new poem for poem a day (more like poem every few days? poem-a-week?)

Overeducation Blues

The relentless evisceration of texts has got me down.
the combing and picking and teasing out occult meaning,
the contexualizing and histori-izing and criticizing.
I’m a demoralized dessicated ossified scholar
With inkstained fingertips and eraser smut on my lap,
a wonky wandering eye, twitching wrists, and a crookback.

What happened to curling up with a old book in a
warm bethrowrugged nook? A mug of tea and time?
What happened to the pure joy of reading for reading’s sake?
I want to read something, anything sans highlighter in my hand
and pen clenched twixt teeth—sticky flags, post-it notes,
cf’s and nota bene’s, the scrawled taint of marginalia.

I want it back—the plunge into the multiplicity
of universes manifest in the dripping rivulets of whitespace,
the possibility of flight despite the justified typography
(though better than flush left and ragged right)
The simple luxury of the slowly fingered page, flip,
flipping at leisure verso, recto, verso, recto.

Damned! The delight has been dammed,
held back, now stagnant pulp muck.
Graduate school, you whoreson dog!
You’ve drained the river to a trickle, trained me,
pickled my brain. Even a menu must be deconstructed!
Restaurant scansion, counting syllables in appetizers, I’m lost.

Can I be saved? Perhaps there’s a quiet place
I can sit and rehabilitate with a copy of something light
like À la recherche du temps perdu. Dunking cookies in tea,
I’ll stretch out and swim into the whitespace rivers, the
flowing cataracts of thought uninterrupted by editorial,
simply text and text. Verso, recto. Verso, recto.

found poetry (warning: email SPAM, may not be for those with delicate sensibilities)

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Filter messages like these.

Now: Light Rain and Freezing Rain and 32°F

says my blinking forecast. Sounds about right.
These past weeks are icestormy, pogonip nights
dropping tinkling crystalline dust on every surface,
sugared walks, latticelike doilies and then frozen water,
leaving crackling shellacked branches
raining icemelt in the morning warmth, quiet cracking clock-
faces in still pools, lucent medallions, ice-cakes floating into
gray days and white nights and diffuse moons, road salt and
sand walks and the plow-scrape scarring parking lots.
Hot coffee and doughnuts in the mornings before class,
I pass the rising cloud breath of crowds, looking for safe footing.
Under all this, it’s still green, anticipating the shortening shadows
marking the inching arc of the sun by day, the clasped buds
tight and pensive, motionless, waiting.

Manhattan Night Skyline, as seen from Blvd. E in Weehawken, NJ tonight.

note Empire State Bldg. is blue in honor of the NY Giants.

My neighbor likes to play a game with me
when I get into the shower.
It’s called “freeze and scald.”
I wash, as he tries to kill me.
Soap and nylon puff smush together,
black bits sit suspended in the lather,
little poppyseeds from an artisanal bar.
The water rains down, and for a while it’s bliss.
I am coated in foam like a melting snowman.
Then, light footsteps upstairs—
the pressure drops oh-so-slightly
and I sidestep.
The few fat droplets that make it onto
my unprotected skin are slivers of ice,
summoning goosepimples.
Then, the pressure changes. I sense it before it happens,
a finely-tuned survival response.
The spray could boil a chicken.
I adjust the dial, normalize the temperature
—but only for a moment, as my
passive-
aggressive
nemesis responds in kind.
This is the game we play.
I’m not sure if he’s simply unaware or
if this is all by design,
but I’ve developed a complex about it—
It occurs with a frightening regularity.
The heat returns to my original setting,
and I rinse, turn off the tap, and grab a towel.
Instantly, I hear the water turn on above me, full blast.
The towel goes round my waist and I step to the sink.
It’s fun to run the water and knock the tap back and forth.
He may be on to something.