Bennie
Just earning a living;
I look at his hair, thin
but he owns it.
When I see how he tries to part it
my heart opens.
There is a rim of something moist
and the grease has
spread to his shirt.
I decide I can forgive him for that.
I suppose he will go home
sometime where it's dark and
solitary. He will
wash and run
his hand over his scalp and
put those precious pants
over a chair, sink onto some kind of bed
and close his eyes.
Social
The fully fattened spider
dies with compliance
following the ancient spider code
hung paralyzed amid her teeming babes
the very protein of her body
giving lessons to the cannibal future. The salmon eagerly punches
toward death. That is his wedding day
with all the pumped up fishy fantasies
stored in his milky brain. He perishes
stuporous in one and final lastitude.
As for me,
goodbye will
turn my eyes to you as the future shrinks.
I will be nothing and you will be all.
An Overheard Conversation
The girl marches into the cafe,
staccato as adolescents sometimes march.
Hamburgers are not enough
to draw her to her mother's table.
She resists a push
as she stamps and plops into her place.
Briefly, I see her plump young countenance
when she turns.
The older woman follows,
an egg woman with short, stout legs.
The origin of charm in the girl's face has darkened
to a surprising variation of what it must have been.
The girl knows what
her mother intends to say,
necessary but ugly:
a long accounting of monies spent
and monies yet to be spent,
details of bus schedules,
estimated bus stop arrival times.
Numbers just fly out of her,
limited conversation
but spoken with love.
Copyright © 2007 Don Schaeffer |
