Haiku

Against a frigid gust,
pecking at nothing, the bird
with no eyes braces.

Just Like Mom Used to Make!

Remember those hand-sewn, wool breathing masks

you used to wear as a child?

A pair of those in your pocket

and you could run all day

up and down the countryside

without having to stop

and cough the smoggy phlegm out of your lungs.

Then at night, you'd just soak 'em in a bucket of boiling water

and you'd be good to go the next day!

Don't you miss those times?

Well miss 'em no more!

With Mrs. Hannigan's Easy Breather©

you don’t have to throw away

your cheap, paper surgical masks every day.

These masks’ll last as long as you do!

Dear Consistency,

I’m sorry I didn’t

write my poem-of-the-day yesterday,
and I’m sorry I won’t be writing one
today.

Building habits is hard,
and I know how you often get slighted
for your twin, Impulse.
But today, yesterday, perhaps
tomorrow, it isn’t about either of you.
It’s about life.
It’s about real jobs that need to get done,
real live people who will be affected
by the time I could have given to them
that I spent devoted to you;
head hard with overcrowding shadows
of commitments that went un-
followed through.

As much as I would like to make
daily prayer of pen to paper
a priority, Rome was not built
with similes; the Sistine Chapel
wasn’t sketched out with line
breaks; the person you care about
will never know the feeling of your lips
if you are too busy trying to find the words
to describe his.