October office morning

Through the window
the world brightens slowly.
I am early, first to emerge
from the nocturnal black cloud.

A single green-poled streetlamp
glows burnt-orange,
a sunlike orb across the
avenue, perched on a wet lawn.

These two blinding liquid-crystal monitors
reflect my profile in the window glare.
My features seem a blur,
vacant and pale and white:

awkward black glasses over a thick nose,
hiding skinny eyes,
lips chapped from the deepening
season and a forlorn mound of hair.

My heart moves begrudgingly,
its reluctant pulses
prefer lost bedside comforts.
My tea is overbrewed, a waste.

I keep the office light off, because
I prefer the darkness.
And as always, I'm sure this Monday morning
is missing something.

Eye tonight

I am drinking rooibos tea flavored with gingerbread house icing and lavendar honey.
I am writing about James Joyce and Stephen Dedalus and Stephen and Daedalus.
I am three days behind with this assignment, my seminar paper.
I am almost done with the semester.
I am still awake and it is three a.m.
I am worried about taking four online classes at once.
I am not always motivated.
I am very full because I have eaten a lot today.
I am ready for a departure.
I am prepared for a change.
I am now home from the library. I was there before seven and I left at 1:45 when the cello-orchestrated Nothing Else Matters started playing over the loudspeakers. An orchestrated version of The Legend of Zelda themesong follows that, and tonight I missed it.
I did come home for one hour from 10:30 till 11:30, though.
I was able to successfully find all BYU's archived and bound copies of James Joyce Quarterly.
I am a procrastinator, and sometimes that worries me.
I am dry in this Utah weather.
I am dry though it snowed all day today.
I am wondering whether the mountains look as beautiful hidden in the dark of night as they do during the sunset.
I am wishing that certain magical and wonderful things happened to me.
I am thinking, thinking, thinking, and not getting anywhere.
I am not Einstein.
I am no fabulous artificer.
I do not have a strange name.
But I'm me all the same.

I ate an orange

The stovetop glared an angry red and
smoke rose from burnt eggs
left under the burner last Saturday.
And the water growled low through bubbles
boiling upward until I filled my
Peet's mug.

I ate an orange, tore my
fingernails under its porous skin
and they smelled like citrus--
California citrus, grown ripe and shipped off
to us in the desert, so we too can
taste that summer.

Through the first
real December snow the night hazed
its yellow twilight, reflecting porchlights
and glowing streets across the settling
dust like shivering prison bars.
I took a sliver from the pale globe in my hand--
separated in chunks, stripped into orange-white triangles;
and its world fell apart--

but it was three a.m. and my feet were cold, even
in the black church socks I hated,
wore only for warmth, fearing cold. Fearing acts of
procrastination. That sour tang on my fingers.

And I pictured the black of tires six inches deep,
spinning small white whirlpools in the covered street,
wading through those drifts in the sleepless morning,
so quiet and calm--
California on my mind and in my mouth.