Pretentious Poet with an MFA

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Oh yes, I am pretentious with my MFA and
experimental

verse.

I love to string esoteric
words together, as they anguish abstractly with
misunderstood longing mixed in moonlight.
This, this, and this, you see what I mean?
Of course you do, because you’re reading my
perfect poetry, does it not remind you of an
eigenvector, my precocious linear transformation
word that you pretend to know, but don’t,
because you are not me, you see, that is the
whole point of so much of this, divide, separate
me from you and all the rest, who shall and should
remain unpublished.

Grad School Late Night

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12am, my usual quitting time, when the
Cherry Coke has run out and I’m done
munching on plain M&M’S, and whatever
I’m writing or reading starts to repeat over
and over, telling me the night is complete.

But sometimes I have to push the clock back,
mix water in with the caffeine and sugar, stay
hydrated, which leads to bathroom, me walking
empty hallway corridors after 2am, maze of fluorescent
lit academia, everyone else sleeping, sleeping.

I turn off my ghosts are real imagination
and focus on whatever I’m thinking about,
Ambrose O’Higgins or some other obscure figure
from South America’s past, when turning the corner
on my way back to study, he screams, I scream.

A freaked out bearded janitor and me like looking into a
mirror seeing myself older with blotchy skin, but same
expression of holy mother of, until we both figure it out and
smile, laugh in fright, then wordlessly walk past each other
into the building’s vacant night.

Music of Bearded Angels

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he always wanted to
tell people how obsessed
he was with music
piano like mozart endless
dreams before sleep, he
heard his mother in
this sound night after
night, and the doo
wop voices on street
corners like his father
snapping fingers in a
tight white t-shirt, could
have been the fonz

it all surrounds him
these memories of morrissey
sweetness, he was only
joking, gosh that was
poetry when poetry was
supposed to be just
robert frost, maybe dickinson
and these memories are
just his, his ventura
highway in the seventies
summer of bushy hair
and bee gee bearded
angels, like endless youth
living in the air

Walking Into Walgreens

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they usually know
what they want
the gum or
shiny People Magazine

others walk the
aisles, an activity
to pass the
time in fluorescent

lights, examine lipsticks
red and pink,
most days there
is a man

sometimes a woman
who sits out
front, any help?
it is both

question and statement
they are usually
ignored except for
those few who

drop quarters in
the old coffee
cup, thank you
they say, and

customers smile before
looking for cuticle
scissors or deodorant
to smell better

this is all
normal at Walgreens
in San Francisco
maybe other places

Downtown Santiago, Chile

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polka-dotted white shirt collar 
in the rain, little black bits of

sulphur dioxide and nitrogen 
oxide, liquid smog clears the

Andean air, never knew the
mountains were there before

storms of winter, when all
is pure again, I wait for the

micro (bus), slicked hair under
umbrella, leather jacket like 

a Russian made man to hustle
on these Spanish speaking streets

in transit to work for finance
power company, electricity and me

daydreaming of Neruda in dirty drips
of sky just asking, why? why?

Thomas Edison Prays

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I read somewhere
Thomas Edison had
a thinking bench
upstairs alone in
that room he
just sat and
thought and thought
and sat, sometimes
he would find
ideas and sometimes
they found him
because he was
waiting and not
really doing much
of anything, kind
of praying to
silence that something
would arrive and
if he sat
long enough and
was very quiet
something always did

Playing Left Field

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Standing as if a sundial, my hand, a glove shadowing time.
Waiting for the ball I blink, wink, chew gum, itch my rear,
because nobody is watching me out in the wilderness where
gnats and sun, smell of cut grass envelop me, make me
a tall insect wearing stripes, socks hiked up high. I pace, shuffle
cleats, shout “Hey Batter, Batter,” as if my distant voice matters.

Take away white lines, the small crowd, he’s just a bushy haired
boy in a quiet meadow, looks like he might be talking to himself.
Or god knows who he is or what he is doing out there alone, a 
quiet king with monarchs that flutter by. Until wooden bat breaks 
daydreams, interrupts his nature, baseball soars over his head.