this 'poem' is to inform those who follow my poems and to those whose poems I follow that I will be having carpal tunnel surgery on Monday, January 12. After that time I will be out of 'poetry commission' for a while.
I just didn't want to stop participating and not keep you informed. Looking foward to a return in the near future, warm wishes, Sara Etgen-Baker
Carpal tunnel twinges
punctuate a torpid afternoon,
as row on row we line the aisles
and stare at nothing
with the guarded anonymity
of urinating men.
My thumb is on the lever,
moving almost imperceptibly,
as marbles rocket into space
and filter down
through obstacles designed
to keep the management in business.
The captive of a chain reaction
freed from craving by acceptance
of the preordained,
I decompose, am compromised,
incorporated by the convolutions
of this artificial universe.
But something breaks
the moment I let go.
The single thread
that holds the world in place is cut,
and once again I fall away
with all my individual needs exposed.
Japan, 1968
Previous version published in Outposts, England
i posted this poem and got a hundred instant hits ~ my wrist’s sore
next time i need self inflation ~ i’ll tap my muse and beg a bit more
and carpal tunnel sufferers out there ~ these monokus don’t ignore
Anatomy of human structure
Poetry of nerves and impulses enrapture
Temple of parietal bone that beats
Carpal bone pleats
Integumentary system perspires
Nervous system inspires
Circulatory system pumps
Digestive system lumps
All other systems function
When poetry is not in sanction
Sixty year old cabinet hinge squeaks
Pain as owner bends her knees
A long relationship at its peak
Cling wrap drops upon the floor
Carpal tunnel lessened her grip
Cabinet door hangs loose from core
Stiff painful back slows grabbing wrap
Lying upon unswept white tiles
Angels hoover near as she collapsed
I rode shotgun
with someone
who look just like me
Had the same skin color
as far as I
could steering wheel see
I rode shotgun
with a racist someone,
who hatefully
talked the same way as me
Had the same gnarled speech,
same gnarly hands,
same ugly voice,
same cursive feet
like the carpal in the passenger seat
I rode darkie mind shotgun
with a ghost face someone
who look unholy, just like me
Had the same 20/20 side-by-sidearm vision,
same 20/20 gauge belief
As near as I
could peer passenger see
I once rode shotgun
with a rearview mirror friend,
now a gas pump-action enemy
It’s hard to double barrel conceive,
I went from zero-to-sixty in a heartbeat
Change of attitude direction
came baptismal trigger swiftly
I was passenger told ... and I prayer hope,
distant objects are closer
than they appear to be
Muse imagination fires; another night’s sleep, lost.
Carpal tunnel initiated; muse pours herself through.
Flood of her dreams; my heart’s delighted by her flamboyant artwork.
In a desperate unknown inaugurate of a life.
beyond the interesting heaves of a new grief.
a story begin unheard of and untold of,
the secluded results of which were uphold of,
as the dawn of the new life declared,
a new melody of joy was layered,
that echoed through every corner of life path,
without any notion of harmony tears and wrath,
the unforeseen future of a new couple started to erupt,
as the wedding well dressed deuce abrupt,
dancing and gallivanting around with a tackle,
the twosome hymn the song with a cackle,
they gazed there twinkling eyes to one another with a sparkle,
as they gashed the wedding cake with a triumph of carpal.
Fear thee not, for thy sweet stench of dormant death is in the aboulic air
Thus in thy fraught, and benighted breath to ask for thy life to shamely spare
Or be quick thy death, defecating and releasing thy sacred salubrious soul
For thy wick in candle, awaiting a chastising seditious smoke streaked stroll
For is not a man, peacefully protected by graceful gods and ascending angels
Or be thy heavens plan rigorously rejected by those who sever thy carpal cables
Alas in thy fetal fright, I bid thee a fond adieu with a savourless somber sorrow
For thus our festive flight with holy honeydew and minstrels musical morrow.
02.20.2017
Fear
Sponsored by/The Seeker
kissing the water as it flows
perhaps they are my tears discovering pathways to woe
whatever it is, it is not the same without you
bewildered and disheveled, i let myself go completely
i remember when all balances were equal
i recall a time when all weights heavy were enlightened by the light
now you are but a memory i am stuck with till carpal tunnel
sinful as it is, i must admit that it does make the day go faster
being bullied by the strong, merciless wind as it blows
Courting days are long over now
men, well, what does define a man?
Certainly, it is not merely physical?
yet one would expect manliness to
involve some sort of strength?
Does a man let a woman cry?
Does a man make a woman cry?
Honey DO this! Honey move-do that!
The theater is mostly empty now,
no sedans emptying bushel loads of kids,
no popcorn flying through Saturday afternoon’s air.
The kids are reigned in plopped in front of laptops,
too elastically rubber-kneed to walk more than
from the bed to the chair.
I mean the lounge chair, where
they slouch in perpetuity.
A decade or two of days to reframe
two generations of total couch potatoes.
They sit glued to their IPhone, IPods, Kindle’s
not writing, not composing but gaming.
It’s enough to make a mother cry, daily.
Fathers rush down packed highways,
single sardines in smaller and smaller cans,
toward their own desktop comps.
Carpal tunnel runs rampant over the populous.
Emptying box, after box of environmentally correct
reused paper tissues and green nappies into landfills,
online they bet on the daily double.
This is for those who hide their heads and their hearts in
the hoods of their hoodies, hiding from the peripheral world
and sinking into their carpal tunnel world, who let the lyrics
from their ipod vibrate their eardrums and drown out the days
ambient sounds,
To those who are the sleepless that lie awake in their beds
as the giant crickets serenade them outside the window with
blue love songs as the glowing rock in the sky illuminates all
the dreaming minds
To those who’ve unstitched their hearts from their sleeves
and tucked them away inside a titanium steel chest, so that
no other swords may penetrate the scar graveyard and so the
cracked heart won’t split any further
To those who are guarded and only reveal their true selves
when the ink flows out from the tip of the pen onto a blank
page, where letters form the words that form the true eloquence
of the writer’s soul
To those who are searching the woods trying to find
the tree with the christmas tree door on it,
to find our something more,
to find our “what’s this”...
I see
the radiation is rolling off my eyelids
right into the sclera
white to red
I can't remember how to pick grapes
with arthritis of the mind
going north towards
the wanderings of the crows
that found that the cows
have had all their ticks picked off their hide
with smiling teeth
so hiding from you
seems an appropriate situation
as the cacti gel makes the tongue swell with words
that have a prickly nature
the ice on the fence post makes
for a new religious icon
and breakfast is nearer to your derangement
of conformity
the hogs are rife with anticipation
as the sun hatches
new moles on your
soul
I see the contrast is too low
for this all to become an apparent
apparition to swallow
especially when everyone looks at the holes
in my hands
like they had a magical worm hole
to thinking correctly
anyway
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