Glass Front

Seen in a series of reflective rectangles

Seven days a week:

A portion of the El, dirty peach

Single sidewalk crack, stepped on

Reversed decals: &SKOOB

                                  SDROCER

Remnant parking meters (2)

Asphalt, painted line

Cars, trucks (too numerous)

You

(head down, hands in pockets)

Slowing

(blinking, looking in)

Adjusting backpack

(frowning)

Reaching for the door

(hesitating)

Shaking head

(leaving the rectangle)

If I can bring myself to watch,

How can you not bring yourself to enter?

Secret Prayer

Dear All Things--

Please keep me safe

In the lockbox of my skull,

And money flowing

In my direction.

Please keep fur soft,

And chocolate delicious,

Also, please vouchsafe

My scribbles

To the ages,

Via unexpected critical

Re-evaluation.

Please be there.

Please.

And lastly, All Things,

Let no one hear this prayer--

But All Things.

And for fear of

Intellectual condescension,

Please quell

Any obvious tells

I may have acquired

That would betray

Me to the World

Because,

The best type of Religion

Should be

Must be

Secret Religion.

The Lidded Box

In the dusty, dim attic of my childhood home

Twixt the dressmaker's dummy and the sad garden gnome

Lies a large lidded box with hinges of brass

A doorway to Faerie, a friend from my past

For in that dear box, on those warm afternoons

I would play as a boy between cedar roughhewn

And concoct all manner of adventures therein

Adventures fantastic--as to make your head spin

That box became a carriage, which transported the king

To a palace of jadeite wherein mermaids would sing

Eerie hymns to the cryptic gods of the deep

The ones with long tentacles and rows of sharp teeth

That box became a cavern, as silent as the tomb

And in it slept a firedrake, which carried in its womb

An egg, that once quickened would bear such a beast

A monster made of flames that viewed humans as feast

But that was long ago, I'm now a father and wed

I now manicure a lawn and put my son to bed

There's no adventure for me as I hear my boy shout

"I hate you daddy, I hate you without a doubt!"

I won't bore you with details of how this situation arose

It suffices that to spite his face a man will cut off his nose

And a child unwanted grows bitter over time

Much like the specter of a rich man who dies in his prime

My wife has passed as well, an accident--or fate

Having bled out when a streetcar knocked her insensate

And so I alone am left to deal with this keening monster child

This me I never wanted, this document misfiled

I had forgotten my box, until one day, at the end of my rope

I said, "Use your imagination!" and my son replied "Nope!"

"Then let's us have an adventure!" I said to his sour face

"There's treasure to be found, and I know just the place!"

So off we went to seek out my (now abandoned) childhood home

And swiftly we found my box near the (now broken) garden gnome

"Looks like nothing," my brutish son, he said with a sneer,

"Why get inside," I beamed, "And then all will become clear!"

My son climbed inside the box and said, "Now what do I do?"

"Close your eyes," I whispered. "And then you will see it too."

And while his eyes were closed, I pounced from where I sat

Slamming shut my lidded box with a truly satisfying splat

The cries from inside the box soon became distant and faint

And I nailed the lid closed with the conscience of a saint,

I imagined my boy and the firedrake as the best of happy friends

And him in the king's carriage with all the honors that portends

As I exited that haunted house I whistled a jaunty tune

Wind moaned in accompaniment as clouds scudded past the moon

Yes, a lidded box is just a box, and you can fill it up with stuff

But it can also become a coffin--if you just wish hard enough.