Bad Mood
Sometimes, I'm in a bad mood
Two, three, four things in a row
Go wrong
And there I am
Stuck
Suddenly, everything annoys me
Irritates me
Bugs me
Pesters me
Pokes me
Gets under my skin
Yanks my chain
Rubs my fur the wrong way
Pisses me off
It tastes like a
Mouthful of spent ashes
Bitter, dry, gritty
I spit and spit and spit
And always there is more
The galling flavor remains
People are stupid
The world is ugly
Life is pointless and boring and banal
And the goddamned dog next door
Won't quit barking
I am
Neck-deep in a quagmire
A filthy fetid tar-pit
Of my own making
I pull myself out of the muck
Force my lips into the shape of a smile
Say the light and happy words
Make empty jokes about PMS
Tell people I'd missed my daily dose of coffee and chocolate
Pretend to be nice and good and sweet
Sometimes I manage to fool myself
The day seems to be turning around
A few things go right
People stop walking on eggs around me
But the bad mood waits
It is patient
A squatting, grinning demon
With halitosis and body odor like rotten cheese
Warty little hands grasping eagerly
Waiting in the shadows for the single
misstep
One small thing to go wrong
And the bad mood will be
All over me again
Look, just don't bother me, okay?
Leave me alone
Because today I am
In a bad mood
Ducks In A Row
This time last year
I had all my ducks in a row
Or at least I thought I did
I was all set to move to California
Then I discovered the little bastards had gone feral on me
All my ducks were in a row all right
But the rows were, in fact, ordered ranks
Squads and platoons
Equipped with army surplus M-14 semi-automatic rifles
Underwing-mounted air-to-surface Tomahawk missiles
And C-4 demolition charges
Their mission: Destroy my life
First thing they did though
Was lull me into a sense of complacency
They let me make plans
Find a new house on the west coast
Pack my belongings and
Get estimates from the movers
Sell my old place
My ducks stayed in their nice neat rows
for months
Sharpening their bayonets and
Polishing their new-grown fangs
Whenever they thought I wasn't looking
In the meantime, a couple of squads of
these ducks
Slipped away in the night
To do their dirty work
Black ops
To drive down corporate quarterly earnings reports
Force the resignation of several highly placed vice presidents
And engineer an indefinite moratorium on employee transfers
Oh, they were clever!
I was so busy cleaning up the mess afterwards
I barely noticed when my ducks took wing
And fled to a survivalist encampment in upstate Idaho
Since then, I've never had my ducks in a
row again
And now my ducks are hunkered down in
Idaho
Hiding in their fortified bunkers
Because they know if I ever find the sons of bitches
I'll be eating duck a l'orange
Peking duck
Smoked duck salad
Crispy honey-glazed roasted duck
And duck soup
For the rest of my days
Return of the Bad Mood
Okay
The bad mood is back
And it doesn't appreciate the
Way I made fun of it
In that other poem
And before you all come down on me
For getting self-referential and self-conscious
About writing poetry, and the fact I
Wrote about bad moods in an earlier poem
Just remember:
I am in a bad mood
Right now
You don't
Want
To fuck
With me
I know I'm behaving in a
Really bitchy way, but
I can't help it
The damned thing has stolen my body
Red-lining my temper like a badly tuned Fiat
Pumping it full of bitter adrenaline
And the gasoline stench of stomach-acid bile
I've been in such a shitty bad mood
I even scared my own dog this morning
She's hiding in the bathroom, I think
The only one I've run into today
Smart enough to stay clear of me
That's why I snapped your head off
When you asked how I was doing
Why I screamed at the bus driver who
Cut me off at the expressway
Why I kicked your cat--
What? You didn't see me do that?
Well I did
Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?
Huh?
Jeez
Fucking assholes, everywhere
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