Currency calculator

I worry when we need milk 

and wonder where the daily bread will come from.

Too many survive famine. 

Child support is over a week late. 
The Department holds the money it collects from others,
on behalf of others, extra days, 

in an interest-bearing account.
The Department makes more money
that way, it adds up in
arrears and years that cannot be spent
growing and splitting heirs.

The college decisions are coming in. 

We all wonder where this will take us. 

We need to pick a meal plan. She will not starve,
she hopes-
they better have good coffee. 

While driving to take the truck in for an unknown repair, 

the sky held up its coolest winter blue,
the air was crisp like minted dollars,

and I could not take my eyes off the sky
while riding home.

It said everything.

And utterly cloudless,
when I spy a shuttlecock of white, like a flash, in contrast to the blues,

I watched this meteoric figure against the broad daylight
falling, fading, falling, 
and finally, disappearing into the sky,
it all sunk in.

Like small talk, no granular attention is paid.
Burned up. I am broke anyway. 

Just like today. This week, I am weaker
than gravity.

Lighter with empty pockets and incinerating
into nothing,
but solid air pumping in and out of the chest

like fire and ice,
all the elements are there and it is enough 

for a poem. 

Photo credit By Clivelindsay at English Wikipedia, 'Comet McNaught with moon setting over the sea' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dude, where's my car?

The usual parking spot
taken again!
It shouldn't bother me-
since these arrangements are all
temporary.
A reminder of routine,
a barb to burst the bubble
feathers to rustle and I was flustered
as I looked around to make sure I had
everything
worth stealing,
holding nothing of value but the health
to walk,
I locked the sad car
a block down the street
by the Montessori school-closed on Sunday.
I tried to shrug it off when looking behind me
I see history-
blinding me-
replayed out-a memory
in bursts of heliographic signaling.
The old apartment with an ex,
the sun glinting on the front window
of the dark living room, the two
fields below, the
dark stairwell in the middle,
the figures fighting blurry...
I know I am seeing too far
too vividly.
So I walked the other way,
               don't look back
again, I tell myself.
Turning the
corner
home
I wish I could forget such trivial things
such as where I am parked
or how I have lived elsewhere
too close to home.



Photo By Härmägeddon (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

(Lip) Service with a Smile

A man walks into a bar

and sits between

an insurance salesman

and an off-duty security guard.

The three are there,

all six i's

for the bartenders two bouncy breasts

and cheap smile.

The man in the middle

is an accountant.

They are all regular(s)

Men

with regular needs

like thirst

and confidentiality.

She serves them all

on the house

this one

with a wink-another drink?

As a matter of course,

they all obey

(after all-

she's doing her job)

with she-grin.

What do you call a bi-polar accountant?

The salesman asks,

'Off-balance',

he says first.

The security guard

responds to the call,

I heard

insurance agents do it

with third parties,

he says smugly.

Go figure,

the accountant

in the red (tie) said,

Did you hear about

the guy that lost his left arm

and left leg in a car crash-

Well, he's all right now.

The bartender tosses back

two cents,

What's the difference between a job

and a career?

One is,

the other does.

Nobody laughs.

A cell phone rings,

the men all nervously check-

his wife is calling

for help.

A new message awaits him.

A call ignored for now, he’s too busy

to protect the innocent,

for she who does not work,

for a living.

It was the last call

to come in

on the punch line. 

Image of painting by Édouard Manet [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.