readingthedark

For reasons that are unclear, I hate posting poetry here. This is an email I just sent...

Quickie for Jonathan


I can rock a mic like I am popping a wheelie
and I know that your cousin is selling lovely handbags.

The world has surprises in store, even if it hangs in a vegetative state
because we are not pod people.

This is our message for the universe: we are not always twerps,
even if we are bullied or degraded far more frequently than we deserve.

Yes, having a placenta can be lovely I guess...
breathing means that we shared one at some point.

Is it like making reservations to an expensive restaurant even though you might cancel at the last minute?
Or is it counting your cash under the table and deciding if you're going to dine and ditch?

Zero Population Growth might cut down on the number of snack chips that our world consumes
and Oscar Wilde is more popular than ever, it's just that no one remembers his name.

I miss you and am glad that you are in love and living in Greece.
Is the toxic exposure killing thousands there?
Please write back quickly so I'll know that you're not dead.

Geoffrey

Tangled Web of Ideas


Years from now,

all the jottings and scribbles
that we crank out with tired fingers,

will be boxed-up, archived and put away,
rubber-banded, stapled and in manuscript boxes,

but that doesn't trouble me one bit,
not at all - even out of print,

I will have amassed my printed pages.

My sadness comes from the death the works endure
outside of my cabinets and trunks,

the small presses I lure into my lands
will bless them into existence finitely,

and paperbacks are stripped
and hardcovers are remaindered;

cheaper to hock or destroy than keep in warehouses,
and it's tragic, the malignancy of the industry
that lets stories live and die

as authors push parameters
and claw at the boundaries

for advances on margins,
selling books before they're done,
merely because we cannot eat the words we write.

Geoffrey H. Goodwin