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.

Hunger in the sculpture garden

Tempting as it sounds
to taste literature with my tongue
there is a limit to what we can know
about authors intentions
the recipe is always
made to personal taste.
And once again I was lured to lick-
almost taunted
to be truthful-
with its smooth lines
melting in the sun
to tactfully taste the Rodin.
My palm salivating
I took a tiny sip
with just my salted fingertip
and noted the same
famished touch as Auguste,
kneaded under me. So I proceeded
to touch each one,
with my limb and flesh, swallowing the
sculptures and devouring their
stoic expressions.
A feast for the eyes,
an appetizer of art, bodies of work
for my insatiable appetite craving more

elements in my metallic spit.


Photo credit: Me, myself and I, 2/11/16.