Booze Cruise

two guys up front, rather normal in

disposition for Peace Garden natives,

talking about sucking for Luck,

jabbering about the hot party spots

in the rugged but less than scenic river valleys,

revealing about a*s-over-teakettle antics with

less than faithful friends even though they have

little in common racially, but much in common

with big pimping and tire burning,

while the socially awkward screwhead in the

backseat wishes a tap of Bud Light or

Busch Light was available so he could

feel like a member of the group, able to

relate without receiving the awkward eyes

from the controller or the shotgun

 

for him, the Friday After Next

references would be easier to swallow

if it was a booze cruise, the kind of

booze cruise that turns abnormal

into normal, a jagged error curve

into a smooth sine wave

 

but he’s not a sine wave or

an error curve for that matter,

he’s a wave of white noise

mirrored in jagged jealousy

on the screen of an oscilloscope

 

which is why he remembers

so fondly navigating the smooth

sine curves from five-mile magnification

and jagged noise curves at normal magnification,

these verdantly and shittily-tinged troughs and crests,

hills and dales, with a brother and brother-in-law

in the front seats and a black mutt thing

in the back seat and they all shotgun

brews like twelve-gauge shells

making incomprehensible

correlations on a

Texas Instruments

Eighty-Three screen

 

and then he is at ease

with his fellow man,

because the booze has

cruised through his

bloodstream to mask

and medicate the

deeper pain he

chronically feels

 

and so this life,

an inverse parabola

zoom-chopped

window-zero style

from the surrounding

sine wave so the

leading coefficient

appears negative always,

as if chemical induction

is the only way to reach

one’s daily local maximum

 

such is every day in

this parabolic life

shrunk into a sine

wave mentality

Reviews

[Audrey Howitt]

I am not a mathematician by any stretch of the imagination, but I loved how the language of it worked here---fabulous write!

and so this life,
an inverse parabola
zoom-chopped
window-zero style
from the surrounding
sine wave so the
leading coefficient
appears negative always,

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

ooooh matheatical poetic equations!!!~

and THIS stanza is a sideways sine wave~ it MUST be~ I just know it!!!

which is why he remembers

so fondly navigating the smooth

sine curves from five-mile magnification

and jagged noise curves at normal magnification,

these verdantly and shittily-tinged troughs and crests,

hills and dales, with a brother and brother-in-law

in the front seats and a black mutt thing

in the back seat and they all shotgun

brews like twelve-gauge shells

making incomprehensible

correlations on a

Texas Instruments

Eighty-Three screen


tilted wondrous poetic slides~ THIS is how my professors should have taught me~ then I wouldn't have grown so bored and so bold ;)~

[John Jackson (El Juero)]

You just wrote my Biography. Lucky for me, I crashed with the sine wave. Getting comfortable within myself has been one hell of a ride.
I love your free verse Ken. It showcases a beautiful mind, sans mental illness.

[Nobody.]

hee hee. had me with the first verse. held me throughout. awesome. favorited.

[Emily B]

I understood the booze part, the math stuff completely lost me

but that's okay, it got me to thinking maybe I ought to stop off on my way home

[The Analog Kid]

This is really hard hitting and amusing at the same time. I think I will read this one a few times. Clever.