Kurt Nimmo
© 1996
ABSENCE
On the
computer screen
is a clock,
it ticks away the minutes,
and I stare at it
as the phone rings,
another useless conversation
awaits me if I pick it up,
so I let it
ring until whatever
it is on the other end gives up,
a small victory,
there’s nothing to do,
nowhere to go,
I have examined
every inch of this city,
every crack and school bus,
every time yellowed theater marquee,
every ignored traffic glyph,
a fan in this room
spins around, churns old air,
the same air
Jean-Claude Van Damme breathes
as he fucks his comely bride,
the same air
Hitler snorted as he
made designs on the Sudetenland,
there is nothing left
for any of us to do, we sit
in offices with
computers and telephones
and typewriters,
we listen to castratos
on the radio as we drive nowhere
with the mob, nothing to do
and nowhere to go
as a clock ticks down
useless minutes on a computer
screen, all our minutes
add up to a toenail in hell
when compared
with the stretch of the Paleozoic,
with stones and invertebrates,
we are finally insignificant,
and only time will
tell, or some
other worn cliche,
as we wait for something
to happen, most of
us all too certain
nothing ever
will.
MISTER NO FEAR
In the rush
to work, I'm cut out
of a lane by a pickup truck
with oversized tires
and a sticker in the rear window.
NO FEAR, the sticker
claims. I brake
hard, pissed, and shift
over a lane. From there,
I can see the guy responsible
for the pickup truck:
a twentysomething male
with a Marine haircut and
a snarly expression glued
to a pale hatchet face.
NO FEAR. Yeah, right, I think--
thirty seconds under the truncheon
of a Serbian interrogator
and this little MTV consumer
would quiver like a bowl of red jello
left out on a coin-operated
vibrating motel bed.
But then this isn't
the Balkans seized with
torture and homicide, but
America, the land of milquetoast
office workers and weekend
splatterball warriors.
Everything is, of course,
relative. Mr. No Fear in his
cartoon pickup truck
is but another gnat, yet another
annoyance. I switch lanes
again, to put even more
distance between us,
and move, as
always, toward
the job.
