SFB (June 23, 2006 8:33pm)

Because I am bored, and because I find myself incapable of writing anything new these days, I would like to share a poem with you that I wrote on April 16, 2003, which I came across this afternoon as I systematically went through all my college notebooks, ripping out the pages and throwing them into the recycling bin, not out of misplaced anger but the need to downsize my life to fewer than six boxes of accumulated crap (I forget what the assignment for this exercise was, but I think it had something to do with a poem we read that had definitions in it and maybe defining words that appeared in one of the scientific essays we read in a poem of our own. At least that's what I did, if I remember correctly) :

what fine definition, have you been working out?
tidal: moon pulls
ocean: waves good-bye

as
life: (cinnamon cereal, and needed by those who define:
  organic: not as exciting as Herbal Essences would like you to believe
  precursor: before the blinking line in your Word document
  hydrothermal: quick-dry long underwear
  synthesize: to make soulless music using an artificial drum beat)

goes on
as
  atoms: make up cells (jails of our DNA): creating origins: the endings of nothing.



Note: This was not part of my prize-winning poetry manuscript, but sadly it contains a similar level of quality. All I can say is that you should be thankful I don't have a scanner or you might be subjected to full-length reminiscing, like my ten-page analysis on using language to create racial and ethnic identity on MTV's Dismissed.