Last updated June 22, 2003
Copyright © 2003, Caroline Randall
Last updated June 22, 2003
Copyright © 2003, Caroline
Randall
|
Motor City Career Path |
OCD Entreprenuer Face Reality Another Tramp To Flip Through the Pages of Vogue |
Motor City Career Path
Lying in Ambush
Kill the Marketing Executives
Stretching Out
Nailbiting
Pre Birthday
Formalities
To be wealthy
Paranoia
Too many
Entrepreneur
OCD
Face reality
Another Tramp
To Flip Through the Pages of Vogue
He’s wondering about his niche
He’s begging for the opportunity to
Prove successful.
Slam his car door and brush the trace of caked
Michigan car salt off his right suit sleeve
Flick his wrist and confidently snap
Southworth Parchment Paper sheet of embellished accomplishments
Flat for inspection
There in the expansive lot of American vehicles
That lug suits, briefcases, little plastic badges with little plastic smiles and blank eyes
Back and endlessly-forth like ants at a picnic
He thumbs the Zippo and gulps in the sweet Marlboro Red calm
Big Brother has nothing on the Big Three but plenty on him
This thought compels him to question whether he
Should feign conformity or individuality
Because “be yourself” only applies to
First dates and even then is terrible advice
Trudge toward the concrete façade
He rehearses the answers he must offer
To sell himself
December 12, 02
He couches a secret for
Ammunition later
Truths like arrows
Strike harshest
She must read a lot
To think so brutally
He believes he can
Match her ability
-- with practice
Later they will dine
Lay out their words
Like fine china
Sketch and ink in
Formalities
Feign independence and truth
He feels no loyalty
No longer values their past
As one forgets the liberation
Of virginity, yet feeling
Freer without
To let forth fury and no longer scramble
to gather the words he has strewn
He couched this secret to truly sear
Those properly batting eyelids
The world does not disappear when
One shuts her eyes
December 12, 2002
All commercials suck
Once on a Saturday we tallied the
Good ads
We found only four and that took
Us three hours and 12 minutes.
We didn’t give up, we just forgot after that.
The Empire Carpet man should
Never pretend santa claus.
Morgan Ferchild will even take
Old Navy’s money.
I would never buy fur
As a consequence of an ad campaign
Or choose fringed boots instead.
Usually they force me to boycott
The somewhat fruitless yet “necessary” path of these consumer products
December 12, 02
Ambition-to-wake groans, crushed and
Oozing like it fell in the back of city
Garbage truck
Manage to love the couch with base devotion
Sprawl and writhe, lie motionless as
Frogless pond scum
Instinctively remember the fetal position
These are things about which one should
Worry.
My skull is a cathedral dome, empty
Except faithed knowledge and hoped motivation.
I move to douche my brain of yesterday’s
Emotional excretion and every day’s before.
Rattle my pen across paper,
Scribble my theoried therapy only to
Discover accidental truths, patterns,
Lights of mirrored sight distance – illusionary
Duplication common in food court
Restaurants.
I have viewed every commercial,
Exhausted every episode of every show,
Befriended HBO like a feral and
Promiscuous college roommate
Living vicariously from my
Cushioned leather existence.
These are things about which one should
Worry.
December 12, 02
Avoid a massive reproduction
Deny obligatory style
I will only grasp success as myself
But to be like those
Who succeed I feel obliged to plagiarize
Never again create
Use a formula, squeeze my own words in
Pressure forms like a hemorrhage
I need to drain other authors from my mind
Prefabricated ideas and processes are a
Hematoma of the skull that has now
drained as far as my cheeks
Will it affect my tongue? Or pen?
Force myself to continue and something
Lies inky on the page
Maybe not what I intended, maybe no inspiration
But forced poetry creates truth unwittingly
Once in a while a line shines out as a ring
On my right thumb basks in the auburn
Bar light
December 13, 02
Now I’ll just write – about Ford sponsoring
Absolutely everything – about wheat beer
And my birthday in a day and 1 hour – but
No one to spend it w/.
Now I know why prepositions
Don’t come at the end of sentences.
Who wants an abbreviation @ the end?
Although this is good practice for
A date. Leave them wanting
More is always better than pretentious – too much
About which I must find more about which to talk – pure pretension
Exchange shitty presents and wonder whether
Cursing is appropriate in poetry
I believe it is only calmly. Angry
Swearing only detracts from the apocalyptic
Meaning of my words
I’ll prolly finish a beer before anyone
Who matters shows up. It’s always
Easier to drink faster alone
Unless in a drinking game. And they won’t even
Hire me at Bailey’s
Everything is so much more frighteningly
Poetic in the moonlight or by pen
Somehow key strokes capture
Nothing but words
I value a floating lemon and the girl
Beside me on a bar stool
Who doesn’t even know his last name
The Better Pasta Pot has a colander in the lid
And a nonstick surface
Must like most people here
It’s kinda like the Butter Cutter
I remembered
The book “Who Likes Donuts?” today
My mother sent me Tori Amos in a box
And a faux card offering stars. I almost cried
I was mean to her yesterday
And the day before, but a present from her shouldn’t fix it
Especially since I deserve to apologize
At least I’m not writing on a napkin
It’s hard to write about people around you
When they’re right next to you
When you talk and write, everything
Is very truncated, disjointed and stream of consciousness –
Start and stop – wonder what to say next –
If you should escape and how?
Numb your tongue.
December 13, 02
I wasn’t trying to avoid using a singular pronoun
“they” denotes more than one
People who are generous will never be rich
Yet I do not fight them
I have no stronger confidants
Lose us, saddle us, bridle us unwillingly
Like a stable that knows no unknowns
December 13, 02
People are easier to offend as I get older
Or maybe I’m more offensive
How long is soon?
I possibly search for an architecture
Of challenge
Create more in my mind
Emotions like PMS, tripping through
A dance of questions
About us
More girly than I am
Drunk off too much you but I’m
Not becoming sick
The next morning I’m not hung over
Just thirstier
Drink sand to keep from
Smothering you
No longer
Gulp down cheap well drinks
Of other men
Never forgetting your taste
And texture
If I had the balls I’d
Tell my mother that you’re
The one
April 15, 03
Give the government
15 bucks for
The right to make
$
And
Get a free
Pen
May 10, 03
Words just aren’t enough like
A few more nicks left after the
Band-Aid box is empty
The bathroom floor is wet
From a calculated shower,
No more tears, no splashes on
The counter
Cloudy mirror like my mask
Martyr less lengths
I fall asleep expecting
Less from you drunk and
Waiting for your arrival
Miss your touch like new
Unpadded carpet
Pick you like fresh basil to
Season my life
I watch you exfoliate past
Fucks to continue us with integrity
Pick my teeth after a bad movie
While you watch
And watch you pee
Bare compassion to repress
Less than tedious menace
I’m a child full of giggles
Run from the bulls of commitment
And amuse myself with your
Hard on
I’m beautiful with bruises on
My knees
May 20, 03
To wake from a dream
Where I dreamt of flying
Is like trying to jump
After getting off a trampoline
The real world crashes down
Upon me every morning
Begin to avoid sleep to avoid
A false reality more appealing
Than the waking moments
Which haunt me in comparison
I fail to catch my breath, base
Decisions on this waking prison
Live my life after dark to mimic
Subconscious thought
Feel as I whirl in daylight, arms outstretched,
That nothing whizzing by my eyes
Exists, for I cannot focus
I do not want to
Last night I laid in your strong
Arms again, last night
I danced unabashedly, last night
I soared over the treetops
I loved I lived I laughed
Then I woke.
June 15, 03
Forever the other woman,
My nerves are a straw wrapper
Tied in a knot and snapped in two,
The knot always on the left.
For I have had many of them
Despite children, wives
I have listened and supported and
Flailed wildly.
Two hours of mock commitment
At a time,
Bastard child of lust and validation
She never made me feel this
Way, he tells me.
Despite morals and doubts each
Finds me again or maybe a
New broken home will lie
Between my shaking thighs,
How do they find me
Pursue with blind, playful
Confidence, whether he
Offers the unrealistic or
Pounces with earnest truth of
No future between us.
Somewhere along the line
I gave in and each time
It is a little easier,
Like a teenager unable to
Taste the vodka in her third stiff drink.
I may be happy but this lipstick
Stained collar is
Not happiness.
June 18, 03
This life is almost entirely fictitious
We all hang in a delicate balance
My sweater is too loose,
Her lips to thin
It all bucks and arches to the point of panic
Don’t make me secrete more information
Than you can handle
Blessed be those who hear
Aim to be one who sees
Because my sight extends beyond
Silicone and Botox and collagen
A straight razor to the wrist
Might do some more good, but not you
I’ve started to consider a cattle prod
In the face to wake Them all up
As though you attached a lightening rod
To bring good graces your way
All I feel is the electric current
Of voyeuristic absence
You pushed so hard for that big break
I turned down indecent proposals,
Although you urged me
To use Them for us, for US
But I loved you too much
We’ll never get discovered in this
Sickly violet fluorescent light
My suit rumpled, baggy
And yours suggestively tight
“We could be better than this”
she yawns, obstinate, pouting ineffectively
her lips like thin pink ribbons
glossed to perfection, devoid of injection
I gathered her in my arms and pressed those
Lips with a freshly manicured index finger
A tear and a cheek and we felt we had failed
Already, at 18
Why not let go the hold on imagined perfection
Let our lips press gently, hold each other all night?
Because
If I am not enough for all of Them
How can I fill you?
I grew up with the sense that my
Future was like my breasts
Small, taut, so full of possibility with
Maturity that never developed
Her erratic breathing each night
Spurred thoughts that my life
Was more greatly in need of augmentation
And she clung to me
Both in passionate, fingernailed embrace
And in searching silence on the train
As if she believed me her lucky charm,
My smile of approval her salvation
Our successes inevitable,
If I merely said so.
One night in April I left her
Helpless, erratic in our bed
Sought one of Them out, undressed,
Climaxed, and left my
Comp card conspicuously, hauntingly
Beside him on the pillow
I let her believe he had discovered me
While walking in the park
A fluke, good fortune
And it was – for us, for US
Augmented life bounced forth a
Cleavage of deceit, They were all the
Same, I used each of Them while
Keeping her clear in my mind –
Remember? I could see.
The future, our future, her hips, the
Light on her shoulders, nipples
She and I in this together
She profited inexplicably, trustingly
I could completely forget each of Them
Beneath me
Bright futures, bright eyes, thick lips
And big tits
You and I, a spread in Glamour, plastic,
Airbrushed, fictitious
Just as our lives had become.
July 4, 2003
