After Graduation

I have headaches and worries

and psychotic blurs of future jobs

and coat hangers holding solemn

jackets, torn from wasted days by

my wasted hands. I'll sit at the kitchen table

argue with my wife

and maybe have a drink. And so it will go.

Rather, I'd be wise to assume now is the time

to find a new route

live for what's to be done awake and alive

rather than skating by on a good salary and

no hope to survive this life of deadlines

specifications, stale coffee and office blinds.

If I remain innately divine, and follow the few last

gasps of true thought and hope I have in these old bones

I might make a right decision, an unbargained trade to my

future self, with a handshake and goodnight kiss.

Goddamn, The pages and pages of online research

bold letters, italicized guides and corkscrew insights

helping me plan a path build on unlit gas, ready to burst

if dropping the match, unless it remains unlit.

All I can do is write to console, and silently scroll

the pages of suggestions and guestimations of certified

educated undergrads who, like I, weep and hope

for a life which loans can be revoked

or at least to wake up and start the day

alive as when your head hit the sheets yesterday.

Distracting Books, Beautiful Sax

Bronze brass breathe deep and stares do seethe

the show before our gazing heaps

of noise and silent gushing cares

praised hallowed reaping notes do creep.

Then silent walls begin to speak

the noise once hidden in the hush

begins to pull and slip unstuck

to frame a noise distracting beats.

Once focus glides towards bolstered horns

now concentrate their blare no more

i focus more upon the floor

which holds the book that broke the score.

Eyes rub roughly upon my back

annoyed I brace now looking at

the same nude head before my face

but lost among a trail untraced.

If only friction fixed the place

of pages held and gravitate

not to the floor but coiled embraced

upon the piano where it was laid.

My Phylum Future

Sparkling waves, glassed bricking brook

poured broken shards of bedrock soot

until the river ran its route

memories settle overlooked

Up ahead glows of red, mean green

paying tolls down the untold creek

which wasted well will surely mean

a few more hours, like jaded peas

my future floats, awaiting me

It passes by the present I

rivulet torrents through my

weathered mind

Instead of knowing, seeing past

I wait and feel its breezing clasp

Hindsight hinders hinged decisions

made in muddy waded marsh

of momentary muddled mishaps

forced to choose among a farce.

It's hard to tell my phylum future

awaiting flushing force down stream

soon it wanes and weans til' sea

accepts the oceaned river's plea

Now I lay knee deep in surf

where I may contemplate marine

amongst the shells and shore horizon

my journey made by gravity.