patrick.net

How about these (pre-morning coffee, so forgive me):

For Sale signs I see
like so many blades of grass.
Is there a bubble?

Who is Bernanke?
Our Helicopter pilot
or bubble popper?

Should I wait to buy?
Who will be the greatest fool?
I hope it's not me.

I see homes selling.
Prices can only go up.
Yes, I am a troll.

A grizzled and graying wizard of
a man rambles on up the hills of South
San Jose, Led Zeppelin style,
and weeping
like an old Testament Prophet
over the high cost of housing.

With one sweeping gesture
he brandishes a middle
finger salute to Silicon Valley in
its final throes of economic funk...

With a sonorous thunder of voice
he pronounces "anathema!"
upon the frazzled masses of taxed-out
inhabitants for their dot.com frolics,
housing bubble excesses, mergers &
aquisitions and other such useless
pursuits of the American dream turned
nightmare...

A fair-weathered lizard with leathery
skin climbs gingerly upon a rock
and muses to himself, "this place has gone
to the birds!" A butterfly,
flutters by then flies down
to Marie Callendars on Blossom Hill
Avenue, to have a piece of home-
style apple pie.

Meanwhile, bills pile higher and higher
upon my desk...unpaid, save for my health
club membership, as I dream of obtaining
the six-pack abs I saw on
a TV infomercial at 3 a.m.
the other morning,
that will transform my life
from insouciance and strife as I attempt
to score a hot, trophy wife
at the local five and dime store...

Once more, I sway
like a Willow in the breeze
as I tease the lid off my fifth
Dos Equis beer, quaffed to kill the pain
and dreams of the days
when I could Boogieboard at Santa Cruz carelessly,
in fun and frolics unabated
by nonsense like finding a career
in high-tech pc board manufacturing...

I cackle like a maniac at the train wreck
of my meager existence, and write my last
check for my college loan obtained,
like a mortgage on a house,
for a useless business degree that got
me minimum wage serial employment and
not that shiny new career I was promised
as the fruit of my labor.

Amongst the new slave labor
class of indigenous asses and sundry
California folk, I am but a cog
in the wheel
of gears that grind
me to a fine grist in the foggy
mist descending upon the valley in
cosmic bliss that cackles its
existential frivolity and points an
accusing finger at life
in my newfangled world.

I adjust my glasses, and feel hard
stabs of pain at the soft memories
of good times and good vibrations that
whirl in a shimmering phantasmagoria of
wheels within wheels glimmering
in this steel trap called
Silicon Valley.

I forage like an alley cat
in the back alleys
of my mind, rummaging for sweet
memories of my salad days
as I ponder the mere shell
of my former self I have become...

The cold thud of reality strikes
my solar plexus like a 5.7 earthquake
rumbling through the San Andreas fault line,
as it moves down my spine to the sound
of the Beach Boys blaring from my radio.

Not even wine will make my domestic economic
catastrophe rosy. I cook up an escape plan as
my green eggs and ham sizzle
in a frying pan on my stove. What the heck,
screw real estate and
high-tech. I'll move to Oklahoma and farm
rice. That would be nice!

It may not be California Nirvana but
it beats munching on an
enchilada and having to endure another night
of birds fighting in the cage next
door, as their wings flap, or
more than that,
the silent sound of one
hand

clapping...

yes, well of course, it's all too easy for harm and newsfreak... :?

some of us are linguistically impaired you know...

so you think i'm a poet,
and i don't even know it?

I suck at Haikus. Here goes nothin'...

It's early in Berkeley and
clogging the roads are
myriads of priuses,
saabs, and Volvos.
Their bumpers gleam in
the unending rain, such
useful reminders that
instead of saving poor
kids in oakland, we should
be saving Tibet. Mass-manufactored
tidbits of pop-culture espousings, as they
wizz past the Bungalows, condos, and
for sale signs on overpriced houses.

Texas has Hoo-has, Alabama has hicks,
North Carolina has nothing but food that
tastes like shit. North Dakota is next to
South Dakota, and Wisconsin gets temps
that are 30 below. Would one venture
where it ever blows snow? I do not know
for I live here, where it's sunny and mild,
where I can speak my mind with the rest
of the crowd, with a sea of nodding heads
that agree in unison that GW is silly, the
country is red, since we are blue I rest
in my bed, knowing full well how right
we are, and that the other red states
shall never get far.

In front the blue volvo with the blue
haired boomer, who still thinks we
care what she thought was hip in
1972 gets out of her car and calls
her son- the one that is now in
school, wishing that soon he can
see the world, buy a home, and
live as his mother did with a home
on the hill overlooking the bay, but
he will be dissapointed, for he has
but no hope- not today, that he
has the same chance, the same
wants, or same desires.
California is mired in red tape,
the cost of living is out of control,
and young families will have to
look beyond their protective abodes
and think "progressivly" towards the
day that they leave the bay- that shining
example of what once was forward thinking
and new- and move to places like Tennesee,
Texas, Idaho, and a few others to name a few,
for the bowl is smoked here, burnt out and
run down. The ideas are stale, unoriginal, and
frail, for they exsit on the backs of those who
thought keeping others out would preserve
what they greedily clutched and tried to
hold dear, but in the end, lost their own
future, their new thoughts and ideals.

It's 10 years later and all isn't good. Cali's
full of old folks, fat cats and the poor.
What happened? they ask- who will take
up the reins, of the future economy, our
schools and tech companies, who's once
brilliant products come forth no more.
They all left, for they could not find
their own way of life, or their one
piece of pie. They took and exported
all the ideas, to distant lands, states and
cities. The brains of the future migrated
away, and all because as I sit in my truck
a dark house I see sits empty with a sign
for sale for 1 million Bucks

The end.