"Selected Poetry by Dan Heffernan"

Selected Poetry by Dan Heffernan

[danheffe@yahoo.com]

A Nicer Place

When I close my eyes it is better.
My eyelids are a window to a nicer place.
The sun shines brightly in turquoise skies.
Its warmth tempered by a gentle breezing.
She (whom I cannot see) bears wildflower scent on her shoulders and grasses and trees sway in
her path.
Birds of prey surf on jetstreams.
Clouds drift.
The noises are nature's own:
deep burping of the bullfrog,
swishing, rustling, cracking, tussling of blowing leaves.
Imperceptible (almost) crunching, nibbling of shrubbery by fawn and doe.
Quiet conversation of stream with rock and sand and mosquito.
The hum of life and living.

I open my eyes and there is still a hum
The humming of evil machines and false suns
Gray walls, scowling faces, hurting hands and backs and legs and hearts and minds.
The air is still and stale and used.
The chirping is harsh and startling, repetitive and endless
It spits from buzzing metal blocks that kill the eyes,
screams from telecommunications equipment for the criminally insane.
The rustling and shredding of thousands upon thousands of useless, wasted pieces of dead trees.
Conversations are bland or meaningless or mean or worse.

The prisoners/parasites have forgotten their childhood
All-consuming becomes the passing of minutes and seconds and hours until lunchtime, until
"happy" hour; the days until Friday, the months until vacation, the years until retirement.
The hands they watch _ that lead them _ are not their own.

I need to close my eyes

A Room With No View

What I have seen does not matter.
The chalk crumbling across the blackboard, grating.
Hair white, gray, bushy, nice smile, innocent face.
That suit, wrinkled, gray pinstripe. What kind of --
One knee bent under her weight, barefoot in the sand, your arms around each other, the sand
damp and cold. The sound of the waves.
A hill so steep. The small black car and the bald guy at the wheel. Houses pink and blue, a tree
that defies the laws of gravity, power lines.
A melting, viscous landscape of violet and blue. Arctic precipices tower above the seething
cauldron. The whitest snow protects them.
At the riverside, a woman in a white dress and her daughter, silly hats to ward off the sunshine,
daintily tread to the edge of the cool water for an appreciative view of their new small sailboat.
Outside it is red and black.
As the top of the pyramid turns, the hour of the day grows later. Warmth still seeps through
closed windows.
Rap music soothes a warped mind.
Two waterfalls, seen but not heard. Their mist keeps me dry.
An asylum this is.
Motionless, silent, smiling faces.
The lamp buzzes and snaps loudly, warning of an impending explosion. Crumpled blue
comforter, two pillows. flannel and fluffed, yank the flimsy curtain from the rack softly yet
insistently.
The bright yellow scorpion is poised to strike, flexing its arms, the poisonous hook of its tail
dwarfs the head
But that's all.
Nothing to see here.
Just a small room at nighttime.

Poem © 2004 Dan Heffernan, all rights reserved
appears here by permission

Author Notes

The first is one of many poems of questionable value inspired by mind-numbing temporary work in San Francisco during circa 1996.
The second was written at a computer in my roommate's tiny room in a flat on the top story of a building on Van Ness and Vallejo.

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