Six Poems
by Ken Haas
COMCAST, YOU SUCK
Everything I have left in this world is connected to your WiFi,
which is down for the third time this week so all I can do is sit
with pen and paper to tell you how plentifully you suck,
so badly in fact that you’re an insult to sucking. Okay, others suck nearly as
much as you—United Airlines, my landlord, and the DMV, for example, but you
shouldn’t be proud of their company, and I’ll get to them later.
My modem, for which you grievously overcharge, is blinking orange,
my TV is frozen on POTUS in his stupid red cap and my phone is bound to a
story about executives in China executed in 2009 for tainted milk.
You should move there.
Why choose the habitat of a poem to detail your suckination?
Because I can’t get to the margin without hyperventilating.
And there’s a form called the rant which isn’t used much these days
when so many are so sensitive, but I checked with the ACLU
and the Proud Boys about whose demonization would offend no one
and your name was especially high on both their lists.
Since I’m old and crazy enough to still have a land line, I called
your 800 number where, after listening 38 times to the same 4 bars
of Eurodance music that would be deemed a war crime
if used at Guantanamo, a canned voice assured me all problems
would be fixed by 8:56 p.m. in some other time zone
and suggested that, in the meantime, I try one of your hot spots,
through which I then suggested that it go shag itself,
at which point I was lectured robotically on the use of profanity
and transferred to Pete, a nice young man well-trained in apologies
but without access to any useful information, who did not sound like
a Pete so I asked for his real name which he said he was not allowed
to give out because, when he did, customers abused him even more.
I wondered out loud why he didn’t just get another job and he said because his
hands were too big to sew sneakers.
Which brings me to the pinnacle of your suckage—
making people like him all day every day of their irreplaceable lives
front for you with people like me.
THE GALLERY
No Monets. No Diebenkorns even. Not his ilk.
Or in his inventory. He being the live-in manager
of our high-rise, who ruled the unruly for decades,
then gave his gruff voice to cancer of the throat,
having spent the week before nailing framed and unframed works
to every inch of plaster caking our serpentine basement halls
between elevators and boiler room, garbage room and laundry,
all the way down to the gray garage.
Row upon row of wall hangings culled
through the years from the oddments ditched by tenants
who had left feet first or for a better life.
Hundreds of hangings trying or not trying to be art.
Movie posters for Ben-Hur and La Dolce Vita,
a historical map of Texas from the Wagon Train Association,
exhibition portraits of Einstein and Astaire from Fargo and Rio,
a sepia of twenty-seven flappers pouting in a line on a beach,
a paint-by-number of L. A. stabbing its skyline through smog,
a clock with the mugs of presidents marking the hours,
an ad for Pan Am flights to Tahiti, the Bloomfield of a woman
dancing in a billowed gown on the upper rim of the Tour Eiffel.
Picasso’s old man with guitar, head bowed by a blue sky?
Not here. This is the place of things as they are.
Nothing for which the Muses would take credit.
Simply a gallery for the peanut gallery, an alley for the galley
rowing restlessly nowhere, a slim passageway for rogues
of the Galilee who never could believe what they saw,
a mess of reverence for those of us in close quarters
who have not loved our neighbors
but might wish someday to try again.
COSTCO AGONISTES
Having entered empty-carted and open on the dark side,
I imagine possessing in immodest quantities everything I might ever need
for the rest of my life. Soon enough, I am sailing the arteries of plenitude
with a carton of 1000 envelopes, a case of 300 Altoid tins,
a sack of 500 surgical gloves. For items with a sell-by date, like
200 bags of partially deveined shrimp, 100 bottles of creamy Caesar dressing,
400 boxes of blood orange mochi, a much larger freezer will be required.
Still, I’m invigorated by the idea of being surrounded by things that will surely
outlive me, yet will not come home drunk and puke on my faux Persian rug.
And I’m bemused by the related notion that descendants
who have never heard my name will inherit fourth-hand crated remains
without a clue as to what most of them are.
Will anyone in 2087 know what to do with pencils?
I do realize that, to victoriously avoid ever having to grace
these unhallowed aisles again, I will have to resist future inventions
that everyone else appears unable to live without, for example,
Q-tips that double as earbuds, ultrasonic water, disposable holograms
of relatives I never again want to see in the flesh.
Such forbearance feels achievable.
Closing the place down, exiting almost giddy, I see briefly that it is possible
to be too happy. So I lay a wee sample of my bounty beside the man
sleeping in the doorway, as I whisper this prayer to comfort
a world in love with cheap cinematics, and to shame my own soul:
May his hands be swathed in latex as he digs in the dumpster,
may he garnish with a topping worthy of a Roman emperor
the lettuce that browns there and,
when he wakes to kiss his dog in the morning,
may his breath be sweet.
THE YOUNG BAY AREAN'S GUIDE TO WALKING
AirPods trimming both ears are compulsory. No exceptions,
even if you left your cell phone in the Uber. What’s the point
if you can’t pretend not to hear some loser asking for directions
or insisting that you scoop up after your Shiba service dog.
And a key objective while marching three-abreast
with your microcelebrity friends is to goad an OK Boomer
into flipping you off, a video of which may then be posted on Instagram,
resulting in his dismissal from the only job he has ever had.
Your recommended uniform consists of shorts and flip-flops with a parka
and wool cap, because it is California and you have a fifty-dollar pedi,
irrespective of your gender identity, but you’re freezing your ass off.
Cars, other than the hybrid you keep in your mother’s garage, are evil,
so you must never pause at an intersection, even if a Ford F-150
with gun rack is already half-way through.
Should the vehicle toot its clueless horn, decelerate as you cross,
checking for texts, perfecting the unimpressed zombie look without flinching
or making any gesture that could be mistaken for acknowledgement,
even as the smoking beast misses you by a foot.
Though you haven’t had time yet for actual children, your remarkable genes
are lounging patiently at the cryobank, and your Orangetheory coach
wants you well-prepared for your dismissive offspring.
If you are at any point tempted to return the smile of a boujie passerby,
remind yourself that you recycle and couldn’t care less
what the Chinese government learns on TikTok. Above all, don’t worry.
You will never become your parents. Or someone they wanted you to be.
Or even someone you wanted to be. In the end, we all find our way
and become no one.
CONSTRUING THE NEIGHBORS
You’ve caught me considering what words I’d use
should one of them show up on CNN as the latest
newsworthy unfortunate or perp. Surely I owe them
more than the moth-eaten polite, well-dressed, kept
to himself. But how much better can I do, really?
Of the middle-ager with an accent across the hall
I could say he was mostly friendly, though at times
a bit too friendly. Did appear frustrated with life after
the military. I had no idea what he was woodworking
in the basement. The elderly teacher downstairs
said she’d been on the Dating Game, baked me
Christmas cookies once when it wasn’t Christmas.
I heard she had a DUI in Texas. The family man
with those potted so-called herbs worked part-time
as a birthday party clown though, come to think of it,
he did wash his pickup an awful lot last summer.
The divorced dude renting 2A put noxious leftovers
out for feral cats and listed hobbies on Facebook as
hunting and prayer. Or so I was told by the expecting
nurse in the Tell Your Dog I Said Hi hoodie, who also
assured me he was the architect of the racy snowman
on her fire escape. What might they say about me,
then? He once offered to help carry groceries,
though masked long after the pandemic was over.
Told jokes, most not nearly as funny as he imagined.
Unclear what became of that bag of cement
he dragged from his SUV last week. An out-of-town
girlfriend slept over sometimes. She seemed nice.
SLEEPING BEAUTY
She woke. No assist. No strings
attached. Won’t even nap now.
Which has nothing to do with the pea.
Though she’s done with
that nightmare about the frog.
The Dwarfs have been cancelled,
the Beast has said sorry.
The only ones allowed to tell stories
of pumpkins and brambles
are pumpkins and brambles.
Prince Smarming is lost
in an incorrect castle, looping Ted talks
on vulnerability, wearing glass slippers,
swearing a soft peck on the cheek
was all he had in mind.
Every rewrite is still a fairy tale.
She daydreams slaying dragons,
combs the Web for her birth mom.
He talks to the mirror, pricks his finger
again and again.
BIO: Ken Haas lives in San Francisco, where he works in healthcare. His first book, Borrowed Light, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, as well as a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women. Ken has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, and serves on the Board of the Community of Writers. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.