bent Hallmark card (for BJ Donovan)
”I'm a bent Hallmark card with no stamp. It won't reach my love”
BJ Donovan (HP gone, Gray Dotted, r.i.p.)
at the drug store, loose poems,
no right-sized envelopes left,
loosie cigs, for newly ‘underemployed’
both, thumbed, finger oil anointed-stained,
and
bent
all available for purchase
24/7, in these United States,
in national drugstores jailed,
kept in “chains” till discarded
therein hides the rub-bled best,^^
great verse writings, deadline-
inspired in a Ohio bullpen office,
@ corp. HQ by an Eng. Lit. major
composed, vetted, approved, yet
marked ‘failure,’ by quality control,
third Tuesday of every month, ritualized,
manager freshens display, victims chosen
Hallmark display, pruning the die-marked,
the no-hope cards, consigned, to a green
in-the-back-garbage dumpster resting place,
where you just may see me climbing-in
(and where America safe keeps its treasures)
droning on, as per usual, I’m kicked away by a
rent-a-cop, muttering insurance assurances, just
business, not personal, grab what cards I can, mine,
stolen pleasures, resending via insertion here ‘n there
my resurrection act, a new business, wife thinks
me stinks, but for me, a perfume of saved words,
an act of rebirthing, god bless America, making it
great by giving Hallmark poems a second chance
gonna send one of those cards in envelope,
addressed to BJ Donovan U.S.A., no stamp,
inside note, your poems were ordinal, small
plates of sardonic pith, human foibles, on being
old, recalling youth, both celebrated, Icarus and Daedalus
pretty sure this poem may not get there but I believe
in poetry and the US Post Office, who delivers
mail to me, marked “Nat”^ and to Santa Claus,
which impresses, cause I’m mythical, he’s real
your compositions were breathtaking, literally,
miss your hallmarked witticisms, criticisms,
glad you escaped that virus nursing home jail,
if needed, write to “Nat, NYC, living somewhere
in a park, scribbling close by the East River”^
I’ll get it, like I got you, they know my special tree,
and the rock nearby, that too, is a known hideout,
no worries buddy good stuff may perish, but somehow
it gets a second wind, can’t keep a good scrip, down forever...
a very humbled admirer...
NaTTy
^^ https://www.pinterest.com/betteshallmark/hallmark-quotes/
———————-
^emerging from the store, walking home in the
now doubly ***** darkly dusk,
a set of white teeth from a passing shadow-man says to me
“you’re home late and have a great weekend,”
she asks, “who is that?”
“why,” I reply, “that is our very own personal postal carrier’
she says:
“he delivers mail to ten thousand people all in buildings tall,
yet knows your name, your face,
where u buy your lottery tickets,
your coming and going hours,
how came that to be”
but waits not for an answer
she just shakes her head, from side to side
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2220471/she-just-shakes-her-head/
