Remembering

Sometimes I like to leave the room,
leave the movie playing on the VCR,
leave my collection of film moments
on closet shelves exactly where they are.

Sometimes I like to return to the couch,
return to the story that's jumped to someplace new,
return to the collection of throw pillows
on our two-piece sectional and sit beside you.

But then I have woken, and I've started to learn
that the cream in my coffee makes it softer.
And the screen on my TV does the same to experience
no matter how crisp or sharp the resolution.

Before memory starts when I first wake,
I fill in the blanks for the life I make.

Accumulations

We are so secure; we are so protected
by technology, and it is not from the terror.
Our identities are idealized to the point,
so sharpened like knives we wield wildly
against any who would try to steal them.
You can't steal my time, we say in public.
You can't steal my mind, we say at home
with our Tivos and Televisions.

I am so protected behind the walls
of my castle, of my car, of my cubicle
by my thinking, by my things, by my...
There are excuses at the ready
for my steady lack of output.

I tell that the forty hours of work
will exhaust my reservoir of energy,
but the fact is that I often return
home and rush to my Tee Vee to check
out instead of in with myself,
with my other, with my mind.

It's not even madness in which I'm immersed
for 9 hours away daily--it's a comfort
that keeps me from having to stretch,
from having to really grow where I want
to go, from confronting my own soul.

And then I get on the shuttle, I shuffle
myself off to my hovel with all my life.
It's all my life I live at home,
where my other part is, it's my collection
of crap- but it's my crap- that signifies
nothing. More than nothing I have accumulated.

And as without, so within, so I ask:
Are you going, are you coming, am I there
yet, amd I still here, are these the words
to the song I'm meant to sing
because I have so much to say,
I want so much for someone to play
with me, with energy, with wonder
like wild animals are just outside our door.

How ill we escape? It isn't from ourselves,
it's from the world. It's from the work,
the wiles of technological wizardry
that makes us the most actively disconnected
society of connected people ever. We're growing
to understand there is no coincidence,
there is no cowardly craven waiting on our doorstep,
there is no cross to which we are kept.

Our arms are outstretched, we want
to embrace someone, something, somewhere
that there is nothing to distract us,
there is nothing to keep us quiet,
there is nothing that cuts too deep.
And more and more kids are staying home
and fewer and fewer kids are moving out.
Maybe more have begun to realize the fewer rewards.

We rush into the world, but it will wait.
The work will still be there waiting
and wanting you to report, so what
is the rush? Are you ready, have you readied,
what will happen if you get there
and you're not ready? What do you want
to be, is what adults ask of others. Is that
because they know they've forgotten their own answer
to the question that begs so many different answers?

Every time you ask out loud before
you ask inside, you will find an answer,
but not the one you need the most.
What you believe determines how you act,
and I'm afraid that too often my behavior
is as cheap as the words I speak.
So I aspire to rise above, I aspire
to reconnect, I aspire to realize

that this age can be the one where I come
into my own, and when I get home tonight
I will continue to crave more than the answers,
I will keep on creeping up on the questions
I still remember from when I woke up today.
I want nothing more than to go where
I haven't been, but the way there will be
wound by my own turning over. Watch me leave.

Customer Service

This is an ode
to every employee
of the customer service industry
who was gee-golly just so pleased
to serve me whichever
soul-numbing amenity
my wallet could afford,
and an ode more importantly
to every single employee
who readily, however hesitantly,
has sold the majority of their waking
life to work for a man
they'll never meet.

This is a song
dedicated to every one
of those workers who sought
to convey to me
just how much
they would rather be doing
anything other than listening
to my hare-brained opinion
on either how to do their job
or why their job matters
or how better to cater
to my happiness.

This is an update to management
that lets them know
that however high they happen to think
that they sit on their horses
above all the rest:
Not even you can make everyone happy.
No, sir, not even when you deign
to come down to reprimand your worker
in front of the unhappy customer.
Not even when you choose
to react in a way that uses
nothing you have ever learned
in conflict management classes, no, Sir.

This is a tribute
to each employee who ever refused
to bite their tongue in the face
of the rude, even though they knew
their manager would be asked for.

"Can I speak to your manager?"
"Who is your boss?"
"I'm gonna write a letter!"
"Let me talk to your supervisor!"

Those are the magic spells of today,
and the wizards who populate the public
know that all they have to do is say
that they just don't feel
that quite enough sunshine
has been blown up their holy ass
today, and like flipping a switch,

a manager will manifest
and stomp his big important feet,
pulling the reigns in on his fleet
and showing his big, red, hairy butt
because, "What?! My employee said what?
Are you saying that he was Human?"

Who here is ready for a revolution?
Managers, the next time a customer
threatens to spend their money
at some other establishment,
what would happen if you said,

"Well, we'll be sorry to see you go,
but we believe in our employees,
we believe in respecting others,
and we believe that everyone will be
much happier if you do decide to go."

So, Thank You, all employees out there.
You deserve to be treated better,
and the next time the public
threatens to write a letter,
let it only light a fire
that warms you the way you deserve
because this public, here,
is not an easy one to serve.