And if that lump
looked like a goiter to you,
that’s most likely because
you had too much of that
bad spinach lasagna last night.
I’m not responsible
for any hallucinations
you may or may not have
due to leafy greens.
I thought you’d at least managed
to grow up into a respectable adult
since you last visited me, but
I’ve been wrong in my judgments before.
Peddle the metal
unresponsively–
pile unrequested
bile and homages
to the dank
and stormy pelican hoop danglers.
Crayon-licking
pumpernickel stereotypes
divulge their wildest imaginations
to the assemblage
of unintimidated pastry thieves
as the whole truck
(and everybody aboard)
skids to a gravelly halt.
The kettle would prefer to boil over,
but nobody’s filled it for six years
at this point. You wouldn’t think
that kettles have very good methods
for recognizing the passage of time,
but you’d be mistaken.
I feel the
cleaver’s
butcher fall
by the waterhouse
under the porcelain
doll’s broken eyeball,
color of blue.
Exasperating nothings
with a fever for forethought
and a riddle basin for catching
unbequeathed daisies–follow not,
for the least of your troubles
would become the most.
Guarantees rarely govern small towns
in the third month of a blizzard,
but you can set your watch
to the puckered up old mouths
going to meetings and complaining
about the heat not working when it should.
It’s not enough for them
to have survived through all they know.
They must complain for the sake
of the younger generations
who otherwise would never have found out
about the trying way the world used to run.
Everything felt like an uphill marathon
with bare feet in shifting sand dunes
on the third hottest day in recorded history.
The hottest day ever recorded
came before they even milked their first cows,
and they have stories [oh they have stories]
about how their daddies rocked them to sleep at night.
Whoever (besides you) could have thought of putting Betsy White in a limousine before her operation? All common sense stands to reason with you, but you seem to take no mind. Precautionary measures should have been taken to at least notify any kind of sane individual as to the negligent way you prepared to take care of the patient. I, for one, am appalled at the limousine company’s behavior for going along with your scheme and not asking a single question, as though they only cared about the money they’d been promised ahead of time. I don’t care if a business needs to take any income it can get, as long as they ask a courtesy question or two about the intentions behind the transaction. Then I’d be spared all of this embarrassment.
WHARVED 