Anselm Brocki

TIME-CONSUMING
 

After a long slow period
at the office when writing
a half-hour meeting memo
takes all day, looking up
word histories of obligations
and faze, lazing through the
dictionary word to word
until completely lost while
still looking busy, my guilty,
restless mind looks forward
to composing a document
explaining recent sections
of the legal code for branch
offices, tabbing for all those
tricky indentions, designing
illustrative tables with cute
little shaded boxes, creating
clever side heads in italics
and numbered subdivisions
which stair-step, indeed,
march stately down the page
and justify my time, my job,
and my reason for living.
 
 
 
 
 
 

SECURITY
 
 
 
 

"That's a good one, saying
I sort of live by the gun,"
the tall old man in a gray
guard's uniform says
to Harvey, who is nice
to everyone who comes
to the All-Nite.
"In a way you're right.
I still wear one all night
working for Home Secure.
Then I sleep with it
hanging on the bedpost
in its holster. Isn't it
a beaut?" he says, raising
his right hip.

"It's a 257 Colt. Paid
a hundred fifty for it
twenty-two years ago.
Now it goes for eight.
That's how much things
have gone up. I'm waiting
for a box of shells for my
thirty ought six that are
going for seventy dollars,
instead of thirty dollars,
but they're worth it.
Come out of the muzzle
at 3,800 feet a second
and smash into a boar
at 1,500 foot-pounds
at 500 years.

"That's a good one too,
about the zoo. Naw,
there's still places you can
hunt boar. One up
Santa Barbara way. Costs
a couple hundred a day
to be on the property,
but I'm going soon as
the shells come in.
Got a scope and everything.
Then smacko into a boar,
right between the eyes,
coming at me evil fierce."