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FOUR POEMS
by Todd Colby

My Ginger Friend

Here on the Portsmouth Harbor Ferry
things are not always what they seem.
I spot a spanner and I want my five year party.
This is your party, have a piece of bread.
Tugs forelock, sips drink, closes book.
I always lose weight when I study
he says looking absently at the red spine
of the book he's just closed.
Gold letters. I called you,
you listen to me when I speak.
I was calling you to congratulate you.
This is the full doubleness and it could
be a ticket thing, let me voicemail you.
You are so predictable
it's like shooting candy in a barrel.
You never said anything about it, he laughs
nervously. I'm all achy with health.
It costs a lot to live. This is still
the freedom plan, the initiative droning:
oh that is nice. Wait a minute, may I have
the joy if you give me the plan?
You and the word deductible do not go together.
Are you on the plan? Could you be on the honest plan?
You come with questions, you honor me
with your absence plan.
This is merely the lower level,
the plan you are on is an altogether
different plan. It always seems like more,
doesn't it? Are there people in here?
The microphone is on. I can't shake off this headache;
it could be from the personnel.



The Future

You might have confused me with someone else. Because of the nut from the
gingko tree I'm capable of seeing everything someone will do in a room before
I'm there. I've been drinking milk since this morning because it decreases
the intensity of my future looking ability. I can't stop knowing so much
about the future, which is becoming quite a burden.

When I meet people, I already know how our relationships will end. I know the
day of my death, and theirs. It's like carrying around a heavy weight that I
can't set down on the grass. Eating chocolate, oddly enough, helps a bit.
Once, in a moment of despair I resorted to inserting jelly candy in between
my cheekbone and cheek, which only gave me a frightening swollen look. I wish
only to forget that which has already happened. I smell like burnt gingko
nuts. My fingernails have the brown dots of roasting heat on them.

In the future I looked into the eyes of my fellow workers in long sleeve
office wear, chinos, and pantsuits. All of them in limited varieties of
grotesque abundance, shuffling amid the workstations. I can almost feel love
for them as they steal an hour or so to free the wanderlust that is so
inhibited by their need to pay the bills. I have bruises on my shins from
bumping into office furniture, and they look like plums. But still, joking
aside, I feel hurt, wandering, as it were, with these painful stills from
horror movies locked in my mind whenever I sit behind this desk. If I sit
here much longer I'll turn into butter; sensitive not only to the heat, but
to the swollen brain of a mad worker making eyes at the end of the day.

The gingko has given me such a good memory that I can see into the future, a
sort of "pre-memory" before the event has even occurred. This has caused me a
certain amount of unease, so if my name is brought up again at a particular
table, don't bother telling me, I already know anyway. Just like I know when
my name will be brought up again and under what circumstances. I know some
other things, but I cannot divulge them at this juncture. I may have confused
you with someone more pleasant.

I can't help but feel a certain hostility in your joking. I am clearly
baffled by this. If this sounds like a viable assessment, I will not redeem
my fate by peering into the future with the aid of a nut from that tree. I am
swooning with future thoughts, do not make me tell you your fate. I remain in the future.



Dear Reader

Were you not washed up, shoeless, dressed in clean sheets
like an unfortunately beveled haircut, a wax mustache, or a bar of soap
carved into the spooky shape of a shrunken head. Oh were you not
thick as a chopstick in a plum, stopping only to grouse
or meander into the flux of nubs, wetting them, it seems.
I punctuate my spasms with gasps of chrome breath,
breathing metal, exhaling oxide, making squirt what cannot
be washed and/or left in an empty chair. Everyone knows,
Dear Reader, that tattoos are for others, the people
who look out from their eyeholes at the flesh marked by the sign
that says tribe or trouble or what-an-asshole. Cool cucumber
sandwiches will be served on the verandah, I hope you will
attend so I can scratch your back with my new invention. But first,
I will inject you with a new medicine that will help you see things my way.
I can't say anymore than this, as it is a secret until I reveal it.
Until then, let your sad pony's cracked hooves serve as your scratcher.
I alone remain humbly yours.


FYI: Mix Magma

For Mix Magma annoyances to produce the maximum expected results,
organizational roles and responsibilities must be sadistically puffed and
maligned. If Executives and Champions are trained and the Dirty and
Delusional aren't, the probability of success decreases to virtually nothing.
The reverse is true as well. None of these situations will produce the type
of results that will occur when Mix Magma practitioners are placed in the
correct humorless and dorky office environment. Additional incidents may be
handy in training underlings to spit in the coffee urn, to refrain from
washing fecal matter from their fingers, and to drop plastic forks on the
floor before serving, but not necessarily in that order or to raise the level
of filth in a sterile office environment. The drool sets are readily at the
disposal of the Delusional. The strategy is to provide filth with a wider
array of skill sets so they can assist in projects that may become stalled or
utterly meaningless administrative sludge. Let me know if this works for you,
it has done wonders for me.