How Are You: The Unpredictability

They almost always start the conversation
With “How are you?”
You say “Fine”.
It is the norm.
Time-honored, automatic, form expected.
        
Yet, you reach an age
Where you no longer fit the norm accepted,
And you hesitate,
Waiting just a little bit
                            ‘fore voicing back.
Unpredictable tomorrow:
Routine ailments, triumphs, sorrow;
Unpredictable around-the-clock.

Is it wrong to linger?
Wait to answer?
I think not.
To blur convention, slur cliché,  
You spur [real] candor
For the day.

When they ask you how you are,
Think of instability
And take a second to reply.

How Are You: The Unpredictability 8.9.2017
Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

What's a ferrous person
Doing here, they asked, those bars of gold
Clutching iron filings as if seeking to squeeze some life into them
Some heat
I clenched my teeth,
Furious

Snobbish, looking down on baser metals,
Mixing only with the company of diamonds
I pulled no punches, held my fists
Red while they jeered
The cracks of ore in my coat
Furious

I bandied through their
Glittering parting like oil and water,
Sliding off me like I wished their wit might,
White hot and flaming, cracking brittle,
Fragile filings
Melting furious

Uncontrollably smelted
Hammered by their eyes
Clenched by their sneers
And burned, scalded, reshaped, reheated
Abused
Scarlet-whipped and chamber fitted

A drill, to reform to a drill,
Aimed at
Softer metals, I
Turn on them, they
Shy away, anxious not to mix
With baser metals, throwing
Iron filings to the floor,
To the earth
Where gold wishes it could be

My jewelry

But they do here :

Rendering.tumblr.com

I wonder why?

(no, of course this isn't an inferior platform...)

Each day there is the morning walk
to gather the morning news in print

An amble back to a rocking chair
comfort for consuming coffee
and attempts to ingest current events

Soon the coffee is gone
followed by another cup
News columns are skimmed
like a dragon-fly skits across
the still of an evening pond

Skittish has become a life-style
concentration a foreign word
completion evasive
By nighttime there is
an abundance of projects,
goals, desires left to await
revisitation - revisitation never happens
as  new distractions fulfill
the daily routine
of living in the moment