Rectangle
Ms. Haiku
Washington DC Posts: 7,338
09 March 2025
The article in Parade magazine
tattooed my brain with no sleeve to hide it.
My future employer who laid me off.
Architecturally complex bookshelf
designs multiplied from unexpected
cash, added fatalities to the bust.
Be aware of employers with well-worn
employee reduction handbook pages.
They hit again, across the north border.
Seventeen hundred job fatalities.
A burden to a country, but the best
country to manage southern cruelty.
Use this online shop for emergencies.
A geography of all commits none.
The article in Parade magazine
tattooed my brain with no sleeve to hide it.
My future employer who laid me off.
Architecturally complex bookshelf
designs multiplied from unexpected
cash, added fatalities to the bust.
Be aware of employers with well-worn
employee reduction handbook pages.
They hit again, across the north border.
Seventeen hundred job fatalities.
A burden to a country, but the best
country to manage southern cruelty.
Use this online shop for emergencies.
A geography of all commits none.
There is no such thing as leftover pizza. There is now pizza and later pizza. - anonymous
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
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I trended with coffee. Conversations
of a Madison, Wisconsin cafe,
the third at our table. Forgetting day
of work blasting into midnight street song
insomnia. These Seattle journey
angels, who pointed to my nose, who pushed
opened doors after grinding beans, a smell
shaped dandy and vixen. Who smiled of Sound.
When I grind coffee beans, these angels' hands
slip into mine, plugging in the grinder,
pouring in the beans, enumerating
coffee mugs. White smoke ascending as steam.
The seconds of these fifteen minutes skip
hopscotch returns under doors through windows.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Militia Men wore open-toed shoes ripe
for taxation. The soles blended in type
of printing, bleeding ink of reign with rain.
They thought of themselves equal with men
they knew on a first-name-basis. They walked
with neighbors and augmented with strangers.
Who spoke of self-determination
were gifted more eggs. They sang steepled songs,
and prowled church Sunday to catch their next wives.
An epoch of failed businesses, poor trade,
no work (So American!), they dropped gloves,
and spoke with their hands. Their grandparents
met the family heretics and thieves.
Generational defense hard to calm.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
26 April 2025
2010, of forced vacations (unpaid),
hiring freezes, paycheck stagnation,
chaos wrapped around my wrists, unbreaths, parades
of blank dreams. Celebrating songs unsung.
Within this tornado of collective
misery, I crawled to accomplishment
with yarn in hand. Sock knitting holiday
lists unstamped by the financial crisis.
Within walking distance, a shop opened.
It knitted colleagues into friends, strangers
into Thursday night clubbers, store owners
as lighthouses gently unwinding skeins
of intuitive safety, revealing
symbiotic hues of the oceans' charts.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Anther fine poem! My wife and daughter will love this- they are big knitting fans. It fascinates me that knitting has a whole language of its own- things like skeins, cast on, bind off, tinking, and my favorite- frogging-- rip it! rip it!
18 May 2025
Jersey Girls are Born to Run, screaming blues
and kicking their legs. Tri-state area
kids long-jump with luggage to adulthood
in borrowed cars, packed shelves from IKEA.
Each two-way route, potholed with love and trash,
mirrors their brilliance and desperation.
Embellished stories sung proud above ash
blueprints and pen-marked tables, street visions.
Births and Deaths hold hands with Bruce's songs, loud
coats warming notched poles pointing north. The ground
lies flat, open petals bear gifts of three
beans and a pen, welcome from ennui.
Trump is a temporary government
employee, bad at math. Bruce is Boss.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
New York pizza without oil-rich toppings,
a venture of tomato and crust, long
culinary pride, Philly style, bright, tart,
peaked with oregano, focaccia art.
Growing up, Saturdays were pizza days
sauce with sautéed onions simmered for hours,
anchovies, peppers, mozzarella laid
on the punched-down dough of water, salt, flour.
Memories turn city pizzerias
into castles, gates closed, doctors' orders,
but the tomato pie, fat idea
for resigned hungers, a food pied piper.
If I were the size of a snail, I'd dive
into the sauce and backstroke the bounty.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
A poet's released gifts intersect straight
and mountainous lines where paper planes wait
for new maps to be bound. We names trees, trees,
grown seeds, future kindling, branched families
of living. We include homes, unfinished
work of bees, domain of books, a grief bridge.
Between our lines lives eternity we
never visit. We face you with a key,
newly smelt from past-life hymns. On first breath
grab it and tear yourself from to-do lists.
Cacophonous ink in tributaries
of paper is buoyed by anime
bubbles of thought balloons. Cryptographic
ink releases doves, defends white and black.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
We've met two times. The first draft of a poem,
to be ghosted like the handshake after
a song, or tossed plagiarized greetings good
for sidewalk signs, but best caught on airplanes.
After meeting two times, we recorded
our voices into arithmetic tape.
We didn’t switch ballpoint pens or watches,
but convexed our concentration towards
the same direction like good employees.
I welcomed you into my workday home,
pointing out the coffee pot and restrooms.
You remembered my name, looked comforted,
and I felt like a goodwill thief who dropped
the loot, but I'm not a recidivist.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Encyclopedias looped with red rope,
fashioned jewelry, repurposed ladders
of success, she inserts in her earring
holes, the gauge of sewing machines, she grows
in large print. She ice skates over billboards,
and boomerangs between newsstands. Her dress
of first pages held together by ripe
sanded sentences who beckon us, steam
visions wrung into seventeen chained words.
She's a movie or show god or goddess
waiting for the return call. Sword in hand,
and bouncy, a two-cup combo perfect
for a bobblehead. More than a pretty
hunger, laughing sharp in perfect grammar.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Even trees wilt. My favorite tree grows,
lives, or is wilting seven miles away,
blocks from the White House. Holding itself grand,
canopied sitting spaces, living up.
During lunch breaks, protected by summer
heat, I daydreamed shining stars of shopping
bags. Pay encouraged unrequited
parallel line life goals. Tree ambition.
As with trees, the tall in me starts to wilt.
The moving hole within those decades, living
paycheck to paycheck, was the dearth of naps.
Instead of simmering in anger, I
could have been filling with fifteen minutes
of power sleep. Rebooted clarity.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Three sidewalk sitters discussing guitars
blocks away from a radio station
of pop, pop country, new pop underground
through an outside speaker building bricks of sound.
Blocks away from the sitters and station
my quest and Google maps unwrap a blue
bar single-mindedness with a sidewalk
chalk sign. Only I can see it's dusty
message. An invitation to taste blends
classic and new, two exclamation points.
The message flows to me at walking pace,
black background like a 70s Elvis
painting. A Tennessee welcome can't stop
falling in love with burning love brewing.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Your first transatlantic trip from Europe
to the Midwest. A first child off schedule.
By the time we met at your uncle's house,
go-getter, tired, hungry, you could sit
upright without falling. Your mom, my twin,
stood to my right. You looked at her. You looked
at me, looked at her, scrunched your face, and screamed.
The other, you, an elder birthday trip,
stripes of yellow, not able to turn, yet,
but you showed appreciation and slept.
The world unwrapped in you, a better place
with you in it. As you were growing up,
we played softball in the snow. I dog watched
during your trips. My favorite word, Aunt.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
New Jersey created and highway bound
in cars bending to break. A wandering
poet, I am, following streeted sounds
of tires in summer afternoon rain.
On maps announcing sedated joy, loud
with laptops and Zoom. In cafes, drinking
chocolatey local roasts. Plans I'm planning
to knit and unravel when shoes hit the ground.
Times demand I lighten the step counting
and pull a pen from the pack. Join No Kings
protests and relearn Habeas Corpus.
Sometimes I transform into a Lazy
Boy lawyer. With Substack I follow real
ones to be Constitution conversant.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
This week grows slowly. Pushed like a bowling
ball bowled to the gutter, rolls in seconds,
no expansion, no inhaled constriction,
a bumpy, unfortunate, pace of life.
The value of a day incurs no tax.
Time could be sneezed and excused, or straightened
to one line of sound, a clarinetist's
improvisation in an empty house.
Today was a day of debt. Zoom meeting
after Zoom meeting, multiplying fees
of deadlines. Time jumped and tripped. If I could
frame the day's distractions, I'd walk away.
I'm two days past death's door, and two more days
until the slammed, thunderous weekend wave.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
When I have the space to offer a home
to a poverty dog, caught, caged, and named
in pencil, or fostered in homes, unclaimed,
I will walk the talk, so she is not alone.
Ginger is a mutt. Stately, Stripes breed
of fierce diva and outfielder. Barky
and joyful, a dog park favorite. Leashed
unhanded down empty streets. A cutie!
Ginger, spicy, unisland, holiday
hero, a wagging time-to-play alarm.
The rescue of rescuers, builder of arms
from ball throwing, becoming star one day.
I'll join the dog owner community
at six AM, bags in hand, pajamaed.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
When Dorothy wears the ruby slippers
the rest of her disappears. The fading
of her youth and curiosity. Things
undone like buttons and straps. Her dress tears.
Ruby slippers sparkle prosperity
for those who can't afford it. Dream denied
by slow capitulation, slowly died,
six feet under armies of starving trees.
Things are easier to hold, can be thrown.
The person noun, named and boxed, everyone's
target, a museum relic, fell on
hard times. Holds a bowl in bread lines downtown.
This is to say, a slippers photograph,
wondering where dying decades turn off.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird