Wads
A friend up the street tells me about
Wads.
Always carried lots of money on his
person.
An old timer with a big heart.
Would help anyone out if he could.
Such things don’t go unnoticed.
Two meth heads beat him with a pipe
and a crowbar, took his money.
Wads is now lying on life support.
In hospital with his face crushed in.
My friend from up the street went to
see him.
Says it doesn’t look good for Wads.
End Tables for the End Times
With even morning socks mismatching,
it seemed like the prudent thing to
do.
End tables for the end times.
Free delivery was the clincher.
Any address you wanted.
I gave my own, but was tempted.
The young gentlemen who carried
everything
up the stairs, more courteous than
efficient.
The elevator out of order.
But these are the times.
Screwing on the legs,
I think of tall black giraffes
unfit for any popular zoo.
Lay down coasters
like cover fire.
This disappearing bottle of wine
right in front of me,
like a magician of sorts.
If you call me in the morning,
expect the machine
or worse.
Friends remain so
more by strategic absence
than any mathematical
constant.
Your belches, farts and banalities,
they add up.
There is a reason I live
with a cat.
Twist Enough Stories and All You Have Are Pretzels
To lose cable is not like
losing a child,
I have no children and have
only had cable,
so I can only imagine,
but Reason fills me with
this ratty piñata
of Belief that threatens to
break open
at any moment; since I
cancelled the cable,
I've been a far happier man,
I still break out in rashes,
but the rashes are mine,
usually on the knuckles
as though I've been punching
tickets to the faulty
rollercoaster of Spin;
twist enough stories and all
you have are pretzels,
the journalists adverse to
journalism these days
so that now I go for walks,
really see things
for myself: patrolling dragonflies,
tinted window motorcades of questionable
transparency,
lattice fencing for a
wedding cake
everyone knows won’t make
it.
Don’t Be All the Rage
The last hoopla left somersault Saigon
almost 48 years ago
which reminds me to change
that orange cut box of baking soda
in my fridge.
Once dependable and now fading.
Don’t be all the rage.
That new hot thing for alien agendas.
Faking the angry confetti of the
fallen.
Ignore this travesty of trends.
Always come back to yourself,
like a junkyard wheel-well
with none of the push or grease.
That bedroom childhood way
you closed your eyes
and let the afternoon sun
fall over you like some long
glowing hot house truth.
And intimate all these years later.
Loving your only wife again.
Dylan Thomas by other means.
Remain a writer and never a billboard.
There are so many tricks
and so few ways to oppose them.
Sitting up
in the bed of beds
throwing water over my
midnight face.
Seething against nothing
that soon becomes a sad failed parody
of that original injurious
lie of itself.
Which is why I find myself
in a constant fit of happiness.
Finally sure of myself
and never the other.
That persistent angry chaos
from within
that always turns
without.
Personal shortcomings
sold for pennies on the dollar.
And this way I sleep in
when I can,
wake up to the dependable surefooted
sun
once again.
Only the Best
Past lives are a funny thing.
Everyone wants to be the best,
no great harm in that, I guess.
But think of it.
All those past lives.
It must have been some strange looking
societies back then.
All those kings & queens &
emperors
& princes & princesses.
And not a single chambermaid or
sharecropper
or plumber among them.
Ryan
Quinn Flanagan is a
Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and
many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in
print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York
Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma
Review.
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