Criminal

Tonight would be a great night to commit a crime.
The fog is so thick, it has stopped being fog, altogether.
I see nothing through the car windows
But sparkly water molecules in the headlights.

Poor it on. Poor it on.
We are on a fog-coated sea,
No longer a fog-covered road.
You'll push me. You'll push me overboard.

The day was nice downtown, but here
The rivers just keep on going until they connect
To new waterroads with houses to pass
And streetlights that make fog thicker.
Until we all come, all come down like virga.

A Demco No. 675 Card Catalog Filing Flag

Who knew
You used to revisit love poems
Enough to mark pages
With paper clips
A Demco No. 675 Card Catalog Filing Flag
Bent around the edges
Maybe you still do

In a secret library somewhere
You were more than an office worker
More than a mother
Someone made you wonder
And mark page 132:

"Do you like the color blue
do I worry you when I frown
Where were you
when I was growing up
and needed somebody"

And thanks to you
I never had to ask

I leave office supplies
As marginalia
Or I will, if I ever find
A love poem better
Than a Demco No. 675 card catalog Filing Flag

100 Pounds

Over
Under
I am just water
wait
and someday
I will be a person

Night School

Welcome to Part II.
Take 2.

Take part.

It's 34 years later
But the dates don't matter.

THIS IS NIGHT SCHOOL!

There are going to be some kids
Here, tucking their cell phones
In their laps, just as the professor looks.

They can't work on the assignment
because they “don't have the books.”

So they'll...
Do it later.

Remember “Later”?
Later, a comfortable promise
That, in the future, you'll be less
Of a jackass.

WELCOME TO “TRY AGAIN!”

To try harder.

They say it's not your fault;
It's the market!

THIS TIME YOU'LL MAKE IT! COME TO NIGHT SCHOOL!

Those fucking kids with their Adobe Flash games,

You'll want to shake them and scream,
“YOU'RE THE FUTURE!!!”

Welcome to first try,
Welcome to why not,
Welcome to "WTF" and "OMG"

And, “This is not, at all, what I imagined.”

Some of the florescent blubs' lights
Putter around the corners of the,
They'll call it,
Dungeon,
Where thick, concrete walls cut off 3G,
But, hey, at least there's WiFi!

You'll think,
Come on, kids, ignore all that and get it together!
But they'll probably talk about that technology
Like you talk about the Daisy printer.

WELCOME TO ALL THAT'S LEFT FOR YOU.

Welcome to more cold dinners.

It's good for your brain.
It'll keep you sharp.
It's night school.