blog pirating

okay, so i know i already posted today, like three minutes ago, and i'm breaking yet another rule by pirating this poem directly from tracey's blog. but i do believe it's worth breaking two blogger etiquette rules; this is extremely consistent with what i've been feeling the past few days in light of hurricane katrina. it's long, but worth your time to read. this was written by kevin sawyer after the tsunami last year.

Alone in my living room, spilling beer on my laptop

I have a 1993 Chevrolet Cavalier
It has 127,346 miles on it, and counting
It leaks oil, I suspect,
And makes discouraging noises in the cold

I don’t have a girlfriend
I live in the ghetto
My toilet runs
My carpet is dirty
My roommate doesn’t clean dishes
And I can’t knit with my left foot

Today’s paper features a photo
Of a mother wailing
Over the bodies of her ten children
Age 1-12
Situated in rows
Youngest to oldest
Within those sixteen square feet,
Lay anything she had to live for
The silent, unspeaking vessels
That, were she to encounter them in their rooms
On a peaceful evening
Would appear to be sleeping
Breathing succinctly,
Under the reliable hiss
Of waves reaching shore

When I was a boy
I was afraid of aliens
In my dreams, I’d wake up in bed
And they’d just be up there
Vaguely celestial,
Their presence more terrifying
Than anything real in my life
I’d slink back, under my sheets
Hoping they couldn’t see me
They could literally do anything
But they never did

My car is this shade of aqua blue
Like every American car made in ‘93 or ‘94
The interior is the shade of gray
That isn’t even trying to be gray
The thing looks like a cheap, abysmal toy

At work, I wonder things, like:
What would a 40ft. wave look like
And, how do Christians know about the Tsunami
Since all of them claim never to watch TV?

I hate cold weather
And phony people
I hate bland food
And purchasing licence plate tabs
And hate, frankly, that I don’t have nicer dishware
For when I have company

On TV, they showed footage from a helicopter
Of a village, or what was once a village
Of 50,000 people
Now reduced to a smattering of white-gray
An expressionless landscape
Featuring arbitrary clumps of materials
That can no longer plausibly be called homes
They used to feature life, and families
Where men and women made love,
Had children…
And huddled with their families just before they died
The TV didn’t show most of that

My car has this particular glitch
Where it won’t always go into reverse when I want it to
It stays in park
And I kind of have to readjust it

When I was a boy,
I saw a news story
About another boy,
Who was burned alive by his father,
In a domestic dispute
That apparently merited the burning of his only son
As the boy was wheeled through the hospital,
He had these circles of gauze around his eyes
Every night, I’d huddle under the sheets,
Terrified that if I looked out my door,
I might see that boy, in his bandages
Still burning…
I was afraid of that kind pain
And I thought, if I didn’t see him
Then he wouldn’t be there, even if he stood
At the foot of my bed

I hate poorly written sitcoms,
Houses that are painted pink,
Especially the old, beautful ones
I hate the suburbs
And I hate the way metal forks taste,
If I allow myself to think about it

I was reading on the Internet
About a woman who was rescued
From a flooded river in Indonesia
Her rescuer carried her off
Then raped her, and threatened to kill her
A Google search of the story brings up porn sites,
For some reason

Leftover TV dinner containers are distressing
My fork hanging precariously on the edge
Threatening to stain my carpet
With spaghetti matriciana – or some such

I wonder about that mother
Wailing over her loss
What did she hate?
When she was a little girl,
What made her shrink and hide?
Because whatever nightmares she had
Fears or premonitions,
For her, they all came true

The driver’s side door of my car won’t open
The plastic handle burst out of its socket one day
So I have to climb over the passenger seat
Which isn’t all that difficult,
It turns outI hate my car
A life changing event
That changed no lives at all

As for me,
the day will bring nothing substantially different
The moon and stars, undulating, but affixed
To roughly the same spot as the night before
My dreams and nightmares
Reflexive of the same fears and desires
It’s all I ever ask from God
And all I ever receive
And I hate that about myself.