Arriving home from work
Wasted
I am defeated by the yogurt I forgot to refrigerate
Sitting spoiled on the table
French Vanilla untasted
Once gleaming proud on the factory line
Market surveyed
Carefully heat sealed
Certified and dated
Does my yogurt mourn
Lost potential
My sleek cat brushes my leg
Chasing a lizard brought in
I am defeated by the email photo from a traveling friend
A squalid market place
White chickens alive
Packed unmovable tight in a crate
A cat sits by licking its paws
I am defeated by the lizards tail
Found on the floor like a green pebbly licorice
My traveling friend calls
Informant of the bigger picture
Back from the earth's other side
Home of folded yogis quiet
The message
The poor there seem happy
When is acceptance resignation
What is a state of grace
If I worked at a car factory
I would bless each piece on the assembly line
Hoping the car imbued with love
Would make an owner happy
That their travels would be safe
I find The tailless green lizard
Crouched still behind the bench
Head cocked to the side
Alive and waiting
© 2008 Audri phillips
3 comments:
A Yogis Wife
Arriving home from New York
The Yogi is tired
Where is my food?
The Yogurt expired
I am deflated by the yogurt
The yogurt tried
I broke my promise to eat it
I'm the one who lied
It's wasted potential a crime against food itself
And the capitalist machine that brought it to me
Once gleaming proud on the factory line
Market tested, can't be bested
Hermetically sealed
with sex appeal
crated and dated
price inflated
marketed throughout the lands
untouched by human hands
Sitting spoiled on the table
Oh Lord why was I unable
to eat a yogurt by it's time
Shirley admitted her serious crime
The French Vanilla
Has gone un-tasted
I so yearn to join it
I wanna get wasted
The moral dilemma
Of food and life
of killing French Vanilla
It's with anguish I'm rife
For how is this waste
this needless little death
any different from the lizard ghost
that my cat plays with
Critters come in all sizes
some big and some small
But my little yogurt cup
holds the most of all
With billions of organisms
In each little cup
Is it proper to eat some
Is it ghosts I hiccup?
My heart aches so much now
Is my yogurt stillborn?
Woe it's lost potential
in my perfect storm
I am deflated by the e-mail from Nigeria
THE KING NEEDS SOME MONEY
but I am numb in my couch,
Doesn't that sound funny to you?
I'm deflated by the Lizards Tail
Maybe I could send it through the mail
to the Nigerian King
What would he make of such a thing?
The tail lay on the floor
like a green pebbly licorice
Where It just might get used
For my cat to get nourished
The Yogi's wife has message
The poor people are happier
Than people with money
they dress snappier
but their lives are crappier
When is acceptance resignation?
When a state of grace
Puts too much on your plate
Is when I will accept your resignation
If I worked at a car factory
I would kiss each piece on the assembly line
Knowing that each car imbued with my spit
Would make no difference in their experience of that car
but would make me happy knowing my DNA traveled with them
Your voice here is a searching, a crushed vine emerging from beneath a fallen tree, growing through light and darkness. Your back-to-back questions -- when is acceptance resignation? what is a state of grace? -- are your genius, and the double helix driving this poem. I am stunned and stimulated at the coupling of those 2 Qs, and see them abiding in the lizard, alive and waiting. What a tension in her repose! I can see her head's stop-action shifts, as she listens. And you make me wonder: is grace the countersign of "potential"? (Anyway, aside from my weird ruminations, I just moan over the way you use subtle, non-obvious questions, almost koans, in your poetry.)
I love this more with each reading. One of the best poems ever, by anybody.
May I strongly suggest the stanza about the car belongs in another poem? Try replacing it with an image from your phoning friend ‘s travels, something he describes over the phone, something he saw which supports his message that the poor seem happy. (If the friend didn’t actually provide this, make it up.) This picture would counterbalance his defeating postcard, so that when when you find the lizard, alive and waiting, it will contrast more vividly with the tail that had defeated you.
m|t
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