Thursday, March 19, 2009

13 Black Cats Crossing Under Your Ladder

13 Black Cats Crossing Under Your Ladder

People are always reading
Meaning
into every little
crease
like the wisdom of
fear-filled
superstition
must be heeded,
obeyed,
deferred to,
“just because.”
Like when you see
a banana peel
lying in the road
and you know that
you must,
you must,
you must write
a poem
about clowns
& monkeys
driving amok
through town
until that
errant banana peel
takes
them
down

unless, of course…

it’s a day like today
where that lack of banana peel
is an enigmatic
void filled
with a claxon’s call
a four-car funeral procession
& a jury of buzzards
in a Kodak moment
sitting on fenceposts
hoping,
hoping, hoping
one of those nearby cows succumbs
to the humidity.
Yet,
instead of attaching
to ominous portents
I
prefer to talk about
clowns and monkeys
& surly
banana peels
that just might be laying
threateningly
across your
path today…
or not.
Because life’s
just a salad
bar of ideas and
you can either load
up on garbanzo beans
(unless, of course, you
happen to call
them
chickpeas)
or
you can walk on by
and
believe
in something
else.


-Dag