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From: ix200@sdcc6.UUCP (Bruce Jones)
Newsgroups: net.poems
Subject: The flu
Message-ID: <1879@sdcc6.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Jan-85 19:36:24 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcc6.1879
Posted: Tue Jan 22 19:36:24 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jan-85 06:38:17 EST
References: <138@ihu1n.UUCP> <782@reed.UUCP>
Reply-To: ix200@sdcc6.UUCP (Bruce Jones)
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 38
Summary: 

The Flu

I am the Tin Man
but no oil exists to quiet the shrieking
of my joints.

A crew of malicious malevolents
works through the night at piece work rates,
goading the pile-driver 
that packs my head with cotton.
In the day they leave it idiling,
thumpingly audible behind my eyes.

Vast tracts of land are being deforested,
denuded in the effort to fill my demand for kleenex.

The wearies that normally yap around my feet
and nip at my ankles like ineffectual chihuahuas
grow to grizzly bear size and ride on my back.

As my ambition fades -- promises, commitments, and asignments
pile up outside my door; the uncleared snow of
an approaching avalanche.

Sleep is the most precious of commodities,
purchased at any cost, voraciously consumed.
Disturbed from it, whether by accident or design,
the beast emerges;
breath of a druid, eyes like two piss holes in a snow bank;
irrasible, crass, impatient, unforgiving.
My friends flee the Hyde in me
awaiting, as I do, the return of
the Benevolent Bruce.
-- 
Bruce
   "I have just begun considering 
      the possibilities of the next disaster"
                                          Jones