Replacing The Compressor
On the walk-in freezer, the red
And yellow China Rose sign
Sails across the midnight street
While I work on my deserted roof
island full of hulks of silent
Machinery ancient little moments
adrift in eternity watching
Needles crawl across the numbness
Of numbers…
Who am I what am I
doing here taking care of
doing here taking care of
This hopeless, misguided
Technology in which every solution
Is a problem, my tooth hurts
I’m afraid I’ll lose them all, my
Customers refuse to schedule their
Emergencies, so I never have time
To take care of myself, I imagine
Taking out my false teeth in performance
And making them talk to me while
Remembering Walt’s brother
Dying “asking
For dad” who’d been dead
Twenty years, and Walt too tired
And disgusted to call me back
to answer
Technical questions with
Human sympathy, anymore, everything
we do is so stupid, everyone
I know is
Dying, it’s insane, can they really
Kill the earth, force me to dig
My own grave, while bombarding me
With trivia and lies, isn’t there
Some law against an excess
Of darkness? I guess it’s
No big deal, but it’s hard
Losing compressors to this heat
Hard when the best work you can do
Doesn’t cut it, when you realize you
Are part of the incompetence
Of everyone, as if in confirmation
My REI work
boots pick this moment (at midnight)
For all the excellently engineered
Leather work to separate
From the oil resistant rubber
Soles, I got it
Done, but it’s a miserable
Victory, I just leave the tools and junk
On the roof and drive, it’s almost comical
To see a beautiful woman in the car beside me
Stopped at the light,
Fluffing her hair, stretching luxuriously
While I try to find my way home thinking
about too many
things that don’t work
right and in the morning six
Brightly colored ropes hang
In straight lines from the roof
To my equipment on the sidewalk
Each with that little
Limp curl just before the slipknot
at the end impossible
To replicate with
Intention.
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