Three Poems

Things to Worry About

Roosters wearing high-heeled shoes.
Born critics like Chicken Little,
malcontent to scratch the dirt,
who find structural weakness in sky.

 

Nursery rhymes, weather bureau web pages,
where do you get the news, how do you survive
when cotton candy clouds deceive us?
They weigh fifty elephants each.

 

We’ve always feared the sky.
Didn’t Zeus employ Atlas to shoulder
the weight, to keep his concubines
from being crushed flat?

 

As for his own needs, Atlas didn’t dare sneeze,
or drop his pants given a chance. Had the globe
been vandalized, he wouldn’t dare chase
the miscreants, chance disaster for humanity.

 

Is that what weighs so heavily on your mind
these days? The way clouds float
serenely, safely, but hailstones, airplanes,
lightning bolts, fall? Everything has the capacity

 

to fail, but don’t call your insurance adjuster
just yet. Enjoy your lemonade. Yes, life’s sweet
and sour, but clouds are made of water, so why not

smile and raise your rust-proof party umbrella?

The Bedroom

She entered and the hinge squealed,
brassy. She closed the door; it clicked
its tongue behind her. In groove,
we connected in ways that made me think
of wallpaper cupids, populous,
cheery in their common goal.
Domesticity would come later,
a kitchen decorated with roll-print eggplants
and sacks of flour. The glue didn’t last,
but eyes closed, stuck together,
it was too dark for us to see
the tacky cherubim peel away
like luck, like empty clothes

 

 

Getting to Yes

Your one across albatross
crosses my dream, won’t land
on my drifting raft of words.

 

You may as well be fourteen down
jumbotron. I break pencils trying
to solve this puzzle.

 

Words can’t help me to spell
my life correctly or understand
why your favorite word is maybe.

 

Without a clue, I search
dog training guides, MBA texts.
They talk about getting to yes.

 

Tomorrow I’ll pose the question,
the answer no not yet moored

to the terminus of your lips