Poems
by Richard LeDue

 

 

A Staring Contest With the Dark

 

As strawberry sundaes

dream of being pistols,

killing someone important

enough to make them famous,

I lie awake, telling myself lies,

like I'm winning a staring contest

with the dark, that my sweet-tooth

didn't die years ago, and the only bullets

I have don't match any of my guns,

leaving the night to write another poem

all over me.

 

 

 

 

 

Death for $50 a Jug

 

Maybe our deaths will be efficient

as a jug of insecticide

we didn't even bother to read the instructions for,

and as we twitch our final twitch,

we'll become one with the bugs

we hated enough to resort to amateur biological warfare,

while the salesman who recommended it

seemed nice and helpful enough

to make us forget it's the worms

we should be worried about.

 

 

 

 

 

Dying on My Feet

 

My epic thoughts about death have died,

replaced with worries about investments,

mortgage rates, inflation, and the price

of diapers, leaving me dying on my feet,

with my eyes boring as a door frame,

while I shake inside like an unseen earthquake

that causes a tsunami,

bringing the sort of destruction which feels

like vengeance, even though it's just

another part of nature.

 

 

 

 

 

Hoping For a Crash Landing

 

Maybe tomorrow will be a blank page,

while yesterday is a bunch of crossed out words

(adjectives trying too hard

to be nouns), and right now is this

poem, scribbled on dollar store paper

and dead as a pinned butterfly,

who probably never thought flight

could be impaled so precisely.

 

 

 

 

 

The whisky helps

 

ease the pain from another day

measured in money.

 

dull the church spires,

trying their damnedest to scratch an itch

many call “god.”

 

silence the dead,

who only ask to be remembered.

 

love speak up

at those times when loneliness shushes

our beating hearts.

 

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