corporate angst

 

you try to be punk but you cut
an Apple logo in your arm
you’re nothing but a slave to a marketing ploy
to convert young, impressionable kids to an OS
you do not understand but it matches your iPod

 

wouldn’t you rather have carved
something a little less commercialized
into your flesh? something like “Vista Rocks”
or “I love IBM and Intel!”
or even a “Zune is better than iPod!”

 

so this poem is for you little girl
one day you will wish you hadn’t cut your arms
you’ll cringe at the ignorance of posting the picture
online for all the world to see and laugh about
and to have some strange creep write about

 

but this isn’t your poem, it’s MY poem
about you, you have no power over me or this page
you only have power over you and
that is why you cut, it’s the only thing you can have
control of and you can’t even control that?

 

If you really want help I can only offer you this:
1-800-448-3000
or you can apply for a job at Wal-Mart
they are always looking for people
to help slash prices.

learning each other

her parents worked during the day
so we had the entire summer to
explore each other’s bodies
young fingers painting imaginary lines
sometimes pausing to explore a scar or freckle

we stripped down and I laid on my back as she took
my ‘thing’ in her hands and
kind of turned it back and forth
from one palm to the other
examining each growing detail of it

her licking, kissing and smiling at me stopped
then it was my turn to examine her, completely
I ran my fingertips from her mouth to her breasts
to the bottoms of her feet then upwards to and across her inner thighs
then stopping to open and explore her, learning facts and dismissing fiction

our young smooth skin has aged and lightly wrinkled
now and the boy and girl now have boys
and girls of our own, but nothing,
nothing can compare to those days just laying there
and not being ashamed of our bodies

sometimes we talk and laugh about those days
when it was just us, in love and lusting for each other
before we started getting old and boring
remembering when sex was more than 10 minutes
of grunting followed by 8 hours of snoring

we were young, love was new and fun- and so were we
before the affairs, before the kids and before we grew so cold

just typing

these are just words
I am typing
on a page that you
are reading

I don’t claim to
have the clean lines
of Hemingway or the
ease of Bukowski

I have just these words
that I am now typing
on this page that you
are now reading

you see, no deep thoughts or
intimacy, no sickly sticky sweet words
penned to woo a lover
or convince people to like me

there were those words
that I had typed
there on that page
that you have now read