The Woman Who Sat on the Toilet for Two Years

The Boston Globe, March 13, 2008

(Wichita), Kansas. Authorities are considering charges in the bizarre case of a woman who police said sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for two years.

And when you
Think of it
It is only a hassle
To get up from
What you will revisit
Time and time
Again.

All that you
Take in, in
This life
Is a wash
Anyway.

All your slick
Posturing
The endless histrionics
Will wind up
In a dance
Cheek to cheek
Above the bowl.

All your
Upstream paddling
Leads to those
Placid waters
And royalty
Yes
Even a king
Will make his
Royal flush.

*From the collection The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel (Cervena Barva Press)

I Saw Myself on the Dudley Bus that Day

I saw myself on the Dudley bus that day
The eyes: a blinking, flirt
With the mid-winter’s sun—
Watching
The slow, fade
Of a dying afternoon,
His face shadowed
In five o’clock.

Half-light,
No hair.
A bus of exiles
Each mired
In their personal
Affairs.

And that man,
Perhaps me?
Looked a million
Miles away.

I believe I saw
Him briefly yesterday
And for a first time
On that day
We saw each other
And quickly
Turned away.

*From the collection The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel (Cervena Barva Press)

Stampede at Wal-Mart

*(AP) A Wal-Mart worker was killed yesterday after an
Out of control throng of shoppers eager for post-Thanksgiving bargains
broke down the doors at a suburban store, knocked him down and trampled him to death.

They pressed
Against the doors
Their heated breath
In conflict with the very cold.
Religious fundamentalists of sorts,
In a murderous stampede
To their MeccaBreaking down the door
Their leaden feet
Pounding the brittle bones
Of the fallen—
For gifts
When a baby Jesus was born,
For discounts, their fervor,
Their bloody, blinding storm.