4-2-16

Self Serving Time

I’ve had an alias
and an alibi
and spent some days
in a dungeon of two
make it three—four
pick any damn number

But quantifying ain’t
about everything
unless you rush
to paint blush
the digits

-only-

as some will sum
stanza one
says it all

aren’t they captured
in high relief
our final tally
a trompe l’oeil
the bottom line
an asterisk
that denotes
approximation

—A Past NaPoWriMo Poem for sure… day/year a ?
——-

Mckeesport

Never just
an orphan
always
Us Orphans

Drove Susan crazy

For example:

Agreeing to meet
for dinner
Susan running
late
enters saying
sorry
and I counter

“Us orphans don’t get hungry.”

or

her news- of- the- day
conversational
gestures
wine glass waving
contents sloshing
left then right
right then left
up then out
to land
in my lap on my khakis
eliciting

“Us orphans don’t need no clean clothes.”

or

try that mid-September
tepid Sunday
late afternoon…
when the sun just quits,
and the wind shifts
and the temperature drops
by a dime of degrees …
then
draping my jacket around
her shoulders,
I can feel Susan smile
when I say,

“Us orphans don’t get cold.”

—————–
Day three NaPoWriMo April 2013

Vernalis

Somewhere someone plans
a spring offensive
somewhere someone young
will die
the old will be bled
and babies force marched
through a warmer gentler
April

Where bombs will concuss
bullets bloom
and snipers shape shift with
sudden green shoots

and headlines will seek
an approbate font

as the front opens
winter’s history revised

*****Day Two NaPoWriMo April 2013

——–