How to Commute

Slide into your silent car. Start
Its simple sewing machine song.
Find FM that your AM heart
Rejoices in and jerk along
A line along the freeway. Steer
To the lowest lane supermen
Dare. There, drive as if you were here,
Shiftless in your easy chair. Then
Slurp your cooling coffee, look up.
Red roses flare and flicker down your row.
Pump your brakes. Park your coffee cup.
Stop. Curse. See other autos flow
To left, to right. Some random wreck
Blocks your lane, your life, and your way
Out is clear. Cramp the wheel, crane your neck,
Floor it, into an everyday
That will be duller than this great
Trek between your leisures and your labors.
This interchange, this interstate,
This concrete town of accidental neighbors.

How to Eat

Have a cup of coffee, a piece of toast,
Later on, a jelly donut from
A pasteboard box. For lunch, a rare roast
Beef sandwich with horseradish and some
Potato chips. Wash it down with beer.
Sometime in the afternoon drop your dimes
In the candy machine. You can hear
Them register, one by one, like your times
Today will register tonight, dropping
Singly on the balance, on the lever,
In the tired darkness, only stopping
When your closed eyes close and sleep drops, clever
As candy, down the chute into your hand
To be unwrapped and eaten. Now though,
Go back to your work. Think of what you planned
For dinner, what to eat and where to go.

How to Get Mad

Someone's late. Someone spelled
Your name wrong. There's a new
Ding in your old car. Held
To account for faults, you
Find no easy excuse.
These are reasons enough
For scowls, verbal abuse,
White-knuckled fists, rude rough
Language, sarcastic quips,
Perhaps even frozen
Fury where venom drips
From clenched jaws to chosen
Targets. Or à la Don
The Duck, fling your arms wide
To the heavens, try on
A shriek for size. Beside
Yourself, let the spittle
Spray. Pay out, cent by cent,
Spite's cold coins, till little
By little, fury's spent.
Not lost. Temper you loose
Isn't. Just more diffuse.

How to Listen to Jazz

Compose yourself. Let your ear relax.
Cross your legs as your tapping toe taps
Air. Nod your head when the tenor sax
Turns to nod to you. Jazz lands in lapse
Full of uncertain, full of the chance
To guess at the next lick, to wonder who
Will lay it down, pick it up, entrance
Itself as it entrances you.
Isn't that just like life? You choose how
And when to play what, the boneman's ax
Tied to time's metronome. And somehow
Save your best encores, your final tracks,
For God who, though busy, won't forget
To show up after hours for one more set.

How to Dream

You must first make it dark and still.
Arrange yourself on a soft pad.
Uncurl your fingers and your will.
Close your eyes. Think of what you had
To do and did as doing dies.
Welcome the sea creatures that live
Between your ears, behind your eyes.
Become these creatures, let them give
You that day's lessoning, the last
Chance at what tomorrow will seem
Rut and routine. This is time passed
To sleep, to change into a dream.
To sleep, to dream, let the past become
The sleeve that you're unraveled from.