Fred Aiken Writing

Category: Poetry

June 15, 2024

standardized

i did not do great on the SAT’s,
or on the GRE’s, for that matter,
it’s not something i’m particularly proud of,
but i do not like to study for standardized tests,
and it’s not because i’m a bad test taker,
because i do fine on tests, for the most part,
but i just never really understood the types of questions
the standardized tests would ask,
nor did i fully comprehend what they were trying to gauge,
like how much of my soul i was willing
to spend on such mind-numbing studying?
but oh well, i suppose i wasn’t meant to be a doctorate of philosophy anyway,
though mostly because that’s also not what i studied

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June 14, 2024

sleep as payment for a day’s work

Daily writing prompt
Describe one of your favorite moments.
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long, dragging day,
blazing sun beating the asphalt ragged,
reading for hours at a time, studying for god knows what,
staring at a screen as the words fail to come,
lifting hundreds of pounds of coffee,
my back begins to screech,
i think i breathed in creosote,
i should probably go see a doctor about that,
but that’s a tomorrow problem,
tonight i will sleep,
i will sleep,
i will sleep
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June 14, 2024

lunch with coworkers

i went out to lunch with some coworkers
and they told that i drank too much water too quickly,
but i said that was a good thing, right?
because of water being necessary to live and whatnot,
then my coworkers said that i could drown
if i drank too much water too quickly,
and then they proceeded to recount a story
i’m sure they heard on the radio
of someone drowning after drinking gallon after gallon
of water to the point where their body couldn’t process
all the liquid, and the person became
more water than human,
though i suppose i wouldn’t mind dying of hydration,
since i would think it would be better than dying of the opposite

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