N. Double A. D. S.
One, if by land.
Two, if by sea.
Three, if by air, and,
Four, if by me…
Awkward. Let me spell it out for you. A.W.K.W.A.R.D. And don’t you let it fool you.
They don’t call me that for nothing, you know. Sometimes I’m just socially “off,”
And the harder I try, the worse it all gets.
One, if by land.
“Look, you can thank me later,” said the procrastinator looking for visualized validation.
Greencoat steps up to the poetry microphone.
Quote. “My entire misunderstanding has just been put into question; my entire existence
Altered and affected by digital communication.” Unquote.
Brain cancer is a serious subject that has been on everyone’s minds lately.
Two, if by sea.
“Paper or plastic?” The back-up cashier behind the register had a tightly
gripped good grasp on reality; that much I could tell.
Ringing up groceries while thinking outside of the box can go hand in glove.
“Paper or plastic” he asks me?
“I brought my own bag,” I said.
(You know the one.) It’s my National Association of Actors and Dancers Society
Conference 2009 tote that’s my bag. And everything always fits.
She’s a sturdy tote, with a zipper that zips, handles for hands, and all of those
memories attached from that conference in ’09.
I used to be an actor, and all that jazz, but I can’t act anymore.
I just needed to be myself.
I can’t take on someone else’s reality and besides, all of their fictitious
characters just keep making everything up!
Future’s past, is presence tense;
Grandma’s pentameter, making sense.
Easy on the eyes, easy on the mind, you see.
All eyes gaze upon the hotshot. Even me.
A lack of style. A lack of care.
Flying off land, three if by air.
I remember my first real memory, and this is NOT open to interpretation. I was
meandering around a patch of grass, the front lawn to my childhood home. It
was summertime, and July 4ish, 1976, to boot! I planted an American flag into
the ground. A small cloth flag on a wooden stick with a pointed tip. Into the
ground—it stuck! And it stayed. And it waved. And it waved. Red. White, and
blue. This was the only flag that I needed and knew. And it flew!
A car pulls up close to the edge of the lawn. A man veers his head out the window and says,
with complete certainty, that Dad had told him to come by and take
me to Dad’s work place and then I heard something about ice cream.
Downtown Harrisburg never seemed so close away! Look at this car! Front
seat! Dad’s work! Ice cream! And then, for truthful reasons I’ve never
understood, I believed there was an unnamed task to tend to at home, to help
out in one way or another. (Four, if by me.)