it’s not about cigarettes
Or who’s currently beating the mets
Only if it’s the regular season
Only if they’re not dead last
150 games out
Don’t laugh it can happen
Did I say Dead?
There I go again
I think it’s lurking in my unconscious
These insufferable philosophies
This existentialism
It’s not a religion
Sure I go to church
But that’s what I do on holidays
Usually only Easter and Christmas
I try to say a prayer for the mets
For the dead
Lying there breathless
Young and old
But it’s worse when they’re young
Their moms crying
They way Moms do
I want to avoid these truths
Instead I think about the words they use on the news
It all sounds so antiseptic
When I don’t let my imagination run wild
Stop thinking about the mothers
Focus on the sporting element
The fact that we will kick some ass
I try to revel in this notion
But it’s momentary
My stomach starts to hurt
I want that comfort
The one where all this pain goes away
The quiet one
Where I worry about nothing
The one where I’m sleeping
Drunk and sleeping
I don’t wake up
I don’t wake up until the morning.
ASPIRING TO
BODDHICHITTA
I could die
today
It would not be so far-fetched
Sitting in this seat
In car 5012
It could happen this very moment
Or later during the Passover meal
I could fall face first into matzo ball soup and drown
After a massive heart attack
This could be my very last
The final trip home
Yet I worry about my Van Gogh umbrella
Flowers in Arles
A nice blue color
That I may have left in Fire Safety class
I spend my time
Looking at Siamese connections
Green means sprinkler
Red means standpipe
Yellow is a combination system
I spend my energy
Angry that there are dishes in the sink
Yet I do not wash them
If the baby cries
I get upset
Wondering what is taking my wife so long
This is the problem
I could croak
Wind up a bag of bones
Be cremated, my soul carried off in a grey cloud
Rising above my embodiment
Yet while I’m here
I think about the argument I hope to have
with Townsend, the sometimes brusque porter
I wish tragedy upon the pedestrian who has the nerve to
remind me that bikes belong in the street
I plot revenge against a host of others too numerous to mention
Meanwhile forgetting the odd motley sky
The cold foreboding over Newark
The shadows that play along a security guard’s face
The interesting disperse of $10 raincoats along 42nd
I am comatose
Surrounded by vague imagining I take to be my mind
Then I am shoved outside the methadone center
I instantly wake up
Good thing
As a garment worker is about to run me over
with a dolly full of fabric
I am irritated then thankful
May I stay awake and realize
The details of this endeavor
Before it is too late
On the day of my death.
Tom Obrzut runs a shelter for the homeless in mid-town Manhattan. He has
been published widely in many small press magazines including Brooklyn
Review, Home Planet News, Long Shot, and others. He has a web-site at
tomobz.blogspot.com. He is the editor of Arbella magazine. Tom has
coordinated several spoken word series over the last twenty years and
teaches poetry to special populations including the elderly, the
homeless, children, and the mentally ill. |