great poems

The pilot comes on
Announcing we are going to circle for 20 minutes
Somewhere over Delaware
And then the monitors on the back of the seats
Lose their signal

It’s 4 days before the anniversary of 9/11
And I’m saying are you kidding me?

All I can think about is
I’ve already eaten my free bag of Terra Chips
And I should have asked for an extra serving of Pop Corners

So, there we are are, up in the heavens
Circling over Wilmington in a holding pattern
And I’m starting to think the worst

Why did they black out the monitors?
What if something happened on the ground at my airport?
Why wasn’t I greedy and asked for multiple snacks?
And why is the woman next to me, taking out all these plastic tubes?

It turns out she was pumping breast milk in the aisle seat
Discreetly as the day is long
Using our circling time for a better cause than worry
And probably not thinking about anything
other than feeding her new baby

Youth scores again
We old goats are hanging on
What we have is diminishing
But we sure as hell want to keep the dance party rolling

The pilot came on in 15 minutes
and said all was clear
He gunned it to LaGuardia
A few minutes over schedule
All quiet over the western front

I don’t need a reason
To tell you again
How much you excite me

In my idle moments
I’m seducing you
Even though I already have you
I love the chase
of taking you all over again
Into my chamber of pent up want

I live for that
Do you?

I flew down to see my Mom
On her 90th birthday
I didn’t tell her I was coming
The look on her face was priceless
when I walked through the door

What to bring other than me
was my dilemma
I wanted something more lasting
than a meaningless box of chocolates
Maybe a stuffed animal I thought
Though that was never something I would have
done before

The story reads better with the stuffed animal
But in the end I went traditional
with a nice box of candy
which we all enjoyed

My mom is not well
Struggling to hang on
We had the best visit we could
I’m hoping to keep coming back
to enjoy what time is left here

I think I made the right choice
on her present though
The gift of a son marking a moment
Later that day she said to me privately
“You really surprised me, you did good”

That was my gift on her birthday
A mother tried and true…

I used to think it was the best kept secret
How could my younger brother be so insensitive?
Almost everybody was beginning to forget.
Bicycle!
I wish there was no such a thing as that.

My cousin tried to teach me how to ride it,
Just after our late uncle’s funeral,
On a farm during the late eighties.
When I told him the story,
I wanted him to chuckle a bit.

Unfortunately,
My misery has become his swan song.
The nobodies call me by that name,
At least behind my back for now.
They are scared of me.

I wanted to be like other people,
You know,
I just watch men teach their kids how to ride.
I’ll never buy my son a cycle,
Not even a tricycle.

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