The Poet of Bologna

Even as you begin to begin
Your pencil to the paper
Nose to the grindstone
The pressure pressing down
The words on the paper a presence pushing back

But it's all inside your mechanical head
The pen and paper
The pressure and the beginning

Nothing more than electrical shorts within your mechanical mind
A stainless steel dream fueled by belts and steam
As your arm relentlessly slices bologna
Steadily and evenly
Stacking it up and sending it along
In an endless progression of cooked meat paste product

In your dreams you are a writer
A poet most mighty
Rhyming with ease
Wearing naught but a tighty whitey

The meat factory real is blocked away
Smelling of stray pink slime
Always in front of you
Yet many dimensions away

Ye mighty bologna slicing robot
Pause for a moment for a quick sterile wipedown
Beginning again at the press of a shiny red button
Cutting product mindlessly
While simultaneously worlds away parsing verbs and assorted nouns

Angry Sundae

Two scoops of the hardest vanilla bean ice cream
Hammered into the bowl with feeling
Slowly melting flat spots on their bottoms
As I stand there with senses still reeling

The back of my neck is bright red
There is a vein in my forehead protruding
I have to feed this upset emotion
Lest lighter fare comes intruding

With warm syrup in my hand
I beheld my two scoops of ice creamed dismay
Slowly tilting and pouring out the fudge topping of rage
Grinning evilly as it melts into the surface making way

Cradling the bowl like an infuriated infant
I make my way to some grouchy looking furniture
Slamming myself into cushions of fury
And grimly begin shoveling in my cold sweet antagonistic mixture

But despite my worst intentions of feeding the beast within me
I felt the unmistakable feels of my ire melting away
Paired with the warming of the ice cream upon my tongue
Incensed annoyance retreating in a fancifully concise concessional display

In the end all I was left with was a pleasant sugar high
Plus a wonder that I'd let THAT bother me so very much
Along with undying thanks to that very angry sundae
With it's delicious chocolate vanilla bean flavorful delicate touch

StOD

Big black cantilevered Max
Loaded with bent metal ammunition
Slid in with an audible click
Closed and spring loaded dire coalition

Stand back from the crimping clamping and stamping!

For this is certainly a Stapler Of Death

Daleks don't Trick or Treat

Upon opening the Tardis door
The Doctor spied a Dalek
Grasping a salt lick
Singing "Trick or Treat"
In it's metallic bleat
Showing that it knew nothing about Halloween after all

Calendar On Pause

The desk calendar still defiantly decreed it to be September
Clinging to it's month with fall colored claws
That reeked of back to school sales
And felt like the inside of a chipmunk hole ready for winter

Soft
Warm
Full of nuts

There was a doodle of a mushroom cloud on the 22nd
I'm not sure why
But I think it has to do with thinking of you
As that begats nuclear fueled reactions within me

Upon the 27th there are numerous hash marks
Like on a prison cell wall
Grouped in fives
Marking time spent in a nondescript day
Performing a job in common ways

Upon a spare square four days past the 30th
The name "Frero Gelan" is inscribed
Was there a meeting with this person for that day?
A day seemingly outside of time
Taking place after September
But before October

A mystery too big for this moment
When my brain needs to be doing other things
So I tear off the September page
And face October's blank staring rage

Eleven days late

Birthday Wishes & Doubling Tyres - pt2

I have no recollection of why
But on my eighth birthday I small tyre fell from the sky
Bouncing twice and rolling to a stop at my feet

I picked it up and wondered at it
As it looked just like the ones I still had at home from last year
Except that it was eight inches in diameter
And the other five were only four inches across

I puzzled over it for only a few minutes
A newly eight year old boy  has little attention to spare
There are frogs to capture
All the better to chase the girls with

One year later
Upon my ninth birthday
Another tyre crashed to the earth from some unseen height
This time bouncing several times
Smashing a chicken coop
And scaring a cow before rolling to a stop and flopping onto it's side at my feet

I picked it up and looked at it
And it looked so familiar
Just like some other tyres that were back in the house
But this one was bigger by quite a bit

I carried it to the porch
Setting it next to the bench there
And going up to my room to get the other tyres

Returning in a minute with two smaller tyres
I laid them all on the wooden planks of the porch from smallest to biggest

I made another trip to my room
This time coming back with a tape measure
And applied it carefully to each tyre in turn

The smallest was four inches in diameter
The next biggest was eight
With the newest one at sixteen inches

The funny thing was that other than their size
They all looked identical in every way
With the same shiny chrome rim
The same tread pattern
The same lettering upon the sidewall

And I remember the one from last year
When I was over at a friend's house
How it came down and bounced before rolling to my feet

Now this year the same thing had happened
But here at my father's house
But exactly one year later

I looked up into the sky and thought to myself

Somebody up there must like me

Birthday Wishes & Doubling Tyres - pt1

"Happy birthday!"

It was one of those birthdays
Where so many people wished me a happy seventh birthday
That I lost track of the whos whens and whats

The two things that matter here
Amongst the things I received as gifts
Was the small package of replacement tyres for my remote control car
And the lamp

The tyres were smallish and bouncy
And not having my car handy at the moment
I ended up childishly rolling and bouncing them about
Until all but one of them were stuck under the orange plush couch

The lamp was from my great aunt Francis
Who had gotten it originally from gosh knows where

It looked just like the small brassy oil lamps that genies pop out of in the cartoons

So naturally
At the first private opportunity
I rubbed it

Out came a genii
Whose name happened to be Pete

Pete had this to say to me
"My name is Genii Pete
You  may call me Pete
And I am here to grant you one irrevocable wish
After which you shall throw my lamp into the sea
And remember me no more"

I toyed with the rubber tyre in my  hands
And thought with my seven year old brain
Before blurting out
"I want a tire just like this one
To be thrown down from the sky every year on my birthday
So I can see how high it will bounce
And every year
I want it all twice as big as the year before!"

Pete nodded his head
His little spike goatee wiggling a bit
"It shall be so
Every year on this day at this time"

And with that
A tyre identical to the one in my hands whistled down from the sky
Bouncing four feet back up in the air
Before landing at my feet

I laughed and turned to thank.......someone
But there wasn't anyone there
Just a dirty old brass oil lamp on the ground
Which I had the urge to take to the ocean pier and throw into the water