Our concerns
and desperate needs
are beyond what your
product or service
can solve
My breeding
and education
are worth less than dust
as you lie sweating
on that deathbed
Your past successes
and throbbing ambition
only re-fuel my
bottomless and desperate
demand for more
We often move and breathe
as a machine
marketing ourselves
to one another
brandishing and polishing
our mastery of this life
Increasingly useful
Maniacally productive
Disgustingly practical
I want
for just a moment to
not seek the angle
not develop the network
not think big (or small)
not promote my strengths
not trust in your abilities
not maximize my yield
not admire your accomplishments
Can we please be out of touch?
A little bit useless?
Offer only
an ear to hear
a hand to hold
an unearned gift
sitting with us
silent and priceless?
“How To”
has become a curse
Just walk with me now
Two broken people
with no confident
answers
And I will try not to
make a damn eternal poem
out of every beer
we drink together
_____________________________________
Robert Bruce is one of the most read, linked, loved and reviled poets working on the web. He writes at KNIFE GUN PEN every Monday from Portland, Ore. Get more over at Twitter. If this did something to you or for you, go ahead and spread it around...
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Bruce, I absolutely adore that last line. Someday, this side of heaven, I’d love to lift a frothy mug of dark lager and listen to you weave another of these “damn eternal poems”. ;-)
“Can we please be out of touch?”
I love that line. Good stuff all around.
Another great one. As a high school student in suburbia, all I hear all day is how relevant the irrelevant aspects of life are. Great perspective.
The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies, by Ivan Illich
Yes.
talk about being an irrelevant high school student…high school in general is irrelevant. man, sitting today in lit class…i taught myself how to french braid my hair. that’s how exciting and relevant it was.
Robert, yes!
I became a house divided there for a while.
(a few weeks ago though, I found myself considering nomoretalkingheads.com)
Mary Ellen, I really like what you are doing on your blog.
haha…I should buy it, shouldn’t I. Just in case. But I haven’t. I wonder who will?
I’m still too easily tempted by occasional attempts at relevance to risk this kind of thing.
I think it is a cool name, though.
Thanks again. I too join the chorus of those wishing to raise a pint of the dark mead with you. How fun would it be to drop this poem in the thousands over the Covey compound, or the Osteen mansion for that matter.
I love you Mr. Bruce!
“A little bit useless?” Uselessness is creativity.
Jecklin and Robert –
nomoretalkingheads.com = uselessness = brilliant
I want to celebrate my faith for no purpose at all.
a quarter for the person who knows who said that. a dollar if you know where.
You raise an interesting question my friend.
But moreover, who are you reading of late?
Contemporary? Hyper-romantic? Naturalistic?
Or the Puritans?
Yours,
Mantooth