A housewife is busy at this hour.
The knife slices and chops vegetables
in a rhythm that synchronizes the clock.
While a farmer is out on the cornfield
riding a tractor, skimming the clods of soil.
It’s just a regular working day. Simple.
I sit here shuffling papers from a tray.
Scribbling and rushing deadlines. Punch,
punch, punch the buttons. Scribble some
more. Telephone rings. One time, then twice.
I picked it up. Yes, uhmmm, yes, I’ll be right there.
A child is lost, yes she is. Where will I get her story?
Ah, the empty sauce pan is simmering in the heat.
The table cover in disarray and the knife stops slicing
and chopping but the clock is ticking nervously.
The dusts were stirred over like a sandstorm.
Someone is running back home and a name
is being called out. This time it grew longer
and louder and larger as if the window panes
will shatter. This is the beginning of the story.
And you will hear the sound of footsteps
becoming heavy. And the noise picks up
like the tractor breaking the clods of soil.
Like the knife speeding the rate of chopping.
But it is not about the tractor. Nor the knife.
It is something bigger on the papers tomorrow.
Printed out loud. And my byline is on it.
Solitude Amidst the Maddening Crowd
Flood
Posted in Current Affairs, Literature, Nature, Poetry, Politics, Social Commentary, Society, tagged above, afloat, ants, away, bailout, bell, blab, body, breach, bring, capture, cards, carry, chew, clock, constant, corporate, days, deadlines, deep, detergents, doomsday, down, downsizing, drain, dreams, drown, enjoy, excitement, fade, figure, file, fill, filth, flood, flotsam, forgetting, glide, gossip, habit, hidden, hope, hours, how, hunger, keep, labor become, laundry, letter, levee, limbo, line, machine, minutes, miss, morning, mountain, myself, necessity, news, next, note, numbness, oblivion, out, overflow, overtime, paperwork, people, pick, pile, poem, poetry, press, punch, race, ranks, rat, resonance, rim, rinse, ritual, rolling, rush, sandbag, silence, smell, soak, soap, sound, spell, stains, straw, stream, suffering, tap, termination, thank, thin, think, tick, time, train, treatment, tub, wait, wash, water, way, weekend, whine, worry, yesterday on June 7, 2013| 4 Comments »
The hours tick like sound of punch cards
in this corporate machine treating
people like ants filed into ranks.
Mountain of paperwork piled up
into sandbags. Bring it on, breach
my levee and let me drown forgetting.
Labor becomes a habit. Of numbness
and enjoying the suffering.
Like the sound of water from the tap
during a morning ritual in oblivion-
silence resonates like a hidden bell.
I wait until it fills the tub overflowing
down the rim and the clock raced
to the minutes rushing for the train.
Like the way the thinning soap glides
my body and the necessity to wash
away yesterday’s worry-rat smell-
that doomsday spell. A thank you note
and the termination letter. The downsizing
and the news keep rolling off the press.
People pick up some gossips to chew
and I am excited to blab my hunger.
Like the constant whining of the weekend
laundry, hoping detergents rinse the stains
and filth of missed deadlines. And overtime.
And I got the time to soak away thinking
about the next line to a poem, capturing it
before it goes down the drain. In limbo.
And I hope to keep afloat above it
like a flotsam of dreams in a stream
carried away in the fading of days.
Figuring it out how to bailout myself
like a straw in deep water.
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