The Poetry Of..
Kenneth P. Gurney...........................
Guilty
Sometimes, a toothache
arrives in your toes
like some shard of glass
you kicked, forgetting
your wear sandals.
Really, you are as helpless
as Kansas during tornado season,
but how can you hope to avoid
the chocolate storm
as you pass store front after store front
on your calorie burning power walk.
Some soldier returns from Iraq,
tells you how he feels nothing
when he squeezes off a round
and watches someone drop.
It's the same way for you
when applied to Hershey Bars.
Not yet, can anyone call you Fatso,
but, really, it is only a few days off
and then your health insurance company
will drop you like a cancer survivor.
None of your overtime helps pay
for the dentist as you wait and wait
for the most opportune moment
to arrive in the chair
and the execution of sentence.
Limiting Infinity
A land without telephones
waits for a call to arms.
The dark in the palm of your hands
waits for you to undo your fist.
All the scarlet ghosts
vacation in the sanctuary of your sleep.
No more coins reside in pockets
as you approach the wishing well.
Oblivious to the haunts of spectres
you smoke, drink milk, play banjo.
You blurt tragic things, hold back
a heart beat, steal your last kiss.
No one hears the hammer nailing
the broadside to the public house door.
A finch fills the void where once
a heart fluttered, a genealogy ends.
Blindfolded Voyeurs
The fiasco begins when all the dancers' feet
are bolted to the floor by some capricious spirit.
Security cameras catch nothing but a small blip
of a flashbulb scraping rust from its fingernails.
A hot-button zealot pours ice water over every issue.
A mind-reader has her third eye poked out.
All the colorful tarot cards jettison cyan, yellow, magenta.
No one thinks to take a carbon-14 reading.
Normally, I believe foul play resides in cracker boxes
stored in the cupboard above the refrigerator,
but not tonight, as the cockroaches swarm the hardtack
only to choke on the grains of salt and sacrifice thousands.
Really, darling, is the last thing I hear Sharon say,
as her cigarette shouts, Sic semper tyrannis!
and thrusts the killing blow through the lungs,
into the heart, to garner some audacious headlines.
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