Poems by Steven Haruch.
S O G I V E M E A C H A N C E A N D I
P R O M I S E I C A N M A K E Y O U S M I L E
Try to paperclip the days together. Memory like a tv rigged with a coathanger. Listen, if you place two microphones just so, certain sounds will disappear, so to speak, from the recording. If a wave is cresting in one and falling in the other. You and me, we canceled each other out and then we'd pull out the diagrams and plan each other's rescue. Then we'd try to sleep and try to wake up while the room was dark and the diodes were spelling out the time. Spend all day trying to stay awake.
People would say, I need validation, and they'd be talking about their cars, trying to remember if they'd parked beneath the rhino or the porpoise on the green level or the brown. Then they'd spiral down down through the garageÑthat giant screw drilled into the sidewalk. A simple machine, the screw: distance times time, work times time.
You'd have your head propped against your palm, headphones wired through your sleeve, and you'd stamp receipts all day, or sell tickets while "Caroline No" blared out of your hand in mono. Mondays and Wednesdays you would practice CPR on mannequins, the eyes of which blinked red if you failed to bring them back to life. I came with you once and tried to go unnoticed but your teacher asked me to lie down beneath an overturned conference table, which would take the place of a tractor-trailer. I was supposed to be unconscious but I heard you come rushing into the room. You knelt beside me, and with two fingers on my neck, you turned to your partner and said, He's hurt.
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