nothing I would change

During the Spring 1993 semester, I composed a series of "morning poems" which took the form of doggerel glosses scribbled in the margins of my class notes. Only fourteen of the original set of nineteen poems have survived the passing of time; the other five have been lost to various purges, though it is possible that a revised complete set still dwells in the documents folder of my wife's old Packard Bell 386. (Not that I'm in a hurry to find out, as I think the incompleteness adds a certain air of mystery, a la lost silent films and classical texts.)

Of all the things I've written, the morning poems are the things I am proudest of, or rather "least embarrassed by" -- not because they're even remotely good, but because they lack the usual self-consciousness that marks my other written work.

Here's the first entry in the sequence:

Morning Poem #1

Again, my friend?
What could you possibly be thinking
In bringing such a crime against pastry
To the desk next to mine?

A danish, you say?
Nay, it is a coiled turd of dough
Scraped off the sidewalk
And glazed in sugar.

I was present
When the carcass pits were peeled open
And the skies over North Woburn turned ochre
With death's heady perfume.

That charnel house tang
Is balsam and lavender
To the smell of your so-called "danish."
Does your nose not function?

You laugh loudly
In response to a joke by your overpainted doll.
A constellation of soggy crumbs
Sprays from your lips.

My head is hurting.
Your gut must be hurting.
Do us both a favor next time.
Buy a donut instead.

I can't remember the context behind most of scribblings (though I know that the "FROM WHAT I HEARD SHE SHOWED UP LATE AND WAS SHITFACED" scrawled on one of my notebook pages refers to an ex-girlfriend), but still vividly recall my inspiration for the above poem.

It's about a fellow that used to sit next to me in my Intro to Symbolic Logic class. He looked like Huey Lewis with a shag haircut, and was fond of chewing foul-smelling danishes with his mouth open and whispering loudly to his girlfriend, who looked like she fell off the back of some meth dealer's Harley. I have no idea why I chose to vent my spleen though bad verse, but it started a trend of poesy that lasted right up until the end of finals.

Johnny Tillotson - Poetry in Motion (from All His Early Hits - And More, 1990) - "I was hoping for Elizabeth Bishop, but what I got was Sylvia Plath..."