20 December 2013

Three Existential Poems

Airport

The faces parade past,
Others of my species,
Each unique,
Never to be seen again.
And so it is with those who have lingered
For months or years at a stretch.
And then my true love, soul mate
Will disappear in the procession
Until finally, or perhaps penultimately,
I too leave behind the carriage that bore me
When my face was passed in the airport 

Cellar

Dad, are you still down here?
Musty, dark, slow death through rust or rot
48 little plastic drawers labeled with impeccable capital letters
I open "COINS"
Overseas pocket change.
“Dad, I have coins like this too!
Shall I put them in?”
How you delight at this 7-year-old's question
One of many.
Paper shopping bags loaded with the contents of your file cabinets
How long can paper lay in this tomb
'Ere it rot?
Pieces of nautical projects
Remember when you first cut the fresh styrofoam blocks
Leaving scraps a-plenty for us to fashion with hacksaw
Into intricate battleships?
Each gun barrel a finishing nail
Another makes for a functional turret. . .

Mozart Buys Time

How could I have gone all these years without hearing the K 593 string quintet?
Had I been on my death bed and this omission were made known,
A tacet agreement between organs would hastily have been signed
To keep the body alert and functioning until this gourmet dish
Had been digested
At least as well as its brothers Ks 406, 515 and 516.