Hitherto underrepresented is the full range of emotion you’d associate with a mood ring. You’ve only ever managed to have your ring turn blue–from cornflower to navy–though most folks you know swear they’ve turned theirs putrid green in a fit of rage. Maybe their rings never went in the laundry by accident. All right, no need to lose your temper. Each passing moment now brings you closer to hurling this piece of knock-off jewelry from a fourth-story balcony. The thought of throwing the ring away produces no new emotional hues while it’s still on your finger, though the turmoil in your head should surely at least cause a minor change. What a waste of six dollars; if only you’d remembered that truck stops never sell anything actually worth the money it costs.
Category: Poetry
Gravy
Flooding the basement with turkey gravy is just the beginning, though it took 26 hours to prepare all that gravy and I haven’t gotten any sleep since starting the process. The gravy needs to at least come up to your shins, or it can’t be called a legitimate flood. I’ve decided against trying to float on my back in the stuff, I don’t need my whole body drenched with a substance that brings to mind those old elementary school turkey lunches at the beginning of the week of Thanksgiving, with potatoes and canned green beans, maybe a piece of droopy pumpkin pie. Once the taste for flooding has been satisfied, digging a hole to China in the backyard is a logical next step. All the cartoons from my youth assured me that it’s possible, and I won’t rest until I burrow through the core of the planet–though more than likely I’ll run out of energy and pass out after I’ve dug about 20 feet down.
Chemical Laundrymates
Wee Chemical Laundrymates
skip under extension cord hammocks,
content to while away their youth
in an mundane–and rather uncouth–fashion.
The parents never stuck around
to check the progression of their progeny,
evolution’s made their job
easier than most folks’.
All they have to do
is ensure the forward momentum
of their species, then they can
vacation around the world
without a care to be found,
living out their golden years with zeal
renting catamarans and pontoons.
They’re seemingly always on open water,
they seek it out instinctually
and with a vengeance, especially
when their days of procreation have ceased.
If it ever came down
to floating in a pond
versus protecting offspring from predators,
recreation would win every time.
Furball
A squirrel hurls
itself forth
from a blossom
of the eldest
poplar tree
in the vicinity
to a younger
specimen, digging
into the suppler bark
and scaling the tree
like it’s nothing
until it twitches
and clutches at air,
missing solid matter,
falls ass-backwards
for seventy-five feet,
and is caught
by a hiker who
saw this transpire
and thought about
letting the furball
drop to the ground–
it would have bounced.
Rubber Mallet
You’re unsure
of what brought you
here as you stand
right next to the
secretary of a
highfalutin executive-type,
deftly denting
the coffeemaker
with a rubber mallet,
unwittingly uncovering
the rattling inner-workings
of that percolator’s psyche,
cracks and creaks
that were never meant
to come across
this superior’s oaken desk,
unsettling his thoughts
while a way to compete
with eastern markets
must be devised
before midnight tomorrow
or these investors
will be pissed.
“Mr. Gamble is trying
to have some peace
and quiet, sir.
I suggest taking
your rubber mallet
elsewhere for now.”
“Oh, this mallet
isn’t mine. I found it
on the floor
when I got here.”
“I thought it looked
familiar. I lost mine
an hour ago, thought
it ran away from me.”
Lore
No boar before
has benefited more
from practices of yore
than when bored
in a store, implored
to do chores
lest gore hit the floor,
pouring foreshortened spores
made to ward off a horde
of imported dull swords, moored
on an old shore
scored with sores–
lore that can’t be ignored.
Stretch
Stretch into oblivion, carpenter ants
treading on you like a bridge. Know
when the chicken brains freeze
in the root cellar below your chin;
make a noise to show you understand.
Dig through your belly button lint
to uncover an ancient tome–often
misused and represented falsely
as a case study in human husbandry.
Read a popular passage that teaches,
“Never eat a stalk of wheat fresh
from the ground, rather make twine
from it and tie together your emotions
before you lose them entirely.”
WHARVED 