The jobs are difficult
And dangerous, there are
No easy jobs, they eat
Up the centers of the days and
Leave so little on the sides, attentiveness
Frozen with boredom, or fighting fatigue.
I’ve tried to think through exactly what it is
In the psyche of the ones who succeed at their
Jobs, what it is, that strikes me as inimical
To the poetical.

An undeserved certainty, as opposed to
        In inauthentic emptiness
                Which knows itself to be such? James Dickey

Was a salesman, but a terminal
Liar, according to his son, plus
A lot of seedy vulgarity in his poems --

        Yes I watched Deliverance
                But that doesn’t

Count. I’ve always found it strange
How the jobs never occur on TV, or in the movies --
Ever notice that? How the sitcom always begins
Outside of the job? Like, is that some bizarre holdover
From classical times, when the upper leisure class
Had the time to get all eleganced in their minds
Whilst the plentiful peasants toiled? The real history
        Of the world: a mud-&-straw shack, smoke
        Curling up out through        the hole in the top
        A toothache        fatigue in the shoulders
        (Like heavy rain                must feel in clouds)
        And extraordinary, breathtaking amounts of _________
(insert: soul, spirit, atman, love)
I remember stopping
By the late-night Kinkos
copy shop, afterhours,
When it was closed down
Bu the bright lights still on, the guy I knew
        The white light blinking in his face
        Tiredness, adult tiredness -- maybe the jobs

Aren’t in the poems because they’re so hard to write about?
                To succeed at a job, one
Of those “career” jobs (what an icky word -- makes a human life
        Look like a tennis lob) you really need
To bear down on it        believe in it
        (for real) (not just faking) (not daydreaming
About a poem)

If it wasn’t for my parents
And for Jenni, I might well
Have ended up like Vachel
Lindsay by now -- in debt, stricken,
Alone in some motel room, gulping
Down suicidal Lysol . . .

The digital alarm wuzzes on the bureau.
She wakes up, but lies and luxuriates
In the bed sheet’s warmth, indeterminate where
They end and her body begins.
        The sun, so curiously
Demythologized, alive.
Unwritable. How could she say her life
        And still keep it real
To its complete anonymity, its complete
Center-of-the-world?
        Hot shower water, the soap.
Floss in the teeth, spit blood in the sink.
        Greasy hands
On the steering wheel, forgot to dry
        After fried eggs.

Guilty, switching between
Country-western, Lite Rock, haw haw talk
        The highway thrumming below the tires --
Boredom seems such a violation of the day.
The clouds are very beautiful today, strung like tufts
        Among blotches of blue.
Yet they are not for looking at
        For very long -- an odd emptiness
Makes one turn the eyes.

And now the formal smile
        At the metal and glass
Gates of work.
Mild pleasures:
        The second cup of coffee,
        Surreptitious clickings
Over to Arts & Letters Daily,
        Cool darkness of the bathroom --

The long drive home, little fires of guilt
Stamped out by forgetfulness. Toggling the dial
        Over to the song, stray, that
Lifts and moves. . . Crackle
If the gravel in the driveway.
And now to stand

        Alone, in the silent kitchen.
These were our days. Where were the myths? Tell me,
How do I immortalize a cubicle? One
Doesn’t -- yet too objective a description, we’ve
        Lost those enormous inner tides of the mind --

But what were they? What were these weird flashes
        “You’re asking too much of poetry. Like Larkin said
        Poetry’s just a ride through the sensorium
        In return for the dime of your attention.”

Sunsets, deer disappearing into woods --
        What about the job? What about
Fucking reality?
        But what is reality?
The bath has grown cold about her.
        She sits in bed.
                Her mint tea has grown cold.
                        She sleeps.



©2005 by Jack Anders