Stale Green

This poem is in honor of a beloved geometry teacher and drivers ed instructor: Mr. Cochran. I learned too late to appreciate him as much as I should have all along. I have tried not to repeat that mistake again. Of all the lessons he taught me about proofs and parallel parking, transversals and interstates, certainly the most significant lesson I learned from him is to try to treat people as if it were their last day on earth.

The third intersection in a row

I’ve been able to 

for the rarest time

drive straight through

makes me think

“stale green,”

the foreboding unknown

Mr. Cochran warned me of,

not in geometry class,

but in the burgundy Dodge Intrepid.

As I entered the driver’s seat

John K had just vacated -

his basketball-center legs

rendering me

a toddler - 

I saw the sidelong smirk

of a man attaining

intentional satisfaction -

a deliberately planned 

and perfectly executed

shenanigan,

like the prank he proudly recounted

of turning all his friend’s screens’ brightnesses

to zero

or setting all his alarms

to 2:34

am. 

Stale green came up

past the cornfields

and the soybeans,

by the street signs

to the interstate,

the blurred forest,

and I-74 exit 132.

It settled down 

at the McDonalds

long enough for me to practice

dodging yellow pylons

and ordering through a window.

Then, the switch back:

John’s knees tucked up by the horn

in the burgundy 

clown-car sedan.

The sidelong smirk spoke.

Stale green 

again.

The Walmart Hearse

On a late night Skittles run,
I saw it
like a royal uber from the inner circle of the rainbow bridge:
a purple hearse in the Walmart parking lot,
as if Grimace and the Ghostbusters ganged up
to treat someone to the coolest last ride ever.

I wondered...
What did the drivers forget that spurred this errand -
Flowers?
Black Balloons?
Funeral Potatoes?
Surely they would know Walmart's coffins are only available online.

Also... 
If I were to die today, what color of hearse would I choose?
Were the drivers simply dead on their feet?
Were the checkout lanes really that slow?

Is this shrine to consumerism the location where someone wished to be buried
in their fleece 😀💖😎 pajama bottoms, too-tight tank top, and tie-dyed crocs,
somewhere between the Cheetos and $5 dvd bin 
just in case the Egyptian pharaohs were right about the afterlife
and you ought to stock up on essentials you may need in the Great Value beyond?

And, am I choosing a similar cemetery as I enter, exhausted, 
in my orange running shorts, Star Wars t-shirt, and grass-stained work shoes,
feeling my will to live wane as I wait in line,
expiring faster than the bologna slovenly restocked by some exanimate shopper 
behind the Equate foot cream?

It kills me how they open the lane to my left 
just as I place my items on the belt after waiting twenty minutes. 

#SaveMoneyLiveBetter

Synchronicity

It's finally happened.

You know how you listen to
Paul Simon's "Crazy Love, Vol II"
as you drive in the rain
then turn on the wipers
and for a few moments,
their rhythms align,
and you tap your foot,
tentatively pleased,
wondering when the other shoe will have to drop
as their beats invariably separate
in one of life's predictable disappointments?

Well, that separation never came.

It was like being in a scene
from Sesame Street
when inanimate objects sprout mouths
and sing along with you,
and the whole world is in impossible sync -
one concerted rhythm of light waves
illuminating through the splotchy clouds.

Or,
at least,
that's what it felt like
for a moment.

Owl Pelletry

It was conveniently intermission -

that glorified term for a potty break -
and my wife called
to see when I would be returning
from your poetry reading
and to inform me that my son
(having fallen asleep in the car
and thus
skipped his pre-sleep poop)
had recently rolled out of bed
and defecated on the floor.

I bade you and the other poet I heard

an urgent farewell,
laughingly recounting the anecdote
and confiding I'd probably be inspired
en route home
to write a poem about this incident.

You said, also laughingly,
that you'd like to read it.

I don't know if you were serious,

so I hope this doesn't stink,

this extrusion of my own orifice,

this log entry of my own experiences...
for I found upon driven consideration
that my son's performance
and my own poetry production
were cut from the same cloth,
woven of the same warp and weft

since they are

natural byproducts of the
physical and mental digestive processes
respectively.

But pondering this parallel
threw me askew into a perpendicular
train of thought:
Perhaps this penchant for propogating poetry
is more akin to the owl pellet than the child turdlet:

I mean, owls, like people, have means for excreting
that which they have digested,
having sucked all the nutrients out,
but owls also have a means for expelling
those substances which they have swallowed whole
and cannot digest (i.e., bones, fur, and the like).

And isn't that what this and many poems are -
regurgitations of undigested incidents,
things we haven't yet figured out how
to suck the meaningful nutrients from?

And some poor sap,
in some lab or classroom,
is left to dissect it,
noting the skeletons we've spewed
and inferring what they will
about our mental -
and sometimes physical -
diets.

Emergency Room Wait-Time Billboards

As we drive home,

I see the billboard

advertising the wait time

for the hospital ER:

75 min.

I guffaw
(wouldn't you?)
and wonder

what the purpose is
of such signs.

As people are driving down the highway,

do they think,

"Oh - it's only 5 minutes to get in?

I guess I'll go get this leg wound taken care of."

Or, as they scramble with a 

hemorraging family member in the car

do they get to the sign and say,

"I'm not waiting 30 minutes for this.

Let's go home and see what happens."

Perhaps this sign would be
better served
and would better serve
outside of a decent restaurant
that doesn't accept reservations
for parties smaller than 7,
or at fast food restaurants,
showing the difference
between the drive-through
and in-store line times.

Now that's
something I need.

But perhaps it would be
too gimmicky
for decent restaurants
or even McDonalds.

But, maybe not.
Maybe it would just be too
useful.

source here

Cruise Control

I can change.
I really can.
And I have proof:

After one of those days
at work,
I drove home distractedly,
going a bit over the speed limit.

Got pulled over and received
a tongue-lashing
but at least not a ticket,
perhaps because I looked
disheveled and exhausted.

Scared out of my mind
on that stretch of road
from then on,
I needed a strategy,
so I started setting
cruise control
to the speed limit
every time I drove it.

So far so good.

If only
I had
cruise control
in other parts of life
to help me change,
really change -
just punch the button,
ride through the risky part,
and trust myself to
take control again
when the rough patch
is over.