Out to Lunch
Sometimes nothing seems to work,
All the senses stay away
As if they are staging a union strike
Against me. I only expect them to do
What they are born to do. The steward
Of the gang retorts, “Out to lunch!
They’ll be back when they can justify
Their work and rewards.”
What am I to do while they are out holding
Signs, drinking, having refreshments and gossiping
About a fishing expedition of throwing a wide gill net.
Are they planning a long-term strike?
The steward looks up at the morning sky
and says, “Maybe.” The ominous one-word
Response is worrisome, for the long gibberish
One gives a platform to stage my own argument.
I parse the one word injecting different needles
Of scenarios…what if this and what if that…
Also remembering that they are out to lunch
Not for a long cruise.
Maybe I’ll take a long bath while the vigilant
Steward guards my door to uphold
The integrity of the union membership.
A warm bath dissolves tensions in joints
Open to work on the contentious
Needs and demands…
By writing a haiku based
On what Kahlil Gibran said:
At the beginning
The marathon of daily
Poem was dream,
But at the end, the
Beginning is memory
Like the big bang…Wow…
Yenna Yi
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SHE TALKS OF KITCHEN GODS
She talks of appeasing kitchen gods
Mad frothing mouth dogs
Schoolchild tangled in bamboo thickets
One small island
One wife
During one life
Two birthdays
Three conquerors
Four nationalities enforced
Name changed thrice
Taiwanese to Japanese to Chinese
And then on to Americanese.
That was the winter after the war
After we drained the last fish from the pond
Wrenched the last scrawny chicken’s neck
After we burned all the tables and chairs to keep warm
Ate the last sweet potato
Baked on wire
Over that ground fire
Warmed our hands in the shadows that night
Searched the sky for the Allied bombers
We bicycled out with first light
Left the ancestral hideaway shelter.
She turned back once to see the single tattered curtain burned red by dawn
Scrubbed no floor, dusted no shelf, left no business card.
Geo Cernada
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A Poetry Reading
(enter stage left: the POET, a shambling disheveled figure, with a long unkempt beard and apparently having just finished an egg salad sandwich, part of which resides in the beard)
I am so glad we could meet.
I would share with you today
the word from the street.
Humpty Dumpty fell from a wall..
Sleeping Beauty heard him fall.
She failed to call 911
Because she was playing cards
with Tom Thumb.
Perhaps that is tragic
it seems to involve magic,
All depends how you
feel about eggs.
This may be somewhat confusing,
but this is poetic musing,
and we all know how odd
that can sound.
If you know how to speak poet,
it is easier to know it.
Consider for a moment another
odd plight,
of the Cow who jumped over the moon.
She was provoked of course
by the annoying cat’s fiddle,
a laughing dog ,and some hanky-panky
between a dish and a spoon.
I can see you nodding your
heads with a TSK TSK sound.
I don’t understand the puzzle on your face.
Is this any more confused than the
daily fare dished out by the human race.
Perhaps a chorus of” Hey diddle diddle”
will improve your mood.
And I haven’t even begun
to touch on the moral and social
tragedy involving poverty and
women’s issues glaringly
revealed by the “Old Woman in the Shoe.”
If you consider this all annoying
think of poor IO , the abused cow
never away from her gadfly, courtesy of Hera.
I’d say you are getting off easy.
Poetic babble without limit
can be squashed like a bug,
if you are lucky.
Suddenly a Loud voice from the audience,
“GET THE HOOK” followed by approving sounds
Alas, I cannot find the off
s
w
i
t
c
h
( Stage right: a cloaked figure emerges with a large pole with a hook,
yanking the poet off stage)
Paul Redstone