When Your Kid Doesn’t Get It

I spent way too long writing poetry yesterday

Boy you should have seen the way I was doing it!

Hanging upside-down from the ceiling like a bat

Writing in purple ink on a yellow memo-pad

Sending the pages sailing down to the carpet

Thousands of them!

My son came home from school, waded in, and got paper cuts all over his legs

"Mommy," he whined, "why do you always have to hang like a bat!"

My Final Act

I was so tired when I got home

I just plopped down on the couch and melted

‘You’re gonna need a Wet-Vac to clean my remains!’ I texted my roommate

He came home with an anteater instead

"I can’t clean you as goo!" he said. "Turn into ants!"

Not one to be antagonistic

I turned into ants.

Closed Sesame

My dentist used to say Open Sesame

Then dig at my gums

I’d say Closed Sesame

And clamp my mouth shut

He’d say Open Sesame

And dig at my gums again

It went on like that for hours

I had astronomical bills.

None Will Hop As High As I Have

Today I hopped the highest

Hopped right out of the atmosphere

Hopped until the earth was pea-sized

A paint-dot under my shoe

Go on, earth, you bloated bauble

Go on and send your most ambitious grasshoppers

Your juiced-up athletes on pogo sticks

Your champion Mexican jumping beans

Your widows who see their dead husbands beckon invitingly from among the stars

None will hop as high as I have

None will leap to this apex

Nor suffocate so willingly in space

None will…

Oh, shit.

Hello steroid pogo dude

Didn’t think you’d make it all the way up here

Congratulations

Guess we can hold hands on the way back down.