In that metal cathedral of flame and sweat everyone shut their yaps, working it double-time, feigning earnest dedication as his frown of power swept over us.
Self-Diagnosis
Once I grew
a garden.
On my knees,
hands
in warm
dirt, face
held
by hot summer
sunlight,
placing seeds
in neat
rows,
covering
and watering,
repeating,
till I stood
admiring
simplicity and
it’s easy
beauty, never
thinking
it would be
my one and only,
never to plant
another.
Perhaps that
was
the cause,
then, of all
my difficulties:
not enough
gardens.
when the foreman came around
in that metal cathedral of flame
and sweat everyone shut their
yaps, working it double-time,
feigning earnest dedication
as his frown of power swept
over us, judgment fuming
in that cold glare, flashing
threats to render us penniless,
at the mercy of the street
and the hammer of a land
fashioned of violent indifference
and the ruination of greed.
A Brief Visit to Eternity
Lunch time at work I walked across the street into the mostly empty parking lot of the grocery store. I was thinking salad but it was one of those splendid September days when the wild motion of the solar system, with its mighty, howling explosions on the sun mixed perfectly with the speeding flight of Earth, gathered together the miraculous beams of light and heat and the planet’s atmospheric machinations to produce a brazenly blue sky that stopped me dead in my tracks. I stared up, dumbfounded, into the mad colors unfolding above. In absolute awe, as if watching an alien craft descending towards me; there I was, an old everyman man, standing still, jaw ajar, arms slightly raised, breathing slowly, deeply in something of a trance. That’s the only word for it because the one thing I knew for certain was that I wasn’t in the world, so to speak, anymore. I felt lighter and lighter like I was leaving, even though I hadn’t moved an inch, but I didn’t care where I was or wasn’t. I only knew I didn’t want to come back. So, that was it, that was the moment I wanted to be in forever, held by the blue sky and warm sun. And in that instant, I sensed I’d been here for a very, very long time and that I’d be here for centuries to come. Time simply vanished and I felt transported from somewhere else to this somewhere. Transported. Just like you were.
