Hour 11
Gone are the good times,
One dollar could get four snacks,
Today… barely stretch.
Chortle
It starts as a smile
Progresses to a full face explosion
Running jumping and chasing.
Then the slip.
Was that a snort?
My eyes crinkle up
The corners of my mouth tickle.
Burn.
It is a full blown fire in my chest.
Oh god.
It’s going to burst.
It rolling rumbling past my larnyx.
Don’t snort.
Ugh. Don’t snort!
Water is streaming
Black streaks down my face
Monuments to my mascara mistake.
Snort.
My face hurts.
I try to pull oxygen past my closed off breathing tube.
Is this how I die?
Snort.
“What’s so funny?”
Huh.
Wait a second.
I can’t remember.
Well isn’t that just hysterical?
Snort.
Hour Eleven A Sunday Evening in 1970 Mary Pecaut
Hour Eleven – A Sunday Evening in 1970 Mary Pecaut
We lay on the gold shag carpet
in our living room like a jigsaw
puzzle. Mother lies on her back
next to the piano. Sister rests her head
on mother’s belly. And I, in turn, pillow
my head upon my
sister’s tummy. Brother follows suit, plopping
his head upon my stomach.
It doesn’t take much.
Mother starts it all –
ha.
ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Father and Son–Hour 11
Buster Keaton lay weighed down on the cow catcher
of the General with a railroad tie in his lap
With no engineer in place
the train chugged forward toward a tie lying atop the track
sure to cause derailment
Our hero! Our hero!
his arms full
chucked the tie precisely
flipping the loose tie off to the side
My dad burst forth with a guffaw I can hear to this day
There Are Times (Hour 11)
There are Times
There are times when my side aches
as my ribs go in and out in reaction
to what someone has said. My smile bursts
with concavity and I show plenty of teeth.
Other times I react to what someone says that
is so outlandish that my face looks the same
but with a touch of irony in my eyes and only
the normal in and out of breathes to mark my sides.
In both cases my eyes may fill with tears.
I feel good in the first case and pain in the other.
How can such opposites have such similar reactions?
Maybe there are just so many reactions and we have to dole them out.
When we’re out of anything new, recycle the old.
How I feel depends if I’m happy or sad, elated or mad.
So maybe we should stop this nonsense and just be stoic.
2022 #11 – Her Laughter
The sound from
you I love.
Every time I hear
it, my heart smiles.
It will never
grow old.
The first thing
I fell in love with.
I will do anything
to hear that sound.
Hour 11 – Growth – Image Prompt
Growth
Twisted, gnarled branches
Entwined in growth’s embrace
Supporting one another
In their small shared space
Like these trees are people
Supporting independence
When we’re little children
We need a mentor’s guidance
And when we learn a skill
We don’t learn alone
We help each other daily
Even when we’re blown
Over by the storms
We weather every day
It’s support which helps
Grow in any way.
So don’t say it’s only you
Even if it may feel bleak
While together we are many
Alone we become weak.
There’s always someone out there
You can lend a hand
Don’t toss aside support
When you can make a friend
Hour 11: Laughter
Sporadic chattering, the twisted breasts of a tree, like an aging woman turning to look behind her, arms outstretched above her head.
Is she stepping out of the shower? Why is the bark so smooth? Shining like wet skin.
A talking smile speaks with rolling bursts of sound, his head falls back and his shoulders shake, the table at his stomach trembles, bent knees jerk apart unseen beneath the table, the inside of his thighs are hairy, like uncooked ham that has fallen on a dirty floor.
Look, Poetry is Hard – Half Marathon Poem #11
Look, Poetry is Hard
Sometimes, you need to take a mulligan.
Face it, not everything is going to be golden.
This one definitely isn’t.