MISTAKEN MACHINE

I did not get the drink that I wanted

Out of the vending machine,

So, I immediately concluded

That this was my mistake;

Since a mistake is something

That a machine never can make.

My fumbling fingers are fallible,

Which a machine can never be,

And I know this to be completely true,

Because I need total certainty

In a revolving uncertain world

Which always changes around me,

As I also change and age

And my body fails gradually.

Yet long before this decline began

I was told of an infallible, all-knowing god

But even as a small orphan

I began to doubt his plan

As unanswered prayers

And ominous hints

Failed to convince

That there was any god anywhere

 I shrugged my shoulders

Got drunk and worked away years

As I could not know

And did not care

So, now a machine that makes mistakes

Is the only thing that’s there.

Always too previous,

 Always too previous,

Start to do the next thing

Before the last one is finished

And leaving the one before that undone.

Never happy when I am

Unable to freeze any moment

In the torrent of time.

Before it arrives

It’s only a dream

Then it’s here

And, in a flash, it’s gone;

Only fragments are left

To be reconstructed

In memory whilst

The next possible event

Has grabbed my attention.

But I’m trying to focus on

Whatever could be

Looming up after that

So I try to concentrate

With the attention span of a gnat.

THE LATE WAITING ROOM

I am a patient patient,

In waiting rooms I wait,

With ever increasing anxiety,

In case the waiting room is late.

It might be due for an appointment,

But forgot to set the alarm,

Or missed the bus or the taxi,

Or couldn’t start the car.

It might have go the address wrong.

It might have mistaken the date.

Then I would be aghast

If the waiting room flew past

And I couldn’t wait any more.

I might feel deep frustration,

Alienation or anomie

If the waiting room

That I was waiting for

Hadn’t waited for me.

listening to a history podcast at present

 I put on the headphones

To drown out the news,

I have an information addiction

That I need to feed.

I want to get drunk

On useless detail

To hear byzantine factoids

About Byzantium

To clutter up my brain

With the intricacies

Of the build up to

The American civil war.

There’s no such thing

As enough of this stuff.

I want to find out

More and more and more.

Because it’s done now

 It can’t be undone

And I hope that

This knowledge might

Make me numb

To the numbers

Coming up everyday

On the radio or the computer feed

Forty-four, or seventy-three, or thirty-one

Have died today

So, I use history to hide

From everyday’s genocide.