Leftovers

The following are some poems that I composed during this semester. It seemed appropriate to include them in this blog if only for the sake of having a place to put them (as they are currently on random pieces of paper floating through various notebooks). All but one were written while I was working on assignments for class and one was actually written "erroneously" in reference to an assignment.


LOOSE ATOMS

So, the guy who found the suit
The guy is yeast
it turns out he's a botanist
"I care about supplemental forms,
I'm a scientist."
As a child
He was chased around
the train yard
by hobos.


DISPLACEMENT

When a human being consumes anjing it is said to have a warming effect on the body similar to that one may experience after consuming alcoholic beverages. Ingesting dog flesh also reportedly decreases the occurrence of premature ejaculation in males who may be prone to such behavior. Muslims have strict guidelines relating to certain aspects of their diet - that is to say that while some food has been deemed acceptable by Allah for human consumption (i.e. those that are halal), other foods are prohibited. Dog meat, along with pork, alcohol, and fish without fins or scales, is considered to be among the latter.

Thomas Edison sought to answer great questions by making a practice of falling asleep in a chair while holding a rock in his hand. Beneath his hand (and the rock contained therein) was a metal bucket. As he drifted asleep and the muscles in his hand relaxed, he would release the rock and it would fall into the bucket (causing the sound one would expect a rock falling into a metal bucket to make), thereby waking him in the process. This was how he sought to retain consciousness while sleeping. Such a procedure may be responsible for the invention of useful items ranging from the kinetoscope to the incandescent light bulb.


THE INVENTION OF THE DEATH RAY

The same guy we found failing with legs

in the park one

Sunday morning was the one on the

plastic seat with the jacket that

meowed.

There was no real problem;

the driver kept his leather

on the wheel

and what I assume were his nostrils

on an amorous breeze

that blew feline intonations, and headphones,

heavy sighs,

and advertisements

out the tops

of windows.

I was thinking about what,

a Styrofoam cup that was attached

to a clear lid

breaking beneath the weight

of my left

foot.

Who knows? A mitten, a newspaper,

the smell

of

wet shoelaces and partially-smoked

cigarettes.

What else, how to find it,

something I was looking

for that morning.

Perhaps it was a brown lighter.

I was shattered, I keep doing that

all the time. Switching between one thing

and

another, always wanting everything to

work out.

So his envelope, his folder, it

meowed again and everyone in the back heard

it and wanted to know

what was going

on

even though they all knew

what was going

on.

And the driver, in his infinite

wisdom and patience,

kept his gloves on the

wheel and his eyes in

outer space.