Spring day inside

Coruscating up and down the walls
Sunlight from the windows falls
Trees shake that I do not see
Shadows free reflecting
Outer life and breathing worlds
All around the building curled
Sighing gently with green new birth
Exhaling shadows breaking light
Dancing sprites o’er all the earth
With the lion’s tortoise pace of spring
Lazily loping through new fields
Reaching fingers through anything
Walls and windows don’t stop the
Wildest romp of season end
Blowing within office walls the voice
Of untamed might and riotous demands
Howling at the structure that defies
Nature in its rising swell of power
Conquering every gleaming glass tower
Calm the sun washes all with sleep
Warming tempers to a pleasant heat
Waiting until another day when
No desk set at liberty I commune
With my wanton spring

People

I hate people, they really suck
They’re mean, and insensitive schmucks
Some especially need to be chucked
Terrorists come and abduct
Take to Afghanistan and ditch
Abandoned forever unless there’s a snitch
They’d be back with the newest sales pitch
Sarcastic comment, or wanting a hitch
Stupid people are always worse
I need to learn a voo-doo curse
But then friends can also be jerks
Annoying as hell, to be given to the Turks

Calendar

Squares of days easily thrown away
Ripped out, shredded every new day
Turning the page making a large X with no delay
Closer creeps the weekend
With time that I can spend
With a dream that it will never end
But then comes the Monday X
When I escape for Tex-Mex
Or wonder if I can work a hex
On phones to make them stop
Customers to make them drop
In a deadly heap, on top of which, I’ll hop
But more days to come and nothing to do
But tear out the day and rue the time when I’ll be through
No money, and no one thickheadedly hovering
So I make my large X and see time passing
Wondering what the next calendar will bring
A bright new corner or a loud death ring
Is it knell? I can no longer tell.
Too many X’s, too much of a daze
My mind has stopped, surrounding vacuity crazed
That I’ve survived this long has me amazed

Madness

Slowly it comes I sense it near, the screaming madness comes, I fear
Creeping so slowly with every new event, forgetting things, emotions pent
Holding it together, surviving, with phone calls and texts while driving
Every week longer, will there be an end?
Confusion and moonstruck madness I portend
Calmly I seem to have lost all dreams
Sleep has been abandoned, eating is random
Only when I have a moment trying to catch up
Does my maniacal laughter indicate I’m stumped
Toward mad Bedlam sending, quiet my precious sanity rending
Will it come with thunder, fist shaking at the heavens, world split asunder
Or quiet whispering sounds that aren’t there; creeping up on me as I sit in my chair
One more thing and one more thing to be done
I can’t handle anymore right now, I must run
Give up, quit, die, show me how to leave this endless circling ride
What more can I do to help you? Wait until the world ends, all things new?
Confusion, like waves inside my head, reason pays no mind
Tossing and turning, trying to be kind, No no more or I’ll lose my mind

The pain of punctuation

When we truly feel, quotations seem unreal
Can you put a comma in stanzas of pain and drama
Pour out the soul on paper with no consideration
Should periods put an end to our vexations?
Paralyze our angst and proffer us punctuation
To stall the coming tide of tearful sentiment.
Please give me semicolons to shore up the banks.
Flooding feelings, running over piled pediments;
For the rescuing apostrophe, we give thanks.
Floating far from the shore of reasonous remarks
Ellipses elongate this sentimental lark . . .
Then back we come past fury and frustrating rages,
To a place of calm and peace-enlightened sages.
Order and punctuation prevail in synchronized accord.
Until emotion sways and they are pushed out the door!

Sick

Empty of feelings emotions are dead
Sitting here softly naught in my head
Wishing I wasn’t here and could go to bed
Rest on my desk I feel like lead
Has filled every limb except those aching
And bruises come with no real making
If I’d been fighting it would make sense
But nothing in my body could be tense
Empty bereft I live with regret
This day offers no hope
Despair is all
Sickness and fatigue have come to call
Just can’t leave too much to do
Life is suffering is all too true
No alleviation writing brings frustration
More work more consternation

emails

Where’re I come, where’re I go
A dabbling steam of emails flow
In and out, to friend and foe
Ads for pills and weight loss all come in a lump
Hasten the deletion of all such junk
Twisting the ways of routers so trained
Delivering delightful and disastrous note
From loading out to the world wide
web they weave their way
Wending to the inbox end
But if reply then back out they fly
In journey ne’er complete
They talk to all they meet
But letters burned correspondence condemned
No saving, eventually all forgot
Deleted without a thought
So our lives on email rely
Yet fade too on digital ocean of time
Fleeting all, naught to turn sublime

Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball Extra Fine

Flowing so smooth
Ink staining paper
In elegant grooves
Slightly serious the line
Leaves meaning behind
Becoming solely
Sensuous in its winding
Meandering gush
Letting words go
Letters now simple designs
From pen tip to
Draw the language
With infinite finesse
The pen takes over
As words I craft

My loving poem to Wednesdays

Winding hopelessly until waking
Sunlight my spirit slowly breaking
Into hopeless monotony of making
A living with no hope of redemption
IRS will give me no exemption
Kill me now as a preemption
Catastrophe comes all clumped
Bleakness of life has me stumped
All that’s left is to get dumped
Why can’t the end come soon
Drown the office in a monsoon
Waiting for Friday night or noon
Time weighing down the living
Death a cheerful grin giving
Resentment for work unforgiving
Feeling downtrodden disheartened depressed
Always stuck in the Midwest
Living on caffeine and still stressed
Without money, dispossessed
Too tired to mount a large protest
I have a plan. Have you guessed?
To escape work week I detest
It involves poison and a large arrest
It’s only Wednesday with too much to go
When it’s over maybe I won’t feel so low
It’s only the hump and it’s going to blow

Calculator

Beautiful buttons
Spread under screen
Numbers come out
Don’t mean a thing
Adding subtracting
My mind doesn’t follow
Pencil and pad?
Step into tomorrow
People don’t add
It’s all done by machine
Mental math is
A phrase obscene
Multiplication division
A torture so mean
Without calculator
I can’t do my math
Ask me sine cosine
Behold my wrath
Without calculator
I’m really dumb
Take it away and
My mind goes numb
It no longer turns on
Thinking seems wrong
Wonder what I’ll do
Maybe ask you

Rubber band ball

Rolling forward without regret
The rubber band ball will be caught in no net
With fearsome color and elasticity
Will never be a conductor of electricity
Bouncing on its merry way through office left and right
With hundreds of bands pulled and stretched so tight
Without purpose or compulsion, rolling forward motion
With nothing to do but roll or sit with no notion
Nothing but contempt useful objects have for
Ball with never a plan after or before
Never contributing or accomplishing chores
Rolling simply in colorful bouncy abandon
Happy in its useless joy
Like a bouncing baby boy
Too happy for the life it leads
No glimmer of cynicism or greed
Simply rolling though there is no need
Living gloriously without direction or aim
Sitting on my desk wanting to play a game

Trash Can

Trying to completely escape
All untimely messes we make
Throwing away plastic, paper and tape
Cans, bottles, bags, empty folder tabs
Too-old cake
Gathered all in a tub plastic lined
Filled with treasures we’ll never again find
Making plains into mountains, never mined
To the future our eyes are blind
Eventually the trash will break out
No longer confined
To generations coming, uncaring unkind
Too much to do, we don’t think they’ll mind
So filled again to the rim every other day
Tossing into the can junk that cannot stay
Making my world clean, an immaculate cliché
Filling mountains, so easy lives can stay and play
Cans overflowing with no thought of who will pay
I wonder if my trash will be taken out today

Staple Remover

Ripping removing rending
Alligator teeth viciousness lending
Tearing to singleness sheets
Pulling away piles of neat
Groups parted and lone paper tending
To try to join again all gaps mending
Bound loosed and taking out the bind
Dittos let go uncertain what to find
Solitary pages now free
No longer us now a me
Lonely

Pens

Everywhere increasing
With no policing
Against penetration
Of every surface and location
Filling the world
Fingers clutching curled
Never releasing
Writing unceasing
Tapping and too many
10 for a penny
Disappearing every time
It should be a crime
Rolling around
Where they go confounds
Hands try to find
Later resigned
Then from nowhere
It rolls to the brink
My pen I snare
But it has no ink

Rubber Band

Stretching thinner tension increasing
Tighter until breaking point ceasing
Rubbery lax is now taughtly sprung
Toward my busy colleague my aim has swung
Pop and hitting ceiling until rebounding
Direct hit then a look and silence resounding
Then again stretching tight almost breaking
Intent seen in an aim with no mistaking
Return of instant karma with echoing snap
Flying through the air to give a loving tap

Stress

Stealing the sanity right out of my mind
Too much to do, I rush and fall behind
Speed essential and fine detail unheeded
Now is when all projects are needed
Customer’s complaints needing greeding pound
Loving heart and placid calm into the ground
Doing seven things and memory goes
Doing all I can no need to bite off my nose
Talking to myself in an uncontrolled mutter
Adrenaline voice on the phone starts to stutter
Stressed out in the dark place where no sun shines
Work running an unending circle of time
Spinning into unbelievable frenetic farce
Time running out, future and hope sparse
Reality loses hold insane laughter comes
Brain is dead and body is shaking and numb
Rushing without care in the apathetic zone
If it doesn’t all stop soon I will start to moan
Laying on the floor like a sick soufflé
Power phones will die or it’s time to run away
Men in white will come and take me from this pit
Or I’ll just up and yell real loud, “I quit!”

Scissors

Slicing the thinnest salacious sheet
When in the dark I don’t want to meet
Stranger running with scissors upraised
Staring straight ahead eyes open glazed
Hacking open packaging with glee
Slashing plastic and all remnants of trees
Severing strings and all manner of things
Destructive fantasies start to take wing
Excising cool calm calculation
Now harboring dreams of decapitation
For my clean sharp scissors lovingly reach
Thwarted wrath there has been a breach
Thief with my favored sheers did abscond
Does the filthy knave know how I’ll respond
Force and bloody vengeance will be mine
My sharp sheers will mutilate his spine
He’ll fall on the floor then start to whine
Graciously I’ll allow him to resign

Without scissors nowhere to go
I’ll go steal a pair from Joe

Heater

When thermostat too low is set
Past summer months I do regret
Even the fact of so much sweat
Brain clouded in cold now forgets
Shivering and shaking to keep cold away
Icy hands seem to hold me every day
Frost reaches into my veins to stay
Frigid hand on mouse my body warmth slays
Until the day a portable heater I bring
A great source of warmth for my hands to cling
Heat so great until my hands slightly singed sting
Then I just hover to feel the warmth of spring
Radiant warmth my body now feels
Through many layers that now can be peeled
Imagining a summer world bright and surreal
Where my heater never leaves me the winter to feel

Until at the end of the day heater turned off
Into the cold outside I start to cough

Bored

Staring blankly at my monitor screen
Hoping it will send me a message
Or turn a very bright flashing green
Clicking my mouse hoping for presage
Of what the remaining day will contain
Looming long loaded with time slow to drain
Pen’s end holding lips together in vain
Gravity lackadaisically dragging
Brain dead motor skills slowly lagging
Behind the absorbed face consciousness flagging
Redundantly shuffling piles of things
Dreaming of many an fantasy fling
Hopefully the telephone will not start to ring

Tissue

Taking an interest in all post nasal drip
Decidedly useful when a cough lets rip
Dotting the landscape with delicate caress
Taken from brightly colored box on my desk
Sopping up the icky mess with a timid press
Hiding from sight the swollen noses all grotesque
Stopping no germs but dignifying a sneeze
Hopefully we won’t catch the new disease


for tie-fighter