theatre of the absurd - 2

two stupid women in a stupid conversation on a bike
one with breasts hard from breast-feeding,
the other with newspaper headlines stuffed in her bra
you know the problem with you is that you know too much
the one in pain tells the other one
who instantly remembers Jack, who
was born when he was fourteen

she chews her bubble gum wrapper,
feeling ticklish in her upper-middle part,
but suddenly remembers where her lost pen really is
all I care is to be with money
to travel to Alaska and eat those poison weeds
but i don't know where I am going
she doesn't know where she's headed

she needs to be with her baby soon but
the other one wants to touch her alien baby,
to rip up the agony of maternity and mommy-hood
it's all insane, when one cannot even buy gasoline,
she's barely, barely chronometrable!
the problem with you is your clogged ears
one says to the other (don't matter which)
the brain should be minced well
the head should tilt, equally well

if they're lucky, the next thing that'll come in their way
is a cargo truck full of Christmas presents
if anything happens to their heads,
like brain knockout or sumthin,
they'll be on the track to happyness

stupid is pretty clever these days
(meanwhile, they're wet, sticky, and smell like
milk)

theatre of the absurd - 1

the rain is still falling
the old house is crying
year after year
idiots don't read signs

but I am looking at your children's faces
small as they are, how thin and blank
I'm trying not to be bothered by their
stinking unhappiness

next agenda of this global warming thing:
spreading the rumor of your misbehavior
of your not learning anything from the
damaged, puddled road
how it ended your husband's life
of what has made your stinking children

at tea time, they chat leisurely and
drink cups of rainwater
their faces yellowing
the vegetables on absinthe
forget, forgot, forgotten

Girls talk

Oh La La cafe, Saturday evening
It was good not to know anybody
Besides, I had my back on almost everybody

We talked in between our chicken salads
And hot caramel latte
This isn't just mentioning or list-making
This is so that you taste what we tasted

But you couldn't
It was a raisin from heaven
Not to have a soul to tell a secret

You are not that lucky, no
To have what I have
To find what I found

To be NOT with the other half of you
To have not slept with it
The truest, the closest to your
Beautiful death bed

rain

rain. again.
the young man is talking to his buddy
in a flooded hallway
too polite to sit on the white plastic chair
too pointless
the botanist and the weatherman
finger-counting what grows
and what collapses in the rain

here, where water comes from every direction,
the piece of ceiling that keeps you dry
is your darling friend. the cry over the phone
of your brokenhearted sister is a dream
you once dreamed.
the man to whom she's betrothed is
an unfounded myth - soon will be
washed away

fear is time-constrained
the water, the earth, the marriage
the demolition under the mud,
what's put to sleep - or who -
the history of love/life,
quietly decoded

worn

what in hell happens to the water running free?
this morning I lived up the unhappy session
laughing at the blocked flow
my canoe bumping around
"why those tears," one asked
oh, I've got million things to say
but it wouldn't be necessary
a redundancy, I should say
time is precious, is it not?
but who can predict
perhaps someday I really will stop
running away
or be stopped by a current

the spool

when the grey clouds swarm over my head,
I just move an inch away from your soul
we’ve learned to march on, we part, we hesitate
your dark side knows why a song climbs to a climax
then, your decrescendo and
the tinkling of my empty glass on the table

which spool is playing now? our bodies lie still,
un-betrothed, thus the story goes, thus the story will end
ears impaired by cries of the souls groping for the light
your eyes grow tired, my words do little to ease up
our symmetrical margins keep building and collapsing

we pretend we’re innocent of the fraud
we don’t say that we need to destroy to live

this is for another repetition, now moving in lethargy
heavy-eyed, untangling the night
from this prison cell

stupid longing,
when one is allowed a good sleep?

tea

cinnamon orange tea, with a slush of Midwest fall
in the white “Wizard of Oz” cup
it’s going down the sink – the tea
it’s going to fly out of the window – the cup
your hand has committed crime of neglect
it has lost its authority to hold up or down
my sanity – all that can keep
a good glass of tea from being wasted

of the so many things we’re guilty of
there is sour we left in each other’s insides
what you’ve left you may not lay claim to
what I threw up is what I’d betrayed

past winter, past the dead souls
I’m not yet okay though I shun
those who read the signs on me
what do they know?
what do you know of the lives of
the blood suckers?
I hide from the white lights

cinnamon orange tea in the cup that still holds up
my hands know the warmth and are patient
after all, they won’t wait forever
nothing will – we’re all bound to
have a sip before we go