2 by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue


The Blue Guitarist

 
He's a singer without a song.
Last night his notes
just packed up and flew
under the metal door.
                                            
But he caught one, a clef note --
held on to its crooked pig-like tail,
and one of its trembling curves
for the longest.

But after awhile
it too slipped out of his butterfingers
to shoot into the great beyond.

Words, too, have left him.
No longer are they the protoplasmic,
malleable, life-giving stuff
of once upon a time.

Now they stand,
though sometimes recline,
bored, mute sculptures,
stuffed anachronisms
of an era dying,
perhaps, already dead.

                                               

 
                ~ ~ ~



It is What it is


I've worn down an even half dozen of carpets
to threadbare, church mouse thickness,
proctoring, urging, mentoring, cajoling
my charges,
largely in underfunded schools
where students who work at all-night
fast food dives,
then hopped up on Red Bull's buzz
sleepwalk through the day
but always – even if they're mathematically challenged --
profoundly aware
of the uneven odds
life, that bastard, has dealt them.

 

Fact: Nobody picks their parents.
If they did, we'd all pick super models and movie stars,
pro athletes, the mega rich,
not our real parents,
that short, fat, ignorant couple over yonder
just sitting there totally void of any fashion sense,
just regular folk
with no money,
and even fewer possibilities.