Not Horrible

Worked until 8:45 today and probably heading in on Sunday. To make up for this, I ran to the bus stop to head down to Pioneer Square and Eliott Bay Book Co.. A series of construction sites, mis-timed buses, and people in wheelchairs found me hailing a cab for the first time (I've always called for one). Seven bucks later, I stepped from the raucous world of drunken weekenders celebrating our sweet freedom to the warm atmosphere of the bookstore. It's like walking into a bakery: all the promises of delight, the familiarity, the general glow of the place. Ended up getting another Seamus Heaney collection, a book of Borges poems, a Chabon novel, and a continuation of the Mysterious Benedict Society.

Afterwards, wandering the streets by lamplight, I realized how awesome the city is. Walked past some kind of vendor fair where a group of Capoeira fighters flipped and cartwheeled to brazilian music and chants – there is always so much stuff happening in the world that it's tough to look past the sidewalks you're used to.

Tried to sum it up in, that's right, another damned poem. Horribly unpolished, taken word for word from the newspaper that I self-referentially describe.

I'm really, really sorry.

How strange and transformed the city.

My mind is filled with song,
Perhaps the melody of a waltz
Where swept into the crevices and cracks
The bustle of action and the fervor of passion;
Or perhaps the lonely croon of a bluesman
Pouring a whiskey-soaked tune
In a room of smoke and dark, wood-paneled walls.

Peering through the windows of fluorescent-lit offices
Their sterile light piercing the soft orange glow of lamplight
The illumination of all detail
– in contrast the whispers and secrets
Hidden in the still shadows of the street.

A bus lurches precariously at the turn
Its lumbering form for a moment
The terrible bulk of a heaving monster.
They run in the streets
With frantic gasps
As they jerk
And screech
To stop:
The clockwork automata of an ant colony.

As we leave
The ebb of the fantastic
And the slow seep
Of the world I know.

So I bury myself in this poem
Letting the careless sway of the bus
Make scratches of my words
As I pour ink onto the pages
Of a newspaper I found in my bag.

Now I'm posting this as I watch Heima because it's Sad Bastard Thursday.

No idea where this came from. She's checking her phone...and...yep.