Signifying nothing

iPad Note Poem Number 5: the good things The good thing about having children Is that they understand the necessity to move On, immediately Move on Move along Move on keep on moving on You, once again, know how it is You always did, now, didn't you? You and your fancy college degrees. Bet you didn't think this one was going this way, Did you Fancy that Sent from my iPad

iPad note poem 6: blinders The riders on the bus were not aware of the explosion They road along in bumping silence, kept company only By their thoughts, their fears, the hunger, or by podcasts They hurtled forward towards an interstate they would Never merge with, eyeing the stop cord suspiciously As their stops approached. Down through the valley Wending toward a quiet doom that they just avoided. Five minutes earlier and they would have all been burned Alive in a gas tanker explosion that God had planned to Destroy them. Of course no one would say that aloud But as they crept closer to the site of their fate, the Thought flitted across their faces as they leaned into Their windows to get a better view of e roiling black Smoke. Sent from my iPad

iPad note poem no. 4: high desert The wind started in the morning rattling Windows to wake the family from sleep. It was going to be a bad one, they knew So they talked about it over coffee and melted Cheese It was just fifty years before that her father First scratched out life from the alkali clay Baked hard by the high mountain sun But she remembered his stories of sheets of Roiling dust, choking even the tall grass with White So they worried over their coffee and cheese About the coming of the storm, the choking Wind, the failing of the spirits, the strength of Fathers She watched the west all day, intermittently, From her kitchen window while she went about Keeping her father's house, now hers, waiting For the family to return, and for the coming of The storm Sent from my iPad

iPad note poem no. 3 He does not leave her until she gets on the bus They are newly married, you see, and we all know The longing look he gives her as she mounts the First step. He stares at the bus for a moment too long While it pulls away and we know and he knows And she knows he is smitten; he is hers; he is Gone. He turns to walk back to their shag carpet Where he will lay half of the day killing his Friends who whisper murder in his ear, not once Thinking of her And he is there on the shag when she returns And he barely notices her in between fragging A friend from Wyoming. Soon the child will Be born A child of lust and longing and desire and hand Grenades. He won't notice it much either As it cries for milk in one hand, controller in the Other Sent from my iPad

iPad Poem Number 2: September Morning She wakes and suddenly she is divorced Married in February, separated by May Divorced by August, alone in September The marriage, she knew, was just kidding A means of making this guy happy That something more might exist that Would make sense of his mindfulness But no, she knew better but drove Ahead with him, even though they Were clearly on different freeways He on the interstate, she on the Belt route And soon they were miles apart Not even texting would keep the Bond that was only a joke in the First place And suddenly it is September And in the back yard there Is a rat, climbing the tree to Get to the bird feeder he put Up It has no food in it, of course But the rat checks it all the Same Sent from my iPad

IPad Notes Poem 1: Public transit The bus smelled of urine that morning The odor hanging on hard from some Unwashed vagrant whose days and Nights were spent in a whiskey bottle The bus riders tried to ignore it Absorbed in their text messaging Or books or music or staring blank Into the fetid air But on occasion you could note The slight grimace cross a brow The scrunching of noses The down-turned lips And even then someone would Wonder how they were the Unwashed. They were the Vagrants going from here to There Sent from my iPad

tomato no soup Originally uploaded by Clint Gardner