The Note

A plastic bottle of Coke exploded, spilling
all over an important crumpled note,
making it completely unreadable.

The old man pulls out
his dirty handkerchief to clean up
tearing the note to shreds.

The unhinged door of my mind opened,
snow fell as the hockey puck hit my head,
knocking me out cold.
I’ll never remember

what happened to the note.

May 10, 2008

This is for the Friday Five prompt over at Poefusion.

Old Poem

Trees Embracing People

I’ve heard of tree huggers,
but can a tree embrace people?
Down in the meadow, I can see it now:

Bob the Oak and Sally the Maple talk,
sharing the latest gossip by the pond cooler.
“Did you hear about Frank?” Bob asks.
“Oh yeah, I heard that he’s taken up with them,
those ‘People Huggers,’ that’s weird,” said Sally.
“Soon he’ll want to demonstrate and wave
some signs, ‘Save The People,’” quipped Bob.
Yeah, it starts out small, wanting to embrace humans,
before you know it he’ll be a card-carrying member
of some whacko humanitarian group!”
“Yeah, Bob I agree. Let the people
blow themselves up, there’s plenty of them left,
we don’t need them anyway, we’ll be
around long after they’re extinct.
2 words: Giant Sequoias,” laughed Sally.
“Yeah. Well that’s too bad about Frank, though….did
you hear about those new worms in the soil?”

May 25, 2004

In My Backyard

Grass seedlings, left untouched
go rotten.
Weeds crowd out the important.
Urgent junk fills in the empty spots.

When leaves fall in Autumn
I just keep trimming the bushes
and weeds overtake me.
Overwhelmed, I do nothing,
taking a nap instead.

In Winter I wake only
to find my backyard filled
with dead trees, brown grass
an old Chevy pickup with a rusted out bed,
jacked up on cinder blocks

Another Deep-Space Transmission

He sends me deep-space transmissions,
my video mail screen flashes daily.
“Master, my new doghouse is fantastic.
you’ve out done yourself again. My voice
has lost all American-dog accent
thanks to the voice modulation treatments,
the modified iPhone you sent has done wonders.”

Fido is loyal.
His multiple daily video emails,
do seem excessive.
Reminds me of his younger days.
He would follow me,
laying at my feet in
whatever room I was in.

Fido has been living in space
fourteen years this past January,
as loyal as the day I brought him home.

May 5, 2008
This poem was motivated by a prompt over at ReadWritePoem.

NaPoWriMo Completed

I wrote 27 poems during the month of April for National Poetry Writing Month. I wanted to get 30 done but I couldn't quite make it. I have written almost 40 poems since mid March so I feel good about this.