Uncracking a Cryogenic Obit

Arthur C. Clarke, 16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008

Small Change

Malik came in from Washington to hook
my laptop to the network: “This will ease
your access to the e-mail server… Look!”
A Windows® message popped up in Chinese.

I left him tapping and I took a walk.
This kind of thing’s been happening for years—
the “simple” fix, the crash, the techno talk…
When DC gets involved, it ends in tears.

I bought a deli sandwich down the street
and found our currency, again, retooled!
“It’s got a purple ‘5’— I think it’s neat,”
the cashier said. I don’t. I’m overruled.

It’s entropy. Perpetual decay.
The only choice you get is “click OK”.

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New Chapbook!

Aquinas Flinched, a book of 15 of my poems, has been published by Modern Metrics, an independent press specializing in “formal” verse. Find out more about the chapbook and the press and how you can get a copy right here.

Here’s a poem from the chapbook:

Manasquan
(for Steven Phillips)

WE crab the ruin rocks at Manasquan,
The Island of the Squaws, we Forfeit Boys,
Embraced by our paternal Grandmas on
A beach of Kodachrome and rubber toys

Where, as we tumble, adamantly tanned,
They come up bleached and ghostly in reel two:
Our fathers talking, standing in the sand,
Their pallid chests, long pants and business shoes.

A moment. Then they crack and fade to light.
We’re back to waving matriarchs against
the bank of blue and yellow clouds that shade
the field of skeletal remains, condensed
8 millimeter tidelines to a night
that pulls us to the lights of the arcade.

_____

I have my copy, and I can vouch for the physical quality of the book! Modern Metrics produces very fine books, indeed. The cover, by the way, was designed by R. Nemo Hill, incorporating a photo I took of the Tick Tock Diner on Route 3 in Nutley on the way home from a Bruce Springsteen concert. As for the quality of the poetry, well…it is published by Modern Metrics. But…you be the judge!

Thanks for checking it out.