Two Poems
by Charles De Bedts 

SYSTEM MALFUNCTION

yard full of tires a couple of half eaten cars
decaying among indifferent weeds
one limping loyal truck older than owner boy
of maybe say eighteen
didn't finish high school

didn't want to.  good looking grimy from hands
to head already bowed under decisions made 
too soon living the fruit of horizons refused
and youth's early juice
setting the course to here.

over there a cheap and listing swing, ropes
raveled and resigned a wooden toy broken.
the thing they call house two rooms water
sometimes hot a bed a cot
a sink of course tv.

fat blond girlmother in faded loud pastels
resentful baffled weary old and seventeen
barefoot holding a big mac and letting go of life
voice flat despairing low
blue eyes already dead.

pretty girlchild in dirty gray diapers pink paper
ribbon in her hair pulling a doll through the dust
past the box of empties, pouting, awareness growing
but not yet knowing
not to dream.


FOREVER TEMPORARILY UNTITLED

One morning the poet went to work and no one was there.
At imagination's door he called but only an echo answered.

He opened mental closets where the Muse might be hiding,
looked for inspiration down the vacant gray corridors,

scraped the bottom of a bin marked "Finished (sort of)" like
an ice cream carton for material the last scoop hadn't reached;

he poked through the used idea lots of the brain, and searched 
the avenue of thrift shops there for good-condition images.

Nowhere a single nugget that might be kindled, blown on,
fanned into life with suddenly PEOPLE ARRIVING

A BUZZ OF CONVERSATION  COLORS COMING ON  A RISING MURMUR
OF SOUND  A THRILL OF RECOGNITION  NOURISHING LAUGHTER  FLOWERS

EVERYWHERE  CAPERING DANCERS  A ZYDECO BAND  FIREWORKS--
EXCITEMENT REVVING UP  BANG!  CREATION HAPPENING.

Just the quiet of an empty office on a phantom street,
the Poetic Tools and Devices shelf whispery dry and cold.

The poet peered into the mind's secret Vision drawer.
It stared blankly back with not one friendly insight into why.

_______


Charles De Bedts left college as a sophomore, already knowing 
everything.  He went to New York to write and to become rich
and famous. Soon realizing this could take weeks, he was prepared
to stick it out.  After awhile he became tired of selling blood 
and fire-escaping landladies. Chuck then took a job in Iceland 
working for a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a large aerospace
company.  There he discovered that food and shelter were as 
nourishing in some ways as ART. So he stayed with the company and,
after many years, became a big wheel corporate vice president. 
Now he is Retired and Writing again.