Four Poems by John Harold Olson

 

Gone

 

The old neighbourhood Is gone now.

The kids grew up, pets crossed over. 

People died.

“I miss it,” she said. 

“Miss what?” 

“This  is our turn,” she said. 

It sure is.

 

 

Prayer for Gigantopithecus 

 

A glass wall fell 20 stories to the Boston Square and turned into a billion smithereens. 

The relief map of my life 

The distance between one glass edge to another was where your heart breaks. 

“They were peaceful apes,” some guy said. 

I was in a bar having a noisy birthday party, talking to a guy about the vanished giants. 

He looked up, as if remembering, the round James Joyce glasses reflecting light.

“They ate tubers,” he said.  “Succulent  little vegetables- It was really too good to last, by Earth Playbook Standards. But they’re all gone. Extinct. That means really dead. Everybody. 

“Wow,” Olson said, “sounds so 

basso cantante.“

 

 

Lost Stitch 

 

My memory stutters 

Gaps of silence 

Or darkness 

Can’t remember your directions, but I recall the cast of John Cassavetes’ “Shadows” 

“How to survive?”, cried the doomed chicken.

 

Someone Put A Curse On Me 

 

Someone put a curse on me 

and I prayed to lose this curse. 

Breaks the sparkling day I could breathe and hung the cross from the doorknob. 

The avant-garde man 

From down the hall 

was offended 

“Thought you were brighter than this. It’s...embarrassing. “

“You’re full of demons,” I said . “Why don’t you let Him help?” 

“Who?”

John Harold Olson - Is a retired Special Education teacher in Las Vegas. Transitioning to being a hospice volunteer.