please do not feel threatened by my poem.
my poem is not a mountain you will have to climb.
it is barely an ant hill.
but don’t step on it.
you know how that goes.
my poem is happy being home, singing little tunes to the striped curtains.
sipping fruit drinks through a straw. watching Mr. Rogers from the plaid sofa .
or hogging all the courdroy pillows simultaneously one in every color.
it doesn’t want to go anywhere, really.
it doesn’t want to be in a big magazine.
unless it has pictures.
it doesn’t even want a prize.
(unless crackerjacks come with).
or breakfast cereal.
perhaps something glistening.
at Christmas.
you’ll know what it likes.
even if
you’re just working temp jobs every day
tacked end-to-end
it won’t stare down its tinted glasses at you making-believe it’s better-
or ask if you have trouble with the files.
which makes you want to start singing that song about the abc’s…
to prove you’re qualified
(the one you learned at 3 from your Grandmother).
oh yuck!
It hates red pencils. Blue ones, too. proofreaders…
(be nice. I warn, or we won’t go Online.)
It most certainly will not, now or ever give you a
performance review (what an awful present, it confided, but
only to me, later at home, over spaghetti squash, batting its eyes
appealingly for more strawberry pie, please with cherries on top
that’s not a metaphor).
it’s not going to wonder why you don’t live in a nice apartment or a lofty context
but just outside, with no roof at all (if you happen to)
with no skill sets or anything-
just out there in the rain with no demeanor-
it says, a little sarcastically-in duck weather and the wrong shoes
mimicing experts who don’t know
rain is a poem, too. but can tell you how to spiff up for the Job Fairs.
why not be there to see when it happens…? (it’s still on about the rain…)
oh let’s not be famous together. (it’s still talking)
oh let’s not have a career at all (it’s giggling wildly).
let’s just be us.
would it be so terrible.
and now, it’s crying and needs to blow its nose…
let’s just look at the wind awhile. (say I to calm it down)
can you tell a fairytale? it said, snuffling.
can you make me pie?
never mind. (it’s embarrassed to ask)
slant rhyme is golden too it says uncertainly can you break its crust and
carve it up for me bite-size it’s
looking around a little unsteady
for something it left at home=
don’t worry.
though it does loves freckled bananas so,
it won’t eat your lunch
when you’re not looking;
the one you’ve
barely touched, that’s leaking
from the tomatoes on the sandwich
straight through that old brown paper sack and dripping on the copies
you’ve just made and the signed originals and the envelopes not yet sealed
(they never will be now, said my baby poem, elegaically)
while everyone else sailed out of the office to dine expensively
the way they always do on Fridays leaving you to munch
those stale Pringles in your left hand drawer in-between
the phone calls ringing all at once, a delivery person
at every fire exit and a heating system out of Little Igloo on the Prairie.
(it’s entirely sympathetic, believe me - also for the delivery persons
out there in the cold in short brown socks. don’t worry, I say; their poems will find them too.
it’s kind of like Santa Claus. showing up at the right time everywhere even in the slush
piled at the door.
Hey, want a cherry cough drop? (it thinks it’s a doctor, sometimes)
humor it. baby, take a bow I say and it complies
And, just like you,
it wants to breathe awhile, uncongested
in a beautiful story far from the working day.
Perhaps, in Space, light years before this office park was born?
it will sigh with happiness
whatever you tell it,
even if you don’t know its language.
it will never make you feel small and ask you
rudely are there any messages for me me me
are yousure, (suspiciously, as if you swallowed them) or tell you it
can’t read your writing at all and what is this supposed to be…
my darling poem said
raising its fluffy eyebrows, waving goodbye…
mary angela douglas 9-10 october 2012
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