The Problem With Morning

J. Randall Hobbs stirred his Cheerios in doubt.

It was a coughed-up kind of morning,

the kind you wouldn't buy unless it was bundled

with a bunch of things, like a day at the lake

or a sick day from work when you're not that sick.

A round corral of tiny brown inner tubes.

"This can't be food," he thought most mornings.

"But, really, what else is there? This can't be life,

you could say. This can't be our leaders. This can't

be our entertainment. This can't be our religion. Etc."

An etc. kind of morning. They're coming more often.

A morning that took place yesterday, too. Next?

One more day in the help department, answering

install questions from the stupid and the lazy.

No wonder. The apocalypse just seems natural.

He couldn't escape it. He'd count the extinctions.

"I think all humans agree," thought J. Randall.

"Bartenders everywhere would be friends. Poets

should all call each other. All junior high teachers

should share their horror stories. Nurses are nurses,

no matter the country, religion, language, gender.

How is it we'll cook this planet until we're gone?"

His boss was a Christian and regularly announced

our one God had a plan for us. No such thing

as a species piloting the planet to doomsday.

J. Randall couldn't argue. He had to shut up.

Didn't he? His family needed him at this job,

in one of the loneliest stretches of Iowa. He asked

Loretta that morning, "What should I do?"

"Tell him to go to hell," she said. Worried like him

about her kids' kids, and their lives then. 4+ degrees.

Less water. More people. Wars gone nuclear.

But, now, the battleground is among grey cubicles

in an auto parts distributorship in nowheresville?

First, we fight what's said? One by one by one?

Language is little more than breath. Cheap. Easy.

Impossible. J. Randall and Loretta hugged hard,

and both remembered themselves new again.

Maybe the problem these mornings is words,

as if they come first, as if they bring daybreak.

Scheme

I wonder if faeries pretend,

or scheme bigger things

than humans can imagine.

Extinction cannot be chosen,

for example, it's just what we do

without thinking, with no prediction

as to how it all might end, but is it

according to plans in faeryland,

where eons don't mean as much

and they'll watch us get rid of us

as a way to get all the hills green

again, and free the world up for all

their smallest, funnest  friends?

Walking With My New Test Head

I don't believe in horizon lines,

or the distant hills,

and barely accept the ground I walk upon

only because I'm a weak, weak man.

A stranger approaches.

I say, "Hello."

It exhausts me.

No Big Deal: I Am The Eye Of God

Disease of another type begins in the waiting room
with a TV locked on an autoimmune disorder channel:
white-haired woman explains it's not so bad,
but you do have to give up cross-stitching, and
find other things to love. TV or soup or walks.
You always pay your deductible right away,
then wait 45 minutes for the doctor.
He needs tests first of all, so it's two weeks
of blood work, MRI scan, results allowed
only for him to see because who are you?
In the meantime, heavy doses of drugs
that are poisonous over the longterm, so
it's only temporary, until a regimen, also
poisonous enough to make you sick
each week, thin your hair, who knows
what else, called chemo pills, that work
only so well, unable to fix a finger, knuckle,
two knee caps, leg cramps, chest aches,
and you can only recall the old lady on TV
gently guiding you on how to give up.
You also wonder why they don't drill
a hole in your head, let the demons out.
The ear doctor explains, "You're going
to have lifestyle changles. They start
with turning the volume of the TV up.
But you've aged out of any rights
to complain. Lucky to be alive. Yes,
true enough. Illness is the creak
of the door closing slowly. Once,
you served as an eye of God,
as He works to figure out what is
dream, what's actually happening.

L.A. Apocalypse Cartoon

The heat cooked Thursday to 98 degrees,
a new record for L.A., a city that advertises
its weather to the Midwest and Back East,
while selling China on Hollywood dreams.
Adam tried to talk to his girlfriend again
about moving to where there'll be water
10 years from the day he might propose
a life together. "So, let's go there, and
make plans in one last atmosphere
similar to where we grew up. The temp
of California left long ago for Oregon.
When we die, Malibu will be way up,
closest beachtown to Anchorage."
Candy just got her Japanese tattoo
declaring her faith all be OK, inside
her interior universe, a doomsday
scene on any given day, earthquake
tearing apart the city stone by stone,
ground rising to meet flying rooftops.
Smokes a joint daily to glue it all back.
"I can't relocate like we're refugees,
babe. It's bad mojo. It's giving in.
We must live what we believe,
and it can't be we'll let it be sold
out from under us, for final profits
in banks without tellers or guards."
Adam wanted to say 200 years
is all that history's got left, and
we'll be lucky to be dead, if we can
still die on time 50 years on.
"Eugene will be good for us.
We're a day's drive from friends
who'll stay here with no choices
left but to beg us some day to live
with us, where there's still water."
Candy swore to keep her L.A.
cell phone number always, forever,
as if she once lived in Atlantis.

Cut The Fuel Tanks Loose

When the indicator lights cooled to dark,
left to guess at the terrain way up ahead,
it hailed inside my head, all the ways to live
with a sun and moon run off to outer space
like lovers who lived next door until they
couldn't stand it any more....exit orbit, yes!

Everything I understood as real, real
as mashed potatoes cooling to gluepaste
on the plate, next to meat congealing
to something the taste of tough socks,
religion to bluster, history purposed
into lies, philosophy dereliction of time,
so that whatever one said was about
them, except maybe math, chemistry,
physics, and other sciences could be
found on UFO's and it equaled out.

Darkness or manipulated light
was the choice spread before me
outside the cockpit. Engines stopped.
Sound of wind from the plummet.
And, well, I willed the plane to fly,
as if cabled to a blue flow of blood,
as if  hope ignited in nuclear power.
Don't think I'll ever land.  No choice.
Rise up, you wing commanders!
You know who you are! Cut
the fuel tanks loose. Pray. Believe.
Teach gravity a lesson all the kids
can take to heart on the ground
in the only conscious extinction.

Denny's - 8:30 a.m.

Not saying Denny's is a prison
but it's about all I can afford
outside my kitchen cabinets.
And it's not bad. The waitress
doesn't seem sad, a low voltage
energy powers her greeting,
writing on the order pad,
her twirl and pace back
to lift a dirty plate and place
my order up on the drum.
Breakfast is always good,
and a broken yolk still talks
of wealth and overwhelming
life. No one eats much better,
at least not in the morning.
I try to hold up my end:
An old man who's not sad.
I remember those guys,
and now I know what
they were doing.
The truth is, we weren't
sad. We were happy,
and hopeful, and
saying goodbye.

And on a midnight next year,
when I've crossed over, come
drink your best Irish whiskey,
all my worst old friends, and
piss free on my pricey grave.