Poems
by KJ Hannah
Greenberg
No One Sighs
Whether preoccupied with syncope or lacerated by kris blades,
There’s no reason for governing oneself per popularity; we die alone.
On deathbeds, no one ever sighed on unaccrued money or notoriety.
More readily, people wished they’d made better choices, shared love.
After all, it’s no fluke that many folks haunted by aphantasia longed
For “sober,” “chaste,” “sensible,” “prudent,” as well as “wise” resolves.
Whenever wastrels cease breathing, their complicity in all manner of
Affairs lowers their status; their lives stay anathema to gravesite visitors.
Dark others’ disrepute becomes the law for their neglected resting places.
Equally, “merely” lambent mortals get heralded as “champions” or “victors.”
Excessive flattery often lines inviligators’ pockets, self-esteem, overall essence.
See, they redeem our compliments for inflated importance.
Pitifully, some folks need such artificial standing.
If we dawt, i.e., make pets of supervising persons, likely they’ll utter no protest,
No remonstration that we minions ought never to have attempted
Elevating them, our overseers.
Higher-ups, after all, negotiate power through intimidation, extortion, timeworn
Forms of bullying. If they’re competent in terrorizing we underlings,
Their realm’s “balanced.”
Gaud
Showy, purely ornamental folks, like handfuls of plumpy stone fruit,
Fail as locums for chocolate, date nights, cashmere sweaters. They’d
Rather embrace mingin acts such that vomit, not asterisms, prescribe
Ways in which they ought to throw back accounts of deeds otherwise
Forgotten.
Contrariwise, less flashy friends tend to buy cat climbing gyms besides
Purchasing scratching posts for misled partners. They cede before boys
Or girls can wrestle away all manner of trust, else tumble to heartbreak
“Speaking feline” never ever fixed hearts wrecked by entitled lovers or
Assuaged them.
