UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY - 11/2012

JONATHAN HINE

Movie

if anyone could see my life
in the movies
they would see me sleeping a lot
or hardly sleeping at all

the set is low budget:
just a tiny apartment
& a 10 year-old-chevy

there would be a flashback
to my formative years
& someone would call
child welfare for all the abuse
I endured as an adolescent
I tried to sweep those years under the rug

not much action in this movie
just reading & writing punctuated by a cigarette
& later two, three or twelve beers
to help ease the current scene of
being unemployed & broke

possibly a little fucking to liven things up

I could also go to one of the numerous
tough blue-collar bars & get into a fight
for saying the first honest thing that comes to mind
or, to create the climax
I could slowly load the clip of my .45
leisurely slide the cartridge into the chamber
& suddenly blow my brains out in high definition
at which point the movie has gone multidimensional
maybe they could put a night vision camera in my coffin
to watch the decay & the worms breaking on through
but I will continue my reclusive life as long as the fates
allow, scrawling poems like this one
drinking two, three or twelve beers


Condemned by Circumstances

a cell had multiplied
& became a worm
the worm became a fish
the fish into
the fetus of a mammal
the chastisement
of a body imposed
but the PRIME MOVER was not finished
my pre-programmed character
was not complete
a series of events of one type
or runs of luck
(whether you want to call it chance,
probability, relative frequency, propensity,
likelihood, providence, etc,) eventually
molded my character
& these runs persisted
until my character was formed
my propensity to behave and think
in a certain way
was determined by the fate
of a flipped coin
statistically
if flipped long enough
it will all even out
to a 50% chance of coming up
heads or tails
85
but these series of life
events are like flipping a
coin over & over
and it keeps coming up TAILS, TAILS,
TAILS, TAILS,TAILS, TAILS, TAILS, TAILS,
tails, TAILS, TAILS, Tails…..
or HEADS, HEADS, HEADS, HEADS, HEADS,
HEADS, HEADS, HEADS, HEADS, HEADS, heads,
heads, heads, heads, HEADS,
etc..................................................................................................................................................... (hundreds of times in succession)...
leaving that uncanny feeling
that things have somehow been rigged
(a providential conspiracy?)
the runs of bad luck were common
they stamped my young psyche forever
and the complexity of these
interrelationships
left me embittered
by the many painful experiences
seared into my neural hardware









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