I Lost a Poet Once

I didn't mean to but those were my early days of promiscuously tasting what the internet had to offer and I thought surely, surely with his distinctive voice (and my impeccable spelling) I'd simply be able to Google him and find him again:  white man, in his 30's, lives in NYC, teaches for a living.  Couple of collections published.  Well, that narrows it down.

Needless to say I did not find him.  Have not.  And 3 or 4 unbacked up (who the hell backs up one's bookmarks?) hard drive crashes later, I never will.  My bad.  My very bad.

Ever since then I try not to make the mistake of assuming that information is at my fingertips and all I have to do is roll up my sleeve, stick my arm into the digital bin and bam! I pull out some writer's website.

What starts these junkets anyway is an elaborate preamble to writing.  It's Friday, do you know where your poetry is?  I look at various 'zines, walking back and forth before the storefront wondering if I should go in and if I do, will I buy?  Each time I think I'm done with "the poetry thing" another line offers itself.  (As in overhearing on Metro North the girlfriends talking about a hospice patient.)  Here are 2 to play with in honor of April being National Poetry Month:

"We're pregnant."  Maybe it's generational, maybe I'm stupid, but when, oh, when did men start having babies?  Introduce me to the man who's pushed a bowling ball through a key ring while lying on his back for, say, 5 hours and then we'll talk.  In the meantime, who can write a poem with that?

"Lonely as a Witness in Vegas."  I've always wondered (haven't you?) what it must be like to be both a Jehovah's Witness and a resident of Las Vegas.

You write a line

I'll write a line
We'll write a poem
together.