The Ugly Tree

The tree was ugly

A chrome-needled creation
From the twenty-five dollar pile
At the local superstore
With pre-installed lights
Which did nothing to help its looks

Tall and narrow
To keep the cats
From perching on the branches

No star on top
To light any wise man's way
Nor a hidden pickle
For a joyous child to find

The tree was ugly

Charlie Brown would have passed
For it deserved no love
But someone did buy it
And that someone was me

A desperate plea for Christmas cheer
Falling upon several pairs
Of tone deaf ears
Leaving the tree all alone

The tree was ugly

No one gathered around it
No cats desired to play with it
No presents hid beneath its apron
No train ran endless circles around

This mostly unwanted tree was ugly for sure
A glorified vertical stick with lights
Standing too tall and narrow
For anyone to take seriously

But it is mine
And holds all my Holiday hopes for me


-FDR13DEC2018

Southside Lake St. Gunnigan

The Southside is the best side
All roads circularly lead to here
Two lanes with a gravel shoulder
An endless stream of cars seems to appear

In the North
They murder the tourists
Clicking their cameras
Wearing their Crocs
Looking for the perfect spot to Instagram
Until all the trinkets have been bought
The unique traditional recipes eaten
Local craft beers drank
It's into the tourist traps with them

To the East
Lay Changeling Fields
Where nothing is as it seems
And you are guaranteed to leave
A couple quarts low
As that sweet old man who shook your hand
Had an ulterior motive to his colloquialisms
Quaint though they be
A woven illusion is what they really were
While he and his kinfolk gathered to feed

The West is where the Mayor lives
Guiding Lake St. Gunnigan with a velvet glove
Always hiding that iron hand
That he got as a souvenir from a long ago war
Always grooming his vast estate grounds
Changing the landscaping every year
Deliveries of all that kind never seem to stop
Along with a curious amount of lye
He spreads a fine white powder every few days
Claiming it helps everything grow

The South is certainly the best though
Stay in the local Pine Log Lodge
Sit on the wide promenade porch
Overlooking the length of the whole lake
With waters primed for fishing
By artificial reefs made up of old cars
Whose?  You may ask
But that's not important now
Only that we have the tastiest Lake Trout in the region
Come for the weekend
Catch your limit

Then we'll catch you

Welcome to Lake St. Gunnigan!

-FDR08OCT2018

Bottled USA

Advancing with ambiguous intent
Powered by the most powerful ferment
That man has yet to invent
The fumes alone were enough to cloud your mind

"Oh give me a home...."
Sung out in a cracking mechanical falsetto
"O'er the ramparts we watched..."
Disconnected random lyrics layed down
Upon an uncertain melody
"Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons..."

Haunting snatches of tradition and patriotism
Distilled into nothingness
Now just comfort in a bottle
Hawked by a barker at the podium
A mobile stage rolling noisily by

I buy one
Because I must

Drinking it down
It burns away my doubt
Fortifies my sight
Cures my lead poisoning
And I can think clearly
For the first time in years

But then it passes just as quickly
So I take another swig
And the promised effects take hold
Giving me enough to chase after the contraption
One hand in my pocket digging for coin
The other holding fast to the elixir

With enough of this in my cupboard
Perhaps I can make it through yet another day


-FDR07OCT2018

Diamonds Are the Moon's Best Friend

Sunrise was coming quickly
Marching its way across the grey surface
I wasn't paying much attention to it
As I was pretty busy

Moving boxes of course

Once upon a time
The term "Astronaut" transcended the real job assignments
Adding poetic romance to any position in space proper

Your job cleaning the toilets on an orbital platform?
Fuck it, you're really an Astronaut, baby!
Rockstar status bestowed
You could now cruise in your Corvette with pride

But I digress

The fucking cargo-bot is still broken
Two months and counting, now
So I'm the cargo-bot for the time being

Supply shuttle comes in
Shit needs to be offloaded
Shit needs to be loaded

Then I get to do my real job
Of turning the shuttle for relaunch
Back to Earth orbit

Repeat as necessary

Suddenly a shiny pebble "tink!"s my faceplate

Dammit, sunrise is here
Which means all the diamonds near the surface get pushed up and out
By the light steam pressure exerted by the abruptly melted ice crystals in the Lunar soil

I drop my sunvisor and try to work more quickly
So as to reduce my time out amongst the tiny flying pebbles
Bursting forth from the ground
In a tiny shower of crushed soil
Arcing upwards about ten to fifteen meters
Before coming back to rest on the surface

Certainly one of the most annoying things about working here on the Moon, really

Janet

I can't always see her
But I always know she is there

I've come to call her Janet

With a light crunch of gravel
While strolling on a moonless night
Closer than seems comfortable
Ceasing before I can illuminate a light

That car that drives by
Just a little too slowly
Windows gangster tinted
Just a little too dark to see

A presence hovering up above
When no one else is around
Gone when I abruptly look up
Without aerial disturbance or sound

Under my bed in the dust
Is the only place I've seen evidence
Upon lifting the dust ruffle to peer beneath
A clear bodily outline is defined

Showing Janet is always near

Broken Shmoken

Everybody gets broken

Into a few big pieces

Or a myriad mosaic

Image of randomly pixelated life

Some glue and patience can work wonders

But the edges are never again quite true

With microscopic misalignments at best

And bits swapped here and there as the norm

Everybody gets broken

So being so is no badge of honor in and of itself

Public Service Message #123

Looking down in the abyss
I tend to get a little dizzy
So I pull it all back
And try to keep busy
Watching mindless television
Picking at the banjo
Washing hands incessantly
Till I run out of handsoap

OCD is a real condition and shouldn't be joked about
There are mental health professionals who can help

Righteous Movement

Busy
Busy hands
Busy feet and toes
Keep it busy
Keep it moving
Keep it go

Some days that's all one can do
With the dark clouds all around
Soul assaulted with the blues

Attack a problem
Solve it
Find another one
Quick like a bunny

Or a randomly generated Hershey's Kiss of Doom
Will approach too fast to flee
Melting upon you
Holding you fast within a tinfoil dream grasp

Busy
Moving
Thinking
Evading

Survival is all about righteous movement

Expertus Auditu

Once a year it always awaits
That small grey booth with one window
Placed disconcertingly at the back of my head
As I sit down in the ageless brown vinyl jump seat inside

The surprisingly heavy sound insulated door snicks shut
Magnets holding it firmly closed
Just touching my right side
An indication of the pounds that I've gained since last year

On a drunken octopus double hook
Mounted on the sound deadening wall in front of me
Hangs headphones that have sat ten thousand heads
Throwbacks to the old 1970's Catholic School learning lab

Hard plastic ear cups attached to silver steel adjusters
No comfort for this old man at his annual hearing test

Waiting for the old canned voice over to initiate the rote exam
I stare mindlessly at the grey wall before me
Pin pricked by a million needles
If I stare deeply enough the points will swim before me
Trying to form a hidden image
That will never come

Years ago
There was a pinup picture
Of a redhead in a swimsuit to gaze upon
Though those days are long past
Down a dusty rabbit hole of human resource rules

I almost jump when the voice finally sounds off
Giving brief instructions to press a red button whenever I hear beeping
Before silence descends inside my little soundproof box again
I know I won't hear the first few rounds of beeps
I haven't for almost 20 years now
As turbine engines and rivet guns have seen to that frequency range for me

Soon enough
I hear what I can hear
And I press the button as required
Until it is another year down
And another year to go
Until I have to come back again

Older
Slower
And a tiny bit more deaf
Than in the years before

Fuck The Man

I will not gather
In your prescribed
Roped off
And appropriately marked area

I will not share my thoughts
In your approved format
Leaving out words of passion
In short clear bullet pointed lists

I will not watch my clock
To gather at the appropriate time
When it is convenient for you
And least disruptive

I will not practice my civil disobedience in a manner that the Man prefers

Assorted Associations

You reap what you sow
That's how it goes
Apple seeds
Begat apple trees
Johnny learned that
And now there's a song about him

Nothing but strange elevator music on the playlist
But it is compelling
With a driving beat
Urging me on to Floor 24
With all the socks and underwear
I could ever want

Oh sweet surrender
To the song of summer
And Daylight Savings time
Which I've been doing all my life
Until I have enough for a new coat
That will cover up all the things I've never done

Unaccompanied minor stanzas
Crowding the public conveyance
Baffling the stewards
Who don't know where to put them
So they all end up in a certain order
Just like this

Weaponized Wrench

Here I lie
Cast in steel
Clad in chrome
Imprinted with sigil
Enclosed darkness my home

I await the beckon of your hand
Into which I fit naturally
To every curve and crevass
A weapon of repair and assembly
Unsheathed at last

Your king calls
To arms!
To arms!

Tense

There once was

At once ambiguous and specific
Depending upon what comes after
Whether person place or thing
It could be you
With this past forming a veiled shade of what

There will be

This expectation of the future
A dream
A hope
A plan
People can push through
Fed on nothing more than that promise
Of what will be

There is

An expression of now
With all the accumulated implications of

There once was

Combined with the hopes
Dreams and expectations of

There will be

Making it a statement of the fact of this moment
Everything past present and future
All wrapped up in what is

Be the best present tense you can be
Built upon
Or in spite of what was
And always aspire for more

Because it will be magnificent

Object of Reference

Floating twisting turning tumbling
Rock hard outer shell
Just another rock
Just another roll
Just another traveler across the void

Trying to plot an origin point
Would be an exercize in headache refinement
Something to pulse agonizingly
Within the logic centers of your brain
Until an answer refuses to be acknowledged
Until you throw your nerd notebook across the floor

In a tiny nerd rage
With tiny nerd fists
Because everything is tiny
On the scale you are used to dealing with

Inches may as well be mountains
With just as much relationship to ratio

Used to a constant companion of back pain
From lugging around such a big brain
There is no reason you can't figure this out

Still there it is
On a constant trajectory
With an occasional wiggle in the graph
From outside gravitational influence

Going
Going
Gone

A line that disappears into a forest of probablility
A mystery that is getting closer every day

Plenty of time though
As things like this go
It is going rather slow

Now logged dutifully in the logbook
As object LSGO-0142018

Speak Up, Sonny!

A high pitched string instrument note
Accompanies me wherever I go
The soundtrack to my life it seems
A Tinnitus in high E flat road show

Once, I heard of a cure
But I wasn't so sure
And my hand wasn't as steady
Perhaps vibrating in tune with that sustained tone

A slip
And a slice
And that ear was done
The drum would never thrum again

So now right channel is all that comes through
Along with that lesson learned
That hearing something
Is better than nothing at all