III.- A return to normalcy

On the street

sweltering fumes rose from block after block

and our heads swam with beer.

The dark kind, less like beer and more liquor.

I can smell the smoke on you, I said.

A long drag of summer.

A return to normalcy -

the other seasons, deviant.

Dead, dying or diseased.

My breathing set side by side with coughing.

Your dress hung off you like curtains

and you concealed your bagged eyes

with concealer and sunglasses.

You mourned, the days passed by without you noticing.

Our trysts revolved around sport

food and pieces of Orbit.

In rapid succession

our own orbit was elliptical -

at times close and others distant.

I wake up removed.

Clove clinging to cilia,

scotch served clean

and always regretful of the past.

Like putting on a sad song

and walking away from the music

unwilling to listen but needing it to be playing.

Scene bars with PBR.

Text messages and penitence.

II.-An ill-fitting dress

When people emerge from Winter

bleak eyes three months dimmer from

florescent lights

they open their cores to the thought

that their gametes could converge with another's.

But like the worst night of a show's run,

where the New York Times reviewer sits in row two

and stares down his nose, through his glasses, 

and chortles. CHORTLES! -

I shaved a forest of growth

and she put on an ill-fitting dress.

We walked down to the corner 

(or we met there, I can't remember. Damn the cold.)

and bellied up to the bar.

The spring threatened, but wavered.

It was warm, but it wasn't.

It was nice, but it was snowing.

It rained for three days straight.

But inside, my Blackberry still went off.

Her iPhone tempted her to better company.

Maybe the promise of a better time, with better people

and more attractive mates.

She told me how wonderful the springtime was

and I remarked on how tree pollen made me feel lightheaded, but not high.

My phone went off and hers did too.

I laughed, and though of how the poor rely on their technology.

The trick to being rich, I said finally, is to be above your phone and e-mail.

Be there, but not there. Be so there that you are unable to be found.

Like Jesus. 

(If there was ever a fellow above it all, it was Jesus. Body and mind.)

Jesus' would have never answered his cellphone.

I.- Systems Of Commerce

Snow falls in February

and people on their way to work

crash their cars,

choking systems of commerce.

It's a good thing mag chloride

(not just good for making tofu)

stopped the metal monster

from sliding across the median.

Unprepared and unready

for the thing February is known for.

What did you expect, I told her

it snows and people die.

We haven't evolved past dying,

yet.

She doesn't care,

she just walked across the courtyard,

picking up after her dog.

They'll give you a ticket you know.

She didn't hear a word I said to her,

and she should have been paying attention, too.

But she thinks she knows it all.

And what do I know? She could be God,

we all could 

and she's never convinced me of anything less.

Inside the apartment building, 

she keeps a candle lit.

The landlord doesn't know,

and never will. They can't take it away from me.

Remember the dorm? Remember the no candle rule?

It's inhuman to make man live without fire.

The first technology.

Take away my cell phone, then. My Macbook.

They run my life. 

I suppose we've always

centered our lives around our newest technology,

she said, rubbing her hands together.

She blew the candle out,

turned off the computer, and her cell phone.

Left the bed, naked, without covering herself.

Cruelest Month

This is not poetry. This is prose, explaining my new radminds project, available, like most everything, in easy-to-digest installments. 

Like Kaili, who is going to be posting parts of a screenplay he's been working on, I'm going to work on and post parts of a poem.

I'll be posting the first part later tonight.

We're still looking for people to contribute. Would you like to?