(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.

Upping the Anti-cipation

Something was supposed to happen today

-yet didn't

I was ready for the news

-yet wasn't

prepared for the magnitude of the mundane

-yet mustn't

fret over the idle moment that moves in

-yet wouldn't mind

staying and waiting with me

-yet I couldn't

stand my own company, so I cancelled

our future plans

since I did not want to wait around until

the end

only to find

Something not supposed to be

(for me)

-yet nothing did

Significant-

(ly).

Composed 1/7/16.
Image of painting By Pascual Carlos Esteban (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Knock on would

When your back is against the wall,

you must turn around and face it-

when you do, 

you will notice 

it was a door

all along.

Image by By Bill Jacobus [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

From Experience

Work ethic?
I never stop working
on ethics, and asking, is it working,
aesthetically?
I know what I'm talking about
from experience,
in the past tense and future sense
I've done that and been aware
I was not cut out
from the same mold, jagged edges
don't pass QC, since praise
and raises don't have my name
on the double-check
dough and owe.

Oh, I've tried,
O how many I've plied,
bonafide with holdings
slanging sammies for many
new deli's, pounding dough,
hot and slow and the pizza parlor,
rise and shine, bussing and breakfast,
sticky sweet and greasy spoons
to rendezvous at posh hotels,
the grand in safe, directing your calls,
taking others vacations in reservations
before valet, all meager pay.

High rises collect
low lifes.
As assistant
two left arm(s), right hand, Girl Friday,
to many, many, many,
so many wealthy men,
that dropped the i
from the deal.

Oh the plethora of ends
that never met, quit and ceased,
fired, uninspired,
attendance was
unfortunately
required.

Dream jobs,
bookstores, cafe's library,
florist, sophist
tick-ated, métiered,
tending bar, mending egos,
pouring poisons, emptying passion-
flower, ugly and dry.
From fast food to soul food,
liquid lunches and
bouncers pulling punches.

Figuring it out, adding it all up,
frisk-ally, the audit shows
the bottom line, a negative balance,
in the red.
So before I'm dead
I will find the write
position,
the only occupation
worth my ply and in-
vocation,
my gift of storied salvation.


Image by Lewis Hine [Public domain or Public domain], Working on steam-pump c. 1920 via Wikimedia Commons.

Under the see

Here, you in the middle.

Music in dancing smoke.

Dense vaporous heat wrapped in red

ripples and shards carry and throw

light bent, fractured panes

strewn before open eyes

widely receptive, a hungry glint

absorbing the whole shaft.

Do not speak of experience

like goosebumps and coincidence,

deja vu and waking dreams worn

on this path. You picked the way

reflected back in pouring pail eyes to

spinning sapphire seas stuck inside your inertial feeling.

You cannot tell

of the way the moon

holds onto you in the crook

of its long arm showing you more.

Or how the sun

seduces you under its warm endless well

of desire to strip you down, and suck you up.

Do not try to repeat what was implied

in the language

of hummingbirds that hover,

of cats that crowd around you,

of swaddled babes enrapt,

of elderly enduring and shaking

off your ghosts.

You stood under all too well. Father time and Mother earth,

hospitable surrogates serving

senseless, undecipherable epiphanies.

You see.

Image of painting by By William Savage Cooper, Phantasy c.1896 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Oversight Counsel

Excuse me-
have you seen my epiphany?
It was about yay high-
pretty round-ish
with flecks in the middle?
Someone said it should be
passing through here around noon-
but I did not catch the Time Zone
I am in.

I am scanning the
event horizon
to spot that little anomaly-
sometimes it looks like an arrow
but most often it
blends in with the background.

It is reckless to lose ideas, I know,
someone else could pick one up
polish it, call it a gem,
and get carried away with it
along some locomotive lines,
who knows
where they’d end up.

This one ran away from me.
Negligence, yes.
I wasn't looking-
forgot to pay attention-
to all those stolen seconds
I took for granted, as though
they were lukewarm and left over.
I understand why I left me too.

If you see anything
that resembles nonsense
it was mine.

Composed 1/4/16.


Image By Creator:Eugeniusz Ludwik Dąbrowa-Dąbrowski (cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fact checking poetry

As a matter of fact

you are on to something.

The fact of the matter

is something is amiss.

Is it in the hypothesis?

No-positively not.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred

or ten times in a thou-

what does it really matter?

We miscalculated the value,

somewhere-

the watch ran away with the moon-

explained in this extrapolated theory

that the influx of  people penning

poetry is directly related to

the fast fading of fact, in fact,

the disappearing of deceptions by

professional misconception has

unveiled the real knowns and 

now no one really knows.

Yet, the fact remains,

after all accounts have been accumulated,

matters like these have become buried

in crypts called His Story.

Cold and dormant, leaves upon layers,

monotonous markers

building, folding and compressing, 

finally, erupting with sulfuric poetry. 

Image by By Vihljun (Own work) Sakhalin Volcano mud 6/2010 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.