Let me take a moment and ignore you
Then together we’ll regroup and have a break.
If we’re talking, I can’t guarantee to
Keep on clearly counting sans mistake.
Lets allow conversations to lull
In an instance before we both delve
Into deeper conversations full
Of caffeine after I count to twelve.
Have I done Eight? ‘Cause if I’m off we
Must extend the lull a little longer.
I won’t belate for fear of weakened coffee
But I’ll scoop another scoop and make it stronger.
When digital cameras were still an idea in the womb
You could take a picture of someone and not show the room.
But that era is over, the etiquette’s made,
Right after your photos are taken, they must be played.
We’ll actively ignore my baby
Adorably smiling and kicking.
To see if you’ll stop and play me
The smiles you caught with your clicking.
I get it, but don’t understand
Why we’re leaving the physical version
So we can instead see the two inches spanned
In a digital image emersion.
I could stare at your face forever,
In the Eucharist my pleasure
See you looking back at me with love.
Your smile is upon me
This mystery can be
All that nothing I think of.
My mind is blank inside you
Though it wanders where it’s tried to
It always wanders back upon your gaze.
I’m sanctified in mystery
From complicated history
To undisputed love where Jesus Stays.
I meditate to taste of you, and feel you in my mind upon my tongue
Swallowing the grace of you, This spiritual place anew,
With songs I never knew the angels sung.
We’ll be having leftovers tonight.
Baked spaghetti is ready despite
All of my efforts pursuing
Something without a previewing.
I think I’d rather be thinner
Than eat more of this for dinner.
It had no problem going down
The second or third time around
But this fourth take tries my patience
In an apprehensive way.
How many variations
can we have before we say
that food’s no longer edible.
It’s time for an imaging game
“Leftovers” are no longer credible
So “Classics” could be the new name.
How much sweeter that would sound
“We’re having classics honey”
Than leftovers left around
To save a little money.
I know that I’ve just been had
By the vending machine so glad
To take my money and stand there
So next time I’ll know where
I can take my dollar and shove it
in a machine that already took my two cents.
Inconveniently I love it,
Spending money on convenience.
Still, I’m paying too much
for half a bag of chips
still hanging in the clutch
of its twisty metal grips.
I feed the box more presidents
To let the chips fall where they may
But now two bags of hesitance
Will fight another day.
Something in my youth had told me
I should desire a trimmed down look.
I bought into what they sold me,
But the magic beans just never took.
Now that I’m older and somehow more mature
My stealthy washboard stomach goes unseen
And its silent ninja prowess holds allure
To those who cannot find their own machine.
Like Clark Kent undetected wearing glasses
I’m a Ninja secret man of abs of steel.
A whispered voice inside me grumbles gases
Which complements my ninja abs’ appeal.
Thank God I’ve been spared from a chiseled physique,
Saved from a tightened six pack.
Rather than holding a fizzled mystique,
I’m prepared for a silent attack.
I wonder why we wander by
The People pulsing past us
Our visual aversions vie
for speech that has surpassed us
vocal chordless conversation
doesn’t lack communication
but relies on the invasion
of our vision’s simulation.
Sometimes it’s hard to think
that your a person pacing past me,
Not an extra on the brink
of a main role in my movie.
You’re someone that is capable of having a bad day
Someone facing obstacles your image can’t portray
But since our conversation lacks an audible relay
I only hear your image to see what you have to say.
Looking at the cracked plastic circle Illuminated
I wait for the large box to fall from the sky.
The logic in this circle perpetrated
With a finger’s second push I deny
That the button’s already been pushed
By the other individual waiting
To step inside and be wooshed
In the act of elevating.
I look at him and crack a smile,
then stare at the numbers descending
He’d been doing it for a while
And I find interest in pretending
I know which doors to step toward.
A ding breaks my trance to guide me
moving as a two-person horde,
A blockade with him beside me,
We move to the silvery doors.
Ready to courteously back away
If a crowd of people outpours
From the mystical box of today.
Horizontally retracting doors hold the notion,
Differing from some sliding glass doors that I’ve known,
With a stickless, StarTrek, inviting motion
We’re ushered inside to be shown
More of ourselves on reflective distorting surfaces.
The brushed metal imagery will help us keep quiet
Lest we find consorting purposes
To interrupt this silencing riot.
We both file in, him first and then me
He decides to go in and secure deep
I egg on conversation and choose to be
The button pusher and pick the first “beep.”
“Floor?” I say to which he responds nonverbally
By extending his hand and retracting it then
In a choice to avoid this hyperbole.
But I push the button again.
It’s a wonder to me
how it came to be
That the TP was replaced
Since my wife and I
Don’t always try
To restock the wiper of waste.
Must have been someone we know
Who put the roll upon our spindle
As a guest who really had to go
And replace our paper dwindle.
‘Cause often our roll sits perfectly still
To be picked up off of the window sill
Then slowly unwound in my hand
Before it’s placed on end, to stand
Wherever it is I can reach,
On the edge of the bath tub or sink.
This thought process I preach
Won’t stop when I do to think
“wow, it’s time to replace the roll”
‘Cause loading the spindle evades me
as I avoid the awkward stroll
with an extra roll that aides me.
I could go back to sleep, but this silence rests in my open eyes
Slouched and couched I dream of turning the coffee on, to my surprise
I already did that, but it’s two rooms away smelling strongest.
This duration of listening to white noise could be my longest.
I let coffee make slurps in the other room rather than get up
In my final moments of solitude I’ll slowly fill my cup.
Until isolation’s interrupted by a child’s crying
I’ll be sitting on the couch with my feet up calmly denying
that my solitude runs clockwise ’till kids get up and out of bed.
Somedays this spitup covered boppy should stay lodged under my head.
BonjourPoetry 