Day Off

The maintenance man is out there,
And I am in here, the rooms are his,
Except this one, my little box
He won't touch, it will remain dirty
And I am fine with that.

I will not emerge, I will not come out
To show him my body, so he can see
The scars and the stains the sun
Has left on me by spilling its rays
In a clumsy matter every afternoon.

The steps he makes,
The sound of someone else,
Probably is frightening the walls,
And pleasuring the floor tiles,
Who are opening up to him.

The front door is open,
And anybody could walk in,
My door is locked, though I am sure
He can hear me, the sound
Of leg hairs rubbing against a desk.

In the common area, I no longer
Am a mystery, everything I take
And leave, is there for him to clean,
I feel the discomfort in my throat
Emerging like a flower, he will see it all.

Bottles and candy wrapper, he knows
I am not eating well, the burnt ends
Of cigarettes, remains of passports
To calmer lands, are all in my trash can,
The one I dispose of myself.

There is no problem with the garbage man,
He comes in the morning, when I am still
Sleeping, and mixes my rubbish with everyone else's,
He takes no time with it, makes no analysis,
All the precious fluids pass by him quickly.

His cough, the product of my own neglect
Bounces closer and closer to me, until
He recedes and walks away, the inspection
Is heading out in time for me to blow my head
Into my hand, and beard, yet he's in the bathroom,

So I must sit until he leaves, I cannot emerge
Like a wounded animal from my cave,
He must suspect constant hibernation on my part,
To let him do his work and wonder
What kind of world he has just stepped out into.

The habit of saintlihood has been broken,
As I can hear the pouring of words, dirty
Like the space he has just stumbled upon,
He must be wondering to himself,
Why there is so much hair everywhere.

 

 

Courier New

As opposed to courier old, the font
Of choice for the typewriter, the font
That was universal, the only choice,
It was what my father saw when up at night
Trying to finish a paper, it was the shape
Taken by every mark he left with his finger.
It was the lettering that held the records
Of radicals down to paper for investigation,
The way novelists, failed and successful,
Saw their stories coming to half-life.
Now it must compete with others,
The end of its dominance coming with the fall
Of the old walls and barbed wire fences,
Collapsing state religions and ideals.
Reinvented, it is now updated to be a relic,
Standing in for correspondences, to set apart
One text from another.

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