Mediocre Writing

Anticipation. Looking up at the screen. When is it going to happen? How long will it be? I am frozen, tightening my scarf around my neck. I am burning in a heated metro station. So many people everywhere, people selling Obama gear, everyone living in anticipation. I am on an Amtrak train toward D.C. I riding Amtrak toward Miami.
Obama’s hand is held high in the air. He is facing a crowd of thousands in Charlotte, in Columbia, in D.C. Bam. He is president.
Long before you notice it.
It’s over.
The moment is gone. Today might as well be tomorrow. Tomorrow might as well be yesterday. Birth might as well be death.
Just yesterday or was it this morning or was it last year? I was crammed into a metro station, hoping to get on the escalator, to escape the sea of heads bobbing. I was eating mediocre tofu in Chinatown, watching towed cars go by.
Just tomorrow I was hoping, wishing that America would listen to me. Or has that already happened? Today it is over. Yesterday it was done.
Do you see? We can never live in the present. By the time we have noticed, the present is the past. Each little action, little thought that I have has already happened. The future is the present. The present is the past. That anticipation is gone. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. The world changes every minute, yet it stays the same. The inevitable remains inevitable. The insignificant remains insignificant. You can’t win. I can’t win. Try to change anything. It doesn’t matter anyway. Does it matter anyway? Does anything matter anyway? Try to find something that matters. Go. Look.
As I write this, my life ends a minute at a time. I can’t stop it. Can you stop it? Can you slow it down? Woosh. There it goes. Good luck to you, my friend.

Poetry ha ha ha

I am not a poet.
And I know it.


amtrak trains
are planes
skidding
a c r o s s
theground
they have turbulence
and fold down tables
even safety cards.
amtrak trains
are angels with flawed wings
fumbling
sling-shotted across the land.

2008

Goodbye & Good Riddance.