This much is true

I rarely venture from a mile or so radius but do not feel like a nihilist. But does dark energy invade static beings?

I posted a little chapbook of previously published poems below for something to do. I think I was "being an ass" in another post (deleted), and was trying to redeem myself? I deleted another post today, but might get back to that subject.

Not many people look in here and I'm glad for that. I think if this site were more popular I'd be all paranoid and stuff. Solace.

Oh, Michael Jackson. He's alive and undergoing another surgery? He's Elvis. He's Jim Morrison. Mariah Carey creeps me out worse than MJ. Don't even get me started on American Idol. Total creep show.

This 20-something 300 lb kid I work with can moon dance like you wouldn't believe. I keep thinking I'll be laid off again, but the work is coming in, for me anyway. Several others are temporarily laid off or on reduced hours.

And Randy loaned me a civil war book and he's got 9 kids and has to work at least 2 days a week just to cover the health care payment and he was told to not come in tomorrow. He was laid off Monday also. Maybe Friday, maybe not.

I've been covering for the pressroom super who's on vacation; checking in supplies and juggling paperwork. I could not keep up with it all today, what with deadlines for my own work, told production mgr you do it. He didn't. Said okay.

He drives a hundred miles daily getting there and back. Low pressure systems have been pinwheeling slowly over the north east. Much of the rain further north. This is a strange place to live in just above the Mason-Dixon. Much of what is considered southern weather rolls up here, gets stuck in this valley. The rolling highlands just north.

And further north, what they call the endless mountains, where my family came from. My parents buried up there, graveyard just across the NY state border. Susquehanna river just a stream up there, and a mile wide down here.

Anyhow, summer hasn't really set in here yet. I'm usually going to get water from the cooler like 7am, and talking with Randy, who's opened the eastern doors and the sun shining in and the production mgr not yet there and this little space just off the parking lot where water settles and there's a small marsh there with cottontails and weeds between asphalt and loose stones that lead to railroad, and highway just beyond with long moan and just across highway the car dealership which is just a vacant lot now, and electric towers with cell towers planted on top.

And I talk with Randy, then Bill, then go to what I do all day, then spit out, and now here, spit out. The kids are playing in the alley now. Black kids. This town populated by blacks fleeing the south, settling in cities just above the Mason-Dixon. Here, I'm the minority. There are some ignorant blacks here, as there are ignorant whites in suburbs.

These kids seem okay. Guy on the corner put up basketball hoop for his kids, then the other kids came. Some blocks west of here is bad. There are playgrounds in the inner city that no kids play in. Gangs and gunfire. Do not come on my block looking for trouble. Ever.