Rock Bottom Prices

January 19

ROCK BOTTOM PRICES

Marble topped dressers, dry sinks and wardrobes, standing in the auctioneer’s warehouse, show loving use and obvious value. The hungry consumers peruse the merchandise looking for the perfect piece to fit their need. Old men eating ice cream sandwiches pick their way through the rows of tidbits laid out on the lawn, bargains to fill in odd spaces and little desires. So like our meeting places, where people try to refurnish their lives. The cost to arrive may have been high, but ones in the market is more than fair. We reclaim relics and we use them as road signs and warnings. There is always someone around to carry large truths home and no one has to go away empty handed. We bid on our own survival by buying someone else a break. Time passes easily, as the one at the podium recounts the rock bottom prices.

Curl up inside the nautilus of your mind and take a nap.

*

Tea or Sympathy

Tears pouring into the teacup

growing cold on the table

create a sea of emotions uncharted.

If I cannot offer sympathy to the contents,

the soulless heel that I am,

how then do I expect to have a future?

If I will tender only meager tolerance

toward the spindled thing

valiantly trying to beat within me

why do I even show my face to the mirror?

If shoulders are cold and turned inward

then I will collapse into the inexpressive,

dismal thing that has been misshapen

through misuse.

I might as well drink the chilly tea

for that is all the comfort I will get.

I must do better by myself

in order to brew a better world.