To be or not to be:
That is a technicality.
Whether ’tis better to weather
The slings and arrows
Of a thousand sorrys and
You’re unqualifieds
Or say
Screw this
And vacate this whore house
For greener pastures.
To board a freight train
No ticket
No destination in mind
Just away
And away
And
And
And forever and always along
Down the tracks
Of whatever and whenever
Amen.
Eight men
Cruising
In steel-smelling; rust-smelling
Chambers in wheels
Chicago to Seattle
Empire Builder
Grunge sponge
A suitcase
A big-time story that’s false
But passes time good
As any drop-down TV would have been.
We arrive
Ill-stomached, good-spirited,
McDonald’s coursing fatty
Through our veins
Offer a grimace and a
Shrug
For your ever-loving shove.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
I Loaned My Brain to Science
Many times, in fact. One of the experiences sticks with me.
I remember it in patches.
They stuck me inside a magnetic resonance imaging scanner–MRI for short. It’s like a big sarcophagus made of metal and plastic. You lay on your back in the dark while a loud hammering noise does semi-circles over your head from left to right and back again, over and over like one of those rotary lawn sprinklers: slow in one direction, fast in the other direction. It’s so loud they have to give you over-ear headphones to protect your eardrums; the headphones double as a communication device. They talk to you through that, and a microphone over your mouth allows you to talk back. Essentially, an MRI scanner takes pictures of your brain by surrounding it with a magnetic field and registering the electromagnetic response. If the technicians are nice, they let you look at your brain pictures when it’s all over.
When I Get It Right
It feels like liberating a hairball from the kitchen sink drainpipe.
I root around with a plumbing snake,
A steel rod,
A flashlight.
Nothing.
I get down on my knees,
Crank a collar counterclockwise with a fat wrench:
The P-trap clatters to the clapboards
The smell of rust mists into the room
The whole sink shakes
I shove my fingers up inside the main pipe and voila.
Catching the back of my skull on the edge of the cupboard (“Fuck!”)
I emerge damp, bruised, triumphant:
“There’s your problem right there, ma’am.”
The dripping tangled mass
Springy between my fingers
Mysterious catacombed matter.
It’s not like I can tell you what hair is made of
Or what precise path to follow should you care to attempt a detanglement
Or the scientific names of the asymmetrical creatures you might find
Should you take a microscopic head count.
I just unclog the pipes.
Sometimes they pay me.
My response to the writing prompt “Write an alternate ending to a movie.”
For any movie, instead of rolling the credits at the end, roll the Zapruder Film. With no explanation.
How to Position a Flushable Toilet Seat Cover
Step 1: Oh, how nice! A flushable toilet seat cover!
Step 2: Whoops, ripped that one.
Step 3: Whoops again.
Step 4: OK, let’s see here…
Step 5: Um.
Step 6: Turn it the other way?
Step 7: Jesus Christ.
Step 8: Shit standing up
Will Conley 