Terminal
January 17, 2012 § 4 Comments
Charred both retinas staring
at this lit screen.
Letters shimmering
like heat off asphalt.
Cursor ablink.
A building gutted by fire,
the site of the opening
of a letter bomb
is my head.
Acuity diminishing
foreground and background
become subtly woven,
hard to tease apart.
I must worry information
off the screen,
gather the tasteless, touchless,
silent syllables.
If a LEM module crawling
the dead-sea-floor of my skull
scooped a sample
would tests reveal that life
had once existed there?
Note: This poem was written when I was a gainfully employed cubicle dweller who shared the space with the great grey eye of a monitor with weak green neon letters and a cursor that pulsed as slowly as a medicated heart.
Some weeks–this week–life is so overwhelming that all I can do is run to the file of some past self and say, “Give me whatever ya got.”
Ah, cubicle poetry! Along with neon green letters, I remember amber orange and the “tell-tale heart” cursor, which was so much more insistent than the hum of an electric typewriter, which was so irritating compared to a manual typewriter whose keys clunked only when pushed. It really doesn’t seem long ago at all.
.
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Panicked,
I thought
I was
Going to stumble upon
Some dear name, like
Ray
or Adrian.
Relief floods me and humor
Takes over as I realize
I misinterpreted
Terminal.
dear Adrian, Take care, laugh, slow down, breathe, you are the only one chasing you..Many people love you and God didn’t intend for us to live frantic,lives.
We just aren’t built for it. Delete something, but not me.
One of your million fans, Sheila
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Somehow the blank screen isn’t quite as intimidating as the blank page, though!
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I love it. Richard
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