Another list

Ha ha ha       and HA!
That's my response. 

Indignation 
and a sarcastic laugh! 

Come! Lets write a poem 
the New Yorker might run. 

Something indistinct. 
A string of 
non sequitors 
and blurry
            contrivances
stilted 
                and      
        
          exhausting 

and opaque.

Just 
another 
list 
of 
words--
musket                 balls
carbolic       soap
and a     good 
old               Wych 
elm. 

Jeez. 

No narrative EVER kicks in. 

And another thing:
Blah blah blah. 

Really, blank stares.
That's is what these poems do
arouse in me.  

Am I to blame? 

n o. N   O.

I'm just the 
reflecting pool. 
#

The leap

I am not in the photo with the kids 

on that colossal rock we call a dinosaur egg,

in that flat grassy infinity behind our house. 

Yet the photo is still in me 

even though not much happens on that egg 

while we wait for my father

to come back from Korea. 

Only endless summer picnics 

of red Kool-aid and boloney sandwiches. 

The State Fair blows to kingdom come out there 

and my idea of a great time is born.

My brother calls every man he sees daddy

and then one day a stranger stands in our door.

Slips off the brown Army garrison cap, scans 

four kids sitting on the sofa for inspection.

I hope you've been behaving yourselves, 

that's all the stranger says before he holds 

out his arms to his wife, rests uncertain lips 

on her more uncertain ones. 

My mother is the only person in the room

who recognizes his face.

But not even she knows yet 
the leap from the window has begun.