Catherine Daly

Catherine Daly lives across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los

Angeles and works as a software developer. The Hacker's Dictionary definition

of "Turing tar pit" is "a place where anything is possible but nothing of

interest is practical." She can be reached at cadaly@pacbell.net.

Turing Tar Pits

I could take that job and live on the beach for the summer.

Summer would stretch into fall and Christmas

in the Southern Californian way.

We would miss me here at the tar pits.

Take the pet with you.

I could take a job where they'd send me to school,

away from early until late.

You might as well live in paradise then, and be single.

Would you help me fix up my dorm room?

Could I come home weekends?

Even if there were jobs at the tar pits,

doing them would be like being home,

and I want to get away

and then return.

My old job seems more interesting from the tar pits

than it was.

Good jobs and poetry where we don't live.

Without a job, I can't to move anywhere nice,

away from the tar pits.

Nothing interesting is practical.

I had a job an hour away but I didn't see any more people

than I see around the house

after the woman I shared an office with

left since there were no people in the office.

My supervisor escorted me to the women's room

for national security reasons

every time I had to pee. It was a dull job.

I couldn't drink the coffee I needed to stay awake.

I had a job nearby but it didn't pay well enough

for me to get a car.

The bus only dropped off, didn't pick up,

at the stop.

The harder I work,

the deeper writings' inadequacies draw me.

If I live here at the tar pits I can write, yet

I could write dull poetry here until I run out of money.

Catherine Daly