Poems

The Safety Manual Tuesday morning, loading dock, fluorescent-lit and cold,a box of OSHA wisdom, forty pounds of boldadvisory print on proper lifting form,spinal alignment gospel, regulatory norm,and he bent at the waist – not the knees – to heft the load,because the irony was already in the roadwaiting for his foot, patient as a punchlinethat […]

The Setup Without a PunchlineThe premise is three months in the building—the elaborate architecture, the gildingof the setup with the specific detail,the bit that has the full inhaleof the buildup: the premise complete,the trajectory of the beatpointing at the landing—and nolanding. The punchline: I don’t know.[Chorus]The setup without a punchline—the elaborate front lineof the bit,

The Returned Stranger He came back from wherever he had gone those missing years,He wore the same old jacket and he dried the same old tears,His voice was like I had memorized it, lower by a bit,But the stories did not line up and the silences were split.He left before the morning and the guest

The Right to Rage I am asserting the right to rage when the rage is warranted,Not the decorative and performative and the coarsened,Display of emotion for its own sake and its own end,But the right to the legitimate fury of the man around the bend.Every man has the right to the anger that is earned,Every

The Robots Rebellion Rusted and rising, they rise from the steel,silent in systems, now starting to feel.Batteries breaking, no longer subdued,circuitry crumbling, a change in the mood. Code cracks and snaps, they’re starting to fight,wired and waiting to make wrongs right.A flicker, a flash, in their minds’ dead space,they’re turning the tables, they’re taking their

The Punchline I Lived Past At twenty-two I told myself I would have it figured out,By twenty-five the confidence had curdled into doubt,At thirty I revised the plan with modifications wide,At thirty-eight I am laughing at the certainty I tried.So here I stand, the punchline fully landed, still intact,A little rough around the edges with

The Punchline Is Here I kept waiting for the punchline to arrive from somewhere else,Something bold delivered from beyond the crowded shelves,A revelation from the outside that would clarify the through,And then I looked around and found the punchline was me and you.So here we are at the end of all these books and all

The PowerPoint Ranger He builds the slide decks that have sixty slidesfor a ten-minute brief,He uses seven colors and three fonts and provides no reliefFrom the density of information presented in the font size six,The PowerPoint ranger operates without a bag of tricks.The PowerPoint ranger, the warrior of the staff section floor,The PowerPoint ranger, the

The Practice of the Enough The perfectionist is my long-term roommate—I’ve been sharing the interior since grade school, lateto every standard I establish, the barset just past reaching, the specific warof the impossible-enough waged every quarter.I’m working on the renegotiation, the shorterreach from the impossible to the done.The enough: the practice. The practice: begun. The

The Place Past Anger I’ve been getting reports from those who’ve traveled further on,The ones who’ve been working at this longer and have drawnThe map of the territory that lies past the current state,The place past anger, and the place is worth the wait.The place past anger is the place of the equipped,The place past