The Road Taken
by Verse A. Phile
Many times the road less traveled
Is less traveled for a reason.
But that’s okay, because
Everyone has to die
Sooner or later, right?
Bears have to eat
Every day, too, right?
Shh. Here comes another free spirit.
Analyzing the Relative Effectiveness of Inquiries into the Quandries of the Human Spirit, in More Than Three Persons/Voices
by Verse A. Phile
We like it when the hot dog vendor lady
calls us “Dear” as she hands us a sweaty Diet Coke
and a small relief of George Washington, and we check
the date on the coin before we absentmindedly place
it in our pockets: 1997, when we were but (when was
that year; 1985; plus 10, plus 2) 12 years old, when we
were pining for the acne of adolescence, to drive, coughing out
curses on playgrounds when parents and teachers weren’t around.
You’d like to know what they’re putting in that structure, a black
and yellow striped stiff snake, extended from the very top of the brick
building down to the trenches, where you are squirming along, down on your
belly both like a soldier and an earthworm in the mud, minding not to be eaten
by the ants; but you don’t ask the foreign workers as you pass by,
and from a distance you can see one of them throwing in bits of debris
at the snake’s top while another nearby watches him; others below bend
the snake to their will, concatenating the discarded materials into mini mounds
of malformed dust and disfigurement that pile up in the dirt.
He continues his walk to the library only to find that it is also under construction–
they’re (who?) moving the books from the first floor to the others, bulldozing
centuries of knowledge into a tighter space than it all can fit, like that business suit
and pair of loafers that must (MUST) fit into his luggage after he’d forgotten
to pack them, after he’d forgotten that there would be that formal dinner where
he’d need to impress all those people with the enlightened image of a man, refined
yet versatile, an image that he can’t quite pull off without that damned suit, and yet
it just doesn’t want to fit.
Into The Fire
by Verse A. Phile
Thickest fat, progenitor
Leaves me sulking in the pan
On the plate, through the shirt,
While it moves inward, downward,
I move (drip, drip…drip) to the skirt.
Comrade meat made crisp complete
Crackles on the teeth, crumbs left
On sheets, fun left replete, shaky
Hands please meet crooked feet.
The wheels, springs, sprockets,
Hinges—the stubborn cricks and creaks,
The labored blips and squeaks, I slick
The surfaces I adorn, massaged into silence.
I ask, I seek, I need nothing in return
Minus heat that loosens me from home.
Cold congeals, rattles my bones, fried,
Consumed, discarded, smoothed over,
Given fame in a glaze.
Shat out in agony to prove
That all shall remember my name.
MC Poetry sez:
- #tpain4fsuprez YES WE CAN
Verse A. Phile sez:
- http://bit.ly/xBl82