[Newspoetry] Poem

[Anne Bargar]

beep!  insert sample

when its your birthday you get to ignore the news, or so i said yesterday
as i ran corn samples through the dickey-john.  its a machine that goes
beep, and in the same lab where it rests the perpetual card game goes on
every weekday at 11:30; in theory a hand is taken over when someone dies
or retires.  today dr. lambert has missed his appointment with dr.
alexander, henry, and some other guy with white hair, and they play cards
without him. will he make his 2:30 shoot-the-shit appointment with the
emeritus dr. alexander, whose status allows him to wander at will and chat
about wheat prices and pork production?  my birthday promise to myself is
that this is the news, although i will later allow bob to read me a news
story about how the rock band oasis got into another tussle of some
sort... stupid kids, they're only worth paying attention to when they do
something dumb, because its always off-the-scale-dumb.  i mean, keith
moon set a high standard for stupid rock-and-roll star behavior. he wasn't
known for beating people up, but for wrecking hotel rooms, although i did
once see a picture of him pouring booze all over a reporter's head.  it
did eventually kill him, i muse as i find myself caught between
conflicting desires.  one, to read the news, be upset, and do something
about it. two, to hibernate in my own life, safely locked away from both
the news, and the guilt trip for doing nothing.  three, to feel that i
could do anything that would cause effective change.  four, to give the
snippy, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing parts of the choir a good
thrashing. five, to give the democrats an even better, more thorough
thrashing.  hey, violence is cool; just ask the lead singer of oasis.
it's all good, and in the end, we'll wander the halls of the crop science
department and speak of pork production and fertilizer application rates
like dr. alexander; maybe that's the afterlife, and i'm seeing it in
action right in front of me.