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Donal Mahoney

12/12/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
1. Holiday Party in San Bernardino

14 dead.
21 wounded.
Holiday party in San Bernardino.

Syed Farook and his wife 
in black tactical gear spray
75 bullets all over the hall.

Our president wants to know more.
He wants the FBI to tell him
the couple's motive.

Perhaps this explains why 
the Trumpeter Swan enjoys
a 20-point lead in the polls.
***
2.Two in the Soup


We’re twins.
We’ve been together
from the start.
You’re the doctor.
You know that.

She didn’t sound happy
when you told her
there were two. 
We’re worried
she doesn’t want us.

See you next week
when she comes back 
with her decision.
We’ll float till then.
Nothing else to do.

***
3.Remainder Bin

We write the stories 
of our lives between 

the bookends 
of birth and death

They stay on the shelf 
as long as we live

and then go in 
the remainder bin 

after we die.
No one buys them

and the paper’s recycled 
to print the stories 

of millions of people
yet to be born 

except for the stories 
that are never told.

They are the stories
Planned Parenthood sells.

***

4.Just for a Day


If you want to know
what it’s like to have nothing
just for a day

head for Skid Row.
Trade your suit and 20 bucks
for the attire of a resident

standing against a wall.
Buy a tin cup and yellow pencils
and go to Union Station in time

for the evening rush hour
when suburbanites with jobs
on Michigan Avenue go home

for dinner and a little HBO.
Flop down near the entrance 
in your tatters with pencils and cup.

Wear Charles Bronson sunglasses
and hold high a sign that says,
“Will Work for Food.”

Count the briefcases that sail by 
and see how many pencils you sell,
how many people even look at you 

before the gendarmes arrive
and poke you with a baton
then walk you away.

***
5.A Milkshake Brings Advice


I bring a milkshake every other week
to an old man in a nursing home,
a refugee from Germany who paid me  
50 cents to cut his grass when I was 
a kid in Chicago after WWII.

I couldn’t understand him then
and I can’t understand him now 
but 50 cents was big money 
in 1950, 10 candy bars,
10 popsicles or maybe 5 Cokes.
Or I could mix and match and trade 
Pete the Collector for a baseball card.

Now my old neighbor sits in bed
and swigs his milkshake as I tell him  
that I drove by his house the other day 
and the new owners have planted 
roses and lilies everywhere.
Every color imaginable.
A botanical garden in bloom.
He blinks at me, smiles
and takes a final swig. 

Because of the language problem
we never talk about anything
except the house he will never 
see again and then marvel that 
he will turn 100 soon, quite a feat.
He smiles at that as well.

But he doesn’t smile when I get up 
to leave and offers me advice 
in the thunder of his accent:
“Someone had better stop ISIS now.
When I was a kid in Berlin, no one
stopped Hitler the bastard then."


1 Comment
Mason C.
12/21/2015 05:24:01 pm

I really enjoyed reading this, the last one is my favourite *10000 thumbs up* Keep it up!

Reply



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