Tangents

Winding the Master Clock

Time feels like it's going backwards

Each ticking second hand

Working double time

One click forward

Then a half click back

Slowly eating itself

Making the day longer

Each boring task more labored

Until the clock is watched

sitting at the bar where

time slips away

Hoping for some terrible thing to happen

away from you

As you sit in anticipation

for the best thing to hurry up

and come

Take you to a place where there is no time

Piper Marau

His and Hers

"Tell me I can love you again

Treat me like you do not know me yet

Just once teach me how I can survive alone

I must be whole."

'I never wanted you to love me

I don’t even know you now

You’ll never survive me

I numbered the pieces as I took them.'

"I once had desire

I’m falling so far down

There must be something left for me

I’m fighting with no strength."

'I gave you your desires

Then I pushed you down

You had nothing to begin with

Just lay down.'

"I can’t do this any more

Your lies poisoned me slowly

Your darkness has consumed me

I give up."

'You never could do anything

You ate them like candy

You never saw light in anything

That’s my girl.'

 Piper Marau

Meeting Blinky

They sure had a lot of technology at the clinic

A sprawling walk-in only

Mad jumble of doctors with names posted on a menu

behind the receptionist

When she checked me in she took my name

age, date of birth, marital status

then religion

And scanned my ID through a machine the size of a standard ruler

Every office before them had a boxy multipurpose copy machine

To make paper files about medical history

But at the clinic I simply picked a doctor and

waited to be called

Like sitting at the ER among flu patients

and screaming kids

With the random bleeder sitting in the corner

When they called me back the nurse took my vitals

and logged numbers into a computer

She put me into a room with my friend (never see a doctor alone)

and started asking about my medical history

I can't even remember her face

I think she was fat

with that thick valley accent splashed with her native Spanish

All I could remember was the tablet she took notes on

A thin screen  much like the one on the computer right next to her

but it must not have been practical for them to

put all of the information on one source

Then she took my picture on the device

for my profile

Then she left me there to wait for the doctor

Another short, round, Mexican with a computer in his hands

Then he asked me the same questions as the nurse

about my complaints and brief family history

So I told him

I told him everything I could remember in addition to the

piece of paper with everything else written on it

Horrible symptoms with incredible weight loss

That I needed to know what was wrong

He let me talk for several minutes before telling me

There was nothing he could do but order a blood and urine test

for the standard things that the basic gynecologist would test for

and he sent me to the lab station where the first technician

completely missed the vein when she stabbed my arm

then proceeded to dig after it with the needle

A cold bitch insensitive to screaming

with a reputation for leaving bruising

When I got her off me the next one tried

but failed to read my allergy chart and reached for me with latex gloves

I yelled to my friend "LETS GO!  NOW!!"

and checked out in a fuss

Violated and confused

I found another doctor after that

The military set me up with that nut bowl first so I had no idea

what they would dig up on the second round

So I asked for a real doctor's office that made appointments

Insurance uncovered a gem

A reception with a big copy machine

And paper everywhere

The nurse asked me what was wrong, my sore throat for that particular visit, and

wrote down my medical history on my chart

When my new physician came in she had the same piece of paper

and began drilling me with questions

When she finished she said,

"We have a lot of work to do"

Piper Marau

7

I like the way it sneaks up

the reckless abandon it brings

in a quiet room

with just the music

melodies to

push through the missing

when there is just one thing

that is so far away

that it never leaves you

But it turns on you

it goes sour and scratches you

when nothing is there

Piper Marau

The Porch

There were lonely nights out there

smoking on the front porch

The only covered area outside

In a quaint little square

with gutters

and the open sky

The view of the sun as it set.

The rising moon.

Across the street was that crazy house

the road between a path for the coyotes.

There was a raccoon the size of a car tire.

A beast.

Always slowly scavenging in the yard

Among the rats

As they threw nuts down from the tree.

A good one

or a bad one again

fearlessly frittering up and down the tree.

And then came the rat I saved

so I think.

The cats were always hunting game

The lizards were always male

And the birds always devoured leaving only a head or maybe a foot.

And the rats were always babies.

I saved three once.

The first died of head trauma

the second in my hand

the third in my house coat

cuddled and clingy towards me.

Then later the cats found more

one got away.

The other I saved twice.

How it lived is a miracle

And I believed it was that rat peering down from the gutter at me

sniffing and nodding

then running back on the roof

checking on me each night as I would sit alone out there and smoke

I would hear the neighbors arguing

late at night.

The crackhead's scheduled melt down.

And the same cars would go up and down the street at night.

A world of things happening around me

and I would soak it all in

Changing with the weather

getting lost in the routine

Knowing too much about others.

Trying to focus on wild life

Owls would search for food at 2am

I would hear the hard beating of the wings

the screeching of the catch as it

was flown away into the darkness.

The most beautiful nights had a fog

Thick enough to feel

still able to see the street

In a mysterious

Oft' creepy haze

The howling of the coyotes would bounce around the canyons

and echo in my ears

Most likely coming to kill something in my yard.

Piper Marau

One California Night

The only call on a lonely night

Some guy named Bo or Beaux

looking for his sister, wrong number.

I could hear booming in the distance

What sounded like cannon fire

And I was kicking myself for all

The nights like this

with the mood

And I never wrote about them

The crackhead across the street

Taking off in the middle of the night with his son

While I waited for her to come over

But I knew she never would

So I drank the wine I bought for us

for the one night away she'd get

When the dope fiend came back it was quiet

All for about 20 minutes

Then he was out again

Selling another sack or maybe

steeling the rims off some other junkie's car

I secretly hoped he would sell them back to

the same poor soul he stole them from

And the booming

filling the dense night air

Trapped under the ceiling of clouds

With nowhere to go

But invade the quiet homes lining the coast.

Piper Marau

Round and Rubber

I've decided rats are better than people.

Let's face it we all, as living beings, must find a way to survive

food and shelter must be obtained but people have the most worthless method of acquiring the bare essentials to life

We are stuck in buildings constructed by other people that are also stuck in buildings to learn a generic enlightenment, of which things will never be applied in actual life, to then ask for permission to work for a period of time and for a designated salary and quite often hearing "No".  These people fritter about searching for love, money, fame, really good drugs, or a feeling.  An emotional sensation to fill the void ever deepening by the lack of ability to obtain the things they need to live a good life.

When finally they are unable to work, assuming they were given the opportunity to, they die.

Or get hit by a bus at 37

Drunk driving accident during the teen years

Most certainly the Coup de Grace-drug overdose.

But they die.  All of them.

Just like the rats

But people become even more useless when they die.

Most of them continue to take up space with a grave marker

or a ridiculous mausoleum that no one will ever visit except horny teenagers that lose their virginity or get dared to make out in there for three minutes.

Worthless.

Then you have the rats, the ultimate example of life going full circle.

A rat is born and, if it survives the first six weeks, learns to hunt.

It builds a nest of whatever it may find and gathers food wherever it may come from.  No asking permission there.

At some point the rat will choke on a seed and die, become old and just croak, have a disease and be killed by its fellow rats, or get eaten by and owl, cat, coyote, etc.  The point is they become food or fertilizer in the ground.

The rats don't care about money for a nut that fell off a tree

They fight tooth and nail for their territory

And they sure as fuck don't say Please.

Piper Marau

There's Gophers Too

I remember the wife had just left town

He left holes in the yard

The result of moving a trailer just after the rain

The ground too soft

Doing it alone like a 'hero'

The night I pushed it out I knew

So when he left I got the shovel and did it myself

The people we rent from said,

"Start a garden, the work's half done"

Only optimists out west

Like that ass across the street

He could yell about the darkest fantasy

He still sounded excited

He made all the noise on the street

Except when my cat got out at night

Only when the wife did it

A strange fellow

He saw people but

Never inside them

Or considered what would fill there holes

Or mine

And my holes

Are slowly becoming filled again

And the sun breaks through the clouds

With the cats right there behind me

Digging another hole

Piper Marau

Republic Blues

It was the first sunny day in weeks

But here the days felt like weeks so...

Time had been drifting here into an awkward monotony

Nothing special, nothing new on any given day

The same cigarette

The same cat food

The same crows leering over the shed

Something gloomy and pale drifting through the air

There was the family across the street

Hot dogs on a junior sized grill

The five minutes of the day that man didn't yell about something

Not that a full mouth would stop him

And the eternal patience of the girl

Quiet and scheming

Careful, most of all

But a quiet afternoon on this boring street

A slow day with curious sunshine

Warming the skin after an eternity of clammy fog

Finally able to open the windows

The mountain air mixing with the coast

Chasing away the old chill

And yet its different when there's sunshine

Comforting sunshine

Always bringing the heat

Boiling down on this peaceful street

With the yelling drug dealer

And the woman proud to have married a black man in more racist times

And the ice cream truck that never stops here

And the cat brought me another lizard...

Piper Marau

Powdered Sugar Belly

The Man Named Sarah

 
There once was a mam named Sarah,
He lived in a town named City,
Then one day by chance,
He happened to glance,
Upon a girl named Benny,
They went out for a date,
To a place named time,
So the next day they met,
On a friend's foolish bet,
The friend lost the bet and Sarah lost Benny,
So Sarah was sad,
But his wallet was glad,
And the next day he spent every penny.

Piper Marau