Some days––you can’t connect with your broken antique alarm clock;
hands swing idly––two or three confused pendulums––
top is off the box:
must be time for a sleep walk.

Some days––you can’t even get your foot in your mouth,
your tongue is too tangled round your brain.
You get up on the wrong side of bed,
the room radically tilts at some oblique angle,
you slide out the door
and into the day.

You stop at some nameless coffee shop,
the blind clerk stares like you’re a ghost.
Silence deafens as your order is disregarded.
You have just been Clerked.

Some days––you investigate the minefield,
deciding to follow bicycle tracks
somebody left in the sand
just to avoid the unexploded mines
of your life.
When you reach the big hole in the ground,
there are no more traffic signs,
no more tire tracks.

Some days––your good friend Mr. Martini
greets you with the enthusiasm
a junkyard dog lavishes on an intruder;
optimistically, you order another––without olives.
That napkin you found crumpled in your pocket
was somebody else’s invitation to this cocktail party
and you ask yourself,
"Am I here all alone?"

Some days––you are lidless.
An unwrapped empty gift box
left open, half filled,
a few handfuls of tacky pink and green Styrofoam packing peanuts
blowing wildly in the crazy wind.


This poem first appeared in Main Street Rag (Volume 15, Number 2, Spring 2010).
Used here with the author’s permission.