Three Poems
by KJ Hannah Greenberg

 

Clouds of Bad Attitude Precede Rainbows

 

 

There’s a story told regarding safety and goodness;

A lady, sure a beast tracked her, fainted, repeatedly.

Revealed, her seemingly large, fierce monster was shadow.

Thereafter rousing herself, madam discovered a straggly kitten,

Picked it up, brought it home, shook from its “fact” of ferocity

(Made possible by alternating doubt with trickeries of light).

 

So it goes that clouds of bad attitude, when wandering hewn

Corridors, cull musings of behemoths’ tethers, hand-in-hand

With improbabilities like dogs finding food unfit for holidays.

Across highways, in quiet communities, some ill-prepared

Persons couple events with tribulations, populate worries.

Remain unable to pass through flashes employing any happiness.

 

Another gal fell impaired when her spouse died along with love.

Their apartment’s featured leniencies assigned to recondite

Others, who never questioned moving past theory to practice.

Her neighbor’s crucial performance, it followed, prepared her

For no tests, just patterned unemployment, recherché acts,

Sorry for distant mother, sister, secretary, students, and dean.

 

Consider, it’s relatively easy to face our shades; structural

Characterizations continue on fairly vindicated, manifesting,

Even articulating like unkempt posies, before dawn (not impervious

To “changes in the weather”), possessing hope’s finicky measure.

Every night, such dwell for the benefit of déclassé dumpster cats,

Willing young soldiers, children, and finely tuned Turkman princes.

 

Self-amortizing might mean: writing newspaper accounts, documenting

Discrepancies between normal life and impeded self-improvement,

Grasping why local emperors, plus teens missing logic’s garments,

Ought to give up internal electronics, build campground, not volcanic fires,

Bridge events such as Jaycee dinners (in the USA, Canada, and Wales),

Also, experience gratitude for things. Sunshine’s no great sin, though.

 

‘cause creating memories, undergirding social causes, furthermore, forever,

Aids the measuring of challenges, self-generated, external, plus otherwise,

Until we face observations to the contrary that old auntie might suddenly

Be equated with criminals for reasons of drawing closer to cosmic spin;

Intervening with love’s doctoring’s not the stuff for fixing wounds with words.

Healing just gives newness sufficient merit to comfort, sooth, salve, maybe fix.

 

 

Horns and drivers aside, our lack of dedicated systems for addressing goings on,

Together with social “sound systems,” could operate if we only maintained them.

Our energetic responds to sensations of hurt, upset, injury, flirted with success.

Perhaps, it’s not too late to gather regional moments in human history; perhaps,

By giving shelter to others’ bleak, meek, personal emblems, we’ll recover a tad.

Alternatively, we’ll have to get by with the aftermath of our storms.

 

 

 

 

 

When Adopting Great Dangers

 

 

When adopting great dangers, from the moment media crews feel surprised,

Ostensibly for purposes of health, to events incurred when horse whisperer

Viscera, like pipas, get sacrificed for bugles, the costs of scrub up teams,

Court fees, emotional damages, burgeon. Western sensibilities, forfeit local

Heritage, money, fame. Seats next to lookers, remain cheerfully optimistic jokes.

 

The usual, passive (to the point of stupor) rudiments, at one level,

Make delightful slapstick like culled from cheese spread, horse manure,

A lifetime’s worth of lost academic salary, windfall meant for paupers.

Potpourri cats’ sensibilities notwithstanding, truckloads of loyalists

Tend to reliant on yerba santa for all matters of respiratory conditions.

 

Also true that balancing new sons-in-law, science degrees, thespians,

Technical staff, movers, maybe turns in the local soup kitchen, taxes, plus

Scattered tongue-in-cheek references, countermands serious explorations.

Flute lessons for six, bowling lanes admission coupons, chaya quiche, too,

Ain’t cheap, were never meant to grouch, sing, cry, extol expiration dates.

 

It remains confounding that returning when to crime scenes, cleaners

Track emotional, psychological and symbolic mud. None value riches

Beyond litigious ends. One thousand bright orange goldfish, groats,

Taciturn definitions for self, relationships, social status, life goals smirk;

Monstrous cultivars, i.e. amphora tall enough for snuggling won’t fit.

 

Thereafter, missing portions of money, designated for developing missiles,

Highway meridians’ beneficial weeds, strange stories, anatomically correct

East Village marzipan, gets sorted by Catalina Islands’ ferry captains,

Waxed mustache, weepy kinds, additionally, glass-eyed oncologists, gift

“In kind” to zombies trussed in afterglow thoughts, pinchers, snails.

 

Travel, real estate, sundry other purchases, serve best gently heated

Over empirical sensibilities or collective law suits. Kissy girls shrill.

Moral lessons, covered in thick layers of family-oriented romps,

Man-eating pythons, love, loss, and the illicit use of select ceramics

Keep rocking peanut butter and jelly sushi, Furry conventions, bequeaths.

 

A million dollars, blended by a simple barkeep, accompanying a penthouse,

Retired researchers from MIT, rodents, reptiles, satchel painters, remains chaste.

Beatniks, careening cab drivers, former executives’ strange incidents,

Purple buds, amidst building conflicts, deliver in individual bowls.

What's truly important sucks down sponsors, deludes Junior Leaguers.

 

 

 

 

 

Least He Foment

 

 

When carting related effects, the gal 

Released her pursuit of a colleague’s

Regards, those opines of a bloke who

Lost his gorge before posting the act

Through many channels, dedicating

Vessels to maundering guests’ views.

 

Not compelled to eliminate odd mules,

To ease the burden of saddle tramps, to

Sing aloud human prerogative, defend

Loved ones from abrasive brushwood,

To posit ethnicity-specific ideograms,

He, anyway, applied vegetable knives.

 

Tubes like black sluices, forerunners to

Present packaging dimensions, possibly

Accommodated terrorists afore ceasing

To discard expensive therapists, airline

Pilots, milkmen, international imprints,

Pigeons exposed to existent injunction.

 

Old trumpet folksongs spluttering torpor,

Gathered senseless, faraway folks plus

Boosted lots of commensal relationships

Mollifying him, least he foment, ruining

His dimple-studded face, suspending his

Photogenic ways, ending chameleoning.

 

Rather than evert peculiar sensibilities,

Those troubling to handle, cholestasis-

Like discomforts, the girl urged jaunts

Thru the Taiga. Unease, though, grew,

Analogous to drive-up intersequels, of

Sizzling corpus zones, of stalling out.

 

Failing creating vellum/crystal objects,

Precious to space starships’ sponsors,

Made wizards crochet purple hippos,

Divas shave heads, herdsmen tether

Uncountable cattle to stolen rice pots.

We can’t trust in yesterday’s meatballs.

 

Rate this poetry.

Copyright is reserved by the author. Please do not reproduce any part of this article without consent.