some poems written while working in a dining hall..

i like a job where i don/t have to
speak too often and can stare into
faces like the faces stare into a
television set.
I see reality TV in its most naked
sense and it/s cold like dead lips
and steel in the shade.
forced smiles that could snap in
half like a frozen leaf...
conversation as dry as a passionless
pussy....
eyes that haven/t seen the world
as poets see the world,
yet they speak of experience and
tales of drunken escapades with
the fire and life of Homer telling
the tales of Ulysses.
sometimes I use the asses as mirrors
and see the marrow within my bones..
a dichotomy of arrogance and self-
loathing.
-------------------------
I can/t stop thinking about death
and it/s a shame because you can
think about death during life but
not life during death...
(or so i/ve been told by the scientists)
death seems so final like falling
asleep on the train (awakened by short
chicanos with jail-house tattoos sweeping
the museum of grime under seats.)
but sometimes i stop, and think
and realize who could have imagined
this world while they were breathing
through gills in the womb, so how
can we imagine what awaits us when our
lips turn blue and our kidneys get donated?
maybe birth was a day dream and this
dying, coughing planet is the true womb;
while we wait like seeds beneath the earth
to get a taste of reality.
-------------------------
I never thought I could be a poet
until I picked up a Bukowski book
and than a pen right afterwards..
perhaps the pre-poet world was simpler,
art can chew you from the inside out
like a cancer.
inspiration begs to be released like
sperm.
and i can/t seem to stare at the sun
without calling it the kidney stone
of the sky and i can/t look at a
naked page without wanting to stain
it with words; stain it like a diaper
dirty with carefully placed shit.
i see right through people; their
individuality and worth is as
insignificant as second grade fantasies
and as invisible as truth in suburbia.
you sell your soul for personal enlightenment
and loose the innocence of hope.
you do, however, find a whole lot of beauty
in awkard exchanges of eyes between
soon to be lovers and the sunsets
drunken tango with the promiscuous
horizon.
---------------------------------
fear those who kiss in the shadows
of shadows with loves in the day.
fear the spiders you swallow at night
while covers brush your chin like a beard.
fear those who lie, but even more the
few who speak the truth.
fear the potential tomorrow can bring
(althought it probably won't be that
much different from today)
fear the repetition...
fear the sunlight for ignorance
truly is bliss and the black coffee
cloak of the evening hours help
you forget, like a luke warm
shot of Jack Daniels or a good massage,
the horror that is the ordinary.
fear time for it is the antithesis
of chaos
and chaos
is as free as a negro crow
perched slightly above the
hangover that is the 21st century.
free as a crumbled Hustler page
in the whispering breeze of spring.
-------------------------
my afternoon was lost like virginity
but for some reason I didn/t really
mind.
the solitude was a much needed
acquitance with myself.
everybody else sat in large groups,
like locusts descending, too ashamed
to stitch together their thoughts
and knit a genuine idea.
instead they exchanged stale
conversation like secret santas
and put on smiles like mascara, hid
boners under the table.
i try to stare out the window as
often as possible for i fear an
awkard tango between our eyes could
result in a contact high of ignorance.
i sure can be an outcast, but at least
its a decision on my part..
and when hope dissipates like morning
dew on green lawns trimmed to a stubble,
i write a poem such as this..
a poem about nothing and a poem about
everything.

submitted by: Ryan Uellendahl (Blog adminstrator)