Tuesday 29 June 2021

Two Poems by Michael La Bombarda

 



CINDERELLA 

 

Every day a dollar

Makes me feel like the prince

In Cinderella.

 

Yes, I’ve gone out

With working-class women

Whom I found attractive,

 

And though I’m poor

And have been poor

All my life,

 

I often think myself

From royalty—I even

Have a royal pseudonym

 

I write under from time to time.

Once I was drinking in a bar

And a naked woman entered it.

 

I fell instantly in love

With her and thoughts of marriage

Even absorbed my mind,

 

And I went home to get her a shirt

And a pair of pants, and told her

To wait in the phone booth.

 

When I came back,

She was gone.

Cinderellas leave my life

 

All the time,

But I go on

Feeling like a prince,

 

Part Machiavellian,

Part little prince,

And always the prince in Cinderella

Looking for a princess

With the perfect fit.

 

 

DECISION 

 

The window comprises

Three horizontal bars,

Equally placed

That run three or four feet wide,

And a foot-and-a-half tall.

I can see outside

Though I don’t think

People can see in.

I’m in a flea-bag hotel

With no more money

To rent a room for the week.

I’ll have to commit

A crime in broad daylight

In front of a crowd of people,

So I definitely get caught

And sent to jail

Where I won’t need money

For a room or worry about

Where my next meal

Is coming from

For a good while.

Truth and falsehood

Are in my poems.

I’ll let you decide

What is true or false,

Prose or poetry,

Since the disparate parts

Of this poem crystallize,

And are supposed to awaken

You into an aesthetic satori

Of realization embodied

In a fleeting sigh, or a drop

Of poop on your head,

And ah-ah at the perfect

Fruition of alum formed

In grade-school science,

Which you have saved.




Michael La Bombarda is a poet and fiction writer. He is retired and lives in New York City. He has published in Publlic Illumination Magazine, Danse Macabre, Yellow Chair, Kiss My Poetry, Oddball Magazine, and First Literary Review East, and the Landmark, and has two books of poetry published, Steady Hands and A Lover’s Complaint, both with Chez Michel Press,his own press. 



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