Prose Poem on an Empty Stomach

I sit amid the popcorn scent of urine
and listen to the man with the mechanical ear
and wonder, am I that unscrupulous?

Today I am a paper sack
filled with bean-ends and carrot-tops,
wilted flower-clippings discarded,
and every week I trade myself in
for a whole turnip. Today I am
the poor mother of a blissful child,
chasing the stale American dream
of tending my own fertile garden
without burying my own seed.

Today I can steal. I have no guilt
or shame, except to hide my spoils,
to keep them from prying eyes, from maggots,
to use them before they can be reclaimed.
I can slip trifles into tiny pockets
because no one would fault her, angel-eye, doeskin
but her hands are busy with other mischiefs.
I am the jackdaw, the magpie, the mouse in the grain.

Tomorrow—is there tomorrow? Will
I ever come to the day with a fresh face
and no longer stoop like a widow in the field?

Should I come to that cliff's-edge
where flowers arc with careless grace
and eyes begin to trace my whirligig path,
would I change?
Are my ways desperate or destined?
Am I exposed in my weakness, or weakened by exposure?
I resolve, I resolve, but with resolution so poor
(so, so poor...) I take take take
and wonder why, and why, and mostly how
but there's nothing more to ask
and I just need a little time, a little touch
to flavor this goddamned turnip.

I forgot my sister's birthday.

Well, not exactly. I knew it was on the 19th. I knew it was coming up.

But the whole Inauguration thing kept my mind preoccupied, so it didn't even occur to me that it was MONDAY the DAY of OMGSPAZZNAUG.

...even the things I don't want any part of take precedence in my mind over things I want to remember and care about. It's always like that, isn't it? Ridiculous.

Explanatory Fragment

I've been playing with the idea of blogging... then my girlfriend got herself a blog, so there went my last excuse (that she'd think it was silly).

This is basically where I'll air the ideas I want to talk about with a degree of anonymity, purely for my own amusement and to see them in print in a public place where I am king MWAHAHAHA.

...You get the idea.

[In case you were wondering: my profile picture is of my hand next to my daughter's. My interest in photography flared once again this evening when my girlfriend and I curled up with a fascinating book of nude photography—not intended as pornography, and technically not used as such, but the inspiration for my entirely-serious observation, "That's the most gorgeous picture of the backs of someone's knees I've ever seen!"]