faster food

she pops
popcorn chicken
oblivious to the plop
flopping over
her belt.
he molests chicken
fingers with no regard
to his
love
handles.
who cares, anyway?
they might wonder, though
they don’t, because nine
of 11 of their fellow
Americans,
at
the
very least, are
similarly slovenly
and
ok, portly, to put it
thinly.
fat, fatter,
fattest.
But careful, always, to wash
it
down with
Diet
Coke.

richard windimere

It’s time, said the voice whis’pring inside his head.
It’s time for the pain to subside.
It’s time to be free from the dark and the blue,
“It’s time,” Richard Windimere cried.

He’d loaded the gun, checked it once, checked it twice,
Every day for a weekend or two.
Paid his bills, fed the cat, wrote the note, swept the floor
All was left was that for him to do.

The bloggers, on morrow, will guess and surmise
What’d caused an old man so to be
A killer, a mur’drer, to slay such a crowd,
The total: thirteen, and then he.

The letter behind was reviewed sixty times
Even though it quite plainly said:
“All I wanted from life was for someone to say,
“I mattered more ‘live than when dead.”

The families of victims will damn Windimere
For the sorrow and pain he has wrought.
They will weep for the loss, for the still, for the dead,
For the peace the old man finally bought.

casualties

She wanders the days in her mind that they walked,
Sees clearly what could be her life.
But that was before she’d waited so long,
‘fore she weld a thin pen to a knife.

Weeping hot tears, now she traces the loops
Of the letters, the words she must send
To change two young lives, to break two young hearts,
The other choice ‘tis but pretend.

She’ll mail off the letter tomorrow come noon.
He’ll get it eight days and two hence.
He’ll read it six times and then three times more,
Then retake his post at the fence.

He’ll finish his tour and up for two more
She’ll wed the boy met in between.
And their disp’rate lives will play out apart,
But for war how it all might have been.

a moment

A moment,
he awaits, that might
bring some clarity
or at least a clarification
about what’s not
clear.
The way it happens
in movies
would be nice.
Gadzooks!
Eureka!
I get it!
But everything remains
mushy, murky, muddled,
mopey.
He looks in others’ eyes,
trying to see what they might
be seeing.
Do they see it?
Are they seeing it?
And, if they are, why isn’t he?
So, he hopes.
And, for a string of
moments, he awaits that epiphany,
that something,
that
some time,
that might
bring at least a hint
about what’s
not
clear.
And really:
is that
so
much to ask?

floyd

Floyd was something else, too. Where Sid kept his hair cropped short, Floyd was into the process. Brother, he was something else. Sweet-talking. Debonair. Slick. Always showed up with a pair of hard-looking blondes. And sometimes one or both was almost scary looking. I got to know Floyd better than I knew Sid. I would become closest with Andy. Floyd was a high school dropout. Actually, he was a high school “kicked out.” I asked him why, once. He told me.

“I got angry and pulled a knife on a boy at school. It was lunch and he was messing with my food. And where I come from there’s two things you don’t mess with – someone’s name and someone’s food.”

Floyd disappeared, too, when the band broke up. Andy kept in touch with him for a time. Floyd was a tough one, though. No set phone. No stable address. Last we heard, through Andy, he was in jail, somewhere. Got in a fight. Stabbed someone. Andy says it was over food. I believed that. Had no reason not to. I don’t know, now, where Floyd is. Ralph and I tried, for a time, to locate him. Then, we gave up.

gripping

I am coming to grips
with
solitude, in
this
way, at
least:
I expect to spend
the
rest
of my days alone.
Not without
friends, I hope; not
without family,
I hope;
not without
a
dog or even a
cat,
perchance.
Just alone.
It seems easier, that way,
to face up
to it
and
with it.

man-o-nimity

He walks through
the local park
with
a ferret
on
a
leash.
The ferret’s
name is
Lilly. No one
asks
his.