Campbell's? Why not Swanson's?

This has been mulling over in my mind for a while now. I need to write more. Perhaps I should start a blog? Perhaps not? Either way it's too late now. Honestly, I don't really have anything interesting to say. Don't bother reading.

Sometimes I set my alarm an hour or so earlier than I need to get up. Then when it goes off, I hit the snooze button and lay back down. I then have nine minutes to lay back down and fall back asleep before it goes off again. For some reason, that is just the amount of time I need to have a dream. Basically, I'm trying to cause dreams.

Usually this works quite well, and I have some pretty interesting dreams. I may share some if I have any particularly interesting ones.

I feel bad leaving you there. It seems like my first post should include something profound - so I guess I'll leave you with a poem I wrote for a poetry class a few semesters ago. I'm a fan of it, so I don't care what you think.

Instruction Manual on Pest Removal

The daybreak foretells of another fiery evening

of fireworks picked up at the large tent on the

corner of Colonial and Orange Blossom Trail –

the one I always wanted to attack with a flamethrower

just to see the beauty of all the blasts going off at once.

It foretells of cheap wine from the ABC next door and

lawn chairs riding a wave of passion.

Free passion. Meaningless passion.

“I wish you knew my father” she cries

as she lights another and takes a drag.

The smoke fills the small kitchen of the

1940’s farmhouse which once stood alone,

but is now boxed in by other houses

like a child’s lunchbox in its cubby

on the first day of the first grade.

It seeps out the door, into the night,

never to be heard from again.

The man she speaks of, her father, was a fool –

I knew him well. He was always quarrelling with

children, trying to convince them that the clouds above

their heads are not, in fact, made of cotton candy,

but rather are parcels of convected hydrogen

dioxide raised and cooled moist adiabatically

until it condenses as a liquid or sublimates as a solid

with the purpose of balancing the globe’s uneven

energy distribution. Every time she talks about him

I try desperately to inform her that I know him,

but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“You never knew of him and you never will!”

she screams with such intensity it unseats

my spine and drops my stomach into my bowels.

She’s crazy too, I try to convince myself,

hoping I’m incapable of hallucinating

the mentally unsound. But of course

she’s still floating there above the foot

of my bed stroking my foot attached to

my body, continuing to murmur about “Daddy”.

I got sick of her babbling – it was really

starting to drive me nuts, so I decided to

take matters into my own hands

(or feet if you will)

getting up to go to the fridge to drink

some Swanson’s chicken broth, but all we

had was Campbell’s, so I dug into a nice

juicy tender chunk of childish wonder.

And finally, with a yawn, she was gone.