elena came into work this morning,
tossing a small can of redbull in the dumpster
out the back door.
forgetting to share her usual smile,
she blamed the allergies for her red eyes.
she looked down while she talked,
and carried on each of her tasks mechanically.

and in the middle
of finishing a handed down task,
she overheard a conversation
out the office door.
her coworker offers condolences
knowing everything was overheard.

elena walks into the bathroom quietly.
turns on the vent for noise,
but leaves the light out.
she puts the seat top down
and sobs,
calculating and miscalculating
recent gains and losses.
weighing her current situation,

she pats her eyes dry.

she begins her daily tasks,
shifts around her environment
trying to make no noise.
she sits in her car after work

she listens to silence
with nowhere to be -
smiling about the damn fortune cookie
her boss gave her at lunch today.

"in every difficult situation, there is an opportunity."

the blameless.

at the age of seven, he remembers witnessing
the ____________ display
caused by a man's pride
and the methods he used to maintain it.

through a kitchen window,
he nervously watches
the old man
yelling to prove his point -

man's miscalculated notion of power
through volume always amazed him.

the old man's glossy eyes
begins to speak with both hands in the face
of his wife trying to calm him.
she willingly takes his harsh words
which she would wash from her hands
once he was asleep.



by puberty,
he became conscious of excuses,
rationalization - as a method of
excusing the things
the things that needed to be take care of.
he became conscious
of every man's need to be right -
and its ability to manipulate
the truth.

hurting everything in its way.


and by today
he becomes conscious of how pride,
blame, rationalization, and in our inability to be wrong
can strip the worth from us, inferiors...


he quietly watches selfishness fill their lungs

and

his,
as well.

anxiously,
i close my tab.

(without reading twice):twice.

each, a light into myself.
for better or worse.

I watched him for the last nine hours we spent on our feet - every move, a mistake. A quick blow to his ego followed. For three hours that followed, he was a Cinderella that never made it to the ball. Stuck in the back room alone the remainder of the night, he welcomes any company. Without remorse, the older man with his perfect white hair and his thousand dollar suit, presses his words harshly into the younger man ego. The younger man nods and offers a half smile in forced agreement to all accusations of laziness. The younger man excuses himself from the room, lights a cigarette in the back alley, then washes his hands to remove the smell from his hands. He distracts his hands with work. The older man sits comfortably in his chair, his sense of entitlement to power wrapped warmly around his shoulders.

from the archive ::: allen and i. truxtun house, bakersfield, ca