It’s rainy. I don’t want to make a fuss.
I’m fit but old and home is beckoning.
I try to exit (rear door) from the bus –
“Excuse me” doesn’t budge youth reckoning
I’ll edge aside – I get to hear her cuss
while boarding, as I shoulder-clip her wing.
And what did I accomplish or improve?
I think next time it happens, she might move.
(Ottava Rima)
In 1998, when Google came
upon the scene, and still 9 years before
the iPhone introduction, I could claim
a quarter century of office work.
Then pension plan consulting was the name
describing us, and when we needed help,
we called on colleagues, brain-stormed: all aflame
with strategies and questions, theories, more.
As substitute, the Internet is lame.
(Magic 9)
We know the clock face features moving hands,
but we can’t watch the motion of the one
for hours. Everybody understands
it moves, yet eyes do not perceive its run.
In growing up with analog, our frame
of reference thus includes the metaphor
that shift occurs – some things are not the same –
though none of us observe the move for sure.
And sometimes we don’t notice that we change.
I’m me right now like I was yesterday –
no tragedy’s occurred since then, no strange
event that might have altered me, okay?
But life’s an hour hand – there’s still a case
for teaching kids the analog clock face.
I wrestled with a client all last week,
for after answering his questions right,
I had to counter his attempts to tweak
our joint perspective till, within his sight,
he’d get results he sought (or tried to seek).
I used deliberate words and expert might.
I had to be exactly, clearly nice.
And though it wasn’t fair I was precise.
(Ottava Rima)
Some months ago I gave up using pot.
I had to stop inhaling smoke or vape.
My bronchiae protested such a lot
I heeded, though too late for full escape.
I sampled edibles, but their delay,
and flavor that repelled or led to more
than needed, didn’t satisfy the way
I wanted from the stuff I liked before.
I always knew there’d come a time to quit
if I lived long enough, but the surprise
was how the ending felt appropriate,
and bettered me in mood. Today’s surmise –
I used to use to alter how I thought,
and didn’t notice changes aging wrought.
Poetic license authorizes me
to break some grammar rules, to twist a word,
to stretch a metric foot’s capacity,
to host ideas my parents called absurd.
It grants me room to battle paucity
of language, and to fancy someone heard.
It let me play Scheherazade of poem,
and kept me sane a thousand days at home.
(Ottava Rima)
This is the final poem in the House Arrest series.
She said her hands feel dry when folding clothes.
He countered smoothing paper irks his skin.
For me a theory quickly then arose –
committed as they are to scrubbing well
when in or out their fingers they expose,
and then applying lotion for repair,
perhaps the sanitizing that they chose
depletes them of good moisture from within.
Immoderately clean means dermal woes.
(Magic 9)
The kids today may need a jaywalk class.
They’re inattentive, and the traffic’s dense.
It takes an age of walking to amass
pedestrian abilities. I sense
approaching drivers who will rudely pass.
I harbor busy street intelligence.
But all the years I lived to learn the score
have made me gray and easy to ignore.
(Ottava Rima)
The shingled structure wears a charcoal stain,
appearing almost black (or uber gray).
But when the sunshine lights each window pane,
the way it did at 3 p.m. today,
it wears a face of silver. That display
examples how appearance varies so.
My fondest enemy has an array –
she’s soft tonight, and other than a foe.
(Huitain)
I loved to read as soon as I learned how,
although I had no use for Dick-and-Jane
or even Spot. From then to beyond now
I turn to written narrative as main
amusement when awake and sitting still.
Selecting English as my major just
to keep on reading, I have found and will
a way to reading novels, cause I must.
My kids are ready readers too, but less.
My first-born favors film, and I observe,
regardless of her work, her love, all stress,
she finds a space for movies. She’ll reserve
a screening like I carve out time to read,
arranging hectic life to sate a need.
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