Sputterpub's Blog

I didn’t own a ragdoll as a mite.
My favorite baby doll was rubber-made
Ginette I loved so hard I used to bite
her head. But as a 12 year old, I paid
allowance for a raggedy new doll –
the classic red-haired Ann to guard my bed.
She’s not a relic of my youth at all;
she represents my cottage taste instead.

Presenting her to you, I don’t expect
you’ll play with her. Do what you will. It’s just
I laundered her today lest she infect
you with bacteria or age-old dust.
I love you more than she asserts at heart,
and it’s okay the wash tore her apart.

I used to qualify my history
by stating, with a grin, the numbered years
I’d earned of marital recovery,
enjoying comprehension from my peers.
But now I know how much I thought was jest
was actually a clue to plumb the truth.
I tolerate a lonesome life the best,
abhorring love’s frustration since my youth.

I honor friction, and I value stress,
but daily irritations make me craze.
It’s been a quarter century and, yes:
I suffer rash eruptions from those days.
Sometimes I want a friend – I take a chance,
but irritation swiftly swamps romance.

A summer evening, doors ajar, I hear
some pops I barely register: the sound
of breeze in garden trees (I have four near),
but then I notice and I look around –
there’s flame that rears beyond the neighbor’s fence!
Ten seconds and I know it wasn’t lit
deliberately – it’s crime or accident –
response arrives and pros extinguish it.

When next I hear the pop and creak of trees,
my body clenches and my heartbeats pound.
The aftermath includes anxieties
surprising me. I similarly found
I flirt, but past events soon shift my whim
to tell the fellow all that’s wrong with him.

An unintended consequence produced,
collateral to innovation’s wit,
is often the resulting wave that’s loosed
upon our culture. Inappropriate
as rent increases born of residents’
attempts to beautify their neighborhood,
the damage no one meant can be immense,
irradiating us with bad-in-good.

The Internet kills independent stores.
The cellular has taken down phone booths.
The chefs appear to cook for Uber scores,
and neither cash nor bar-soap’s used by youths.
We’re homo sapiens. We’re smart. We’re smug.
And we evolve as randomly as bugs.

My body mod’s invisible, advised
and done by docs. Four teeth are rooted in
titanium. My lenses are comprised
of goods with laboratory origin –
I focus at all distances, and see
specifics unidentified before.
I own a hidden disability
(if reproductive amputations score).

My lobes are pierced (once each), but that was done
(as long as I was in the doctor’s chair
for something else), at nearly 21 –
so I could buy the posts I longed to wear.
I choose for comfort, quiet color, ease,
to cart around my eccentricities.