Tag: poetry

soundbites and clickbait,

the real fake news streaming live,

5G coming soon!

the band falls silent

and confetti turns to pulp

upon rain-soaked streets

those salad days fade –

memories of memories

just shadows and ghosts

The tax deadline is fast approaching, and I find myself wishing my record keeping was a bit more systematic. I basically have a shoe box packed full of documents and receipts, and now I have to make sense of it all.

I also wish I had kept better records of my literary submissions throughout the years. Many of the publications that accepted my work were little independent presses that are now defunct. I’ve either lost or given away most of the contributor copies, and I never used to keep duplicates or even bother to back up my hard drive.

I suppose my early stuff is essentially lost, but I like to think at least one poem has survived. Perhaps it’s in somebody’s basement in Skokie, Illinois, sandwiched between stacks of old National Geographic and Sports Illustrated magazines. Maybe someone will even happen upon it one day during a spirited spring cleaning frenzy. Maybe it will even be read one more time before it finally ends up at a recycling facility where it will be reduced to a pulpy cellulose in a chemical vat and repurposed for something else. Anyway, here’s a haiku about it.

those early poems

languish on brittle pages

of dead magazines