The Minor Poet Gives the Two-Poem Warning
       

Two more poems, the poet says,
much as the nicotine addict promises
just two more cigarettes before he quits.
Or the child begs for one more story
and then another before the light dims.
Or the man leaving his wife and Rottweiler
says of the matching coffee mugs they bought together
that summer in Provincetown, keep them, they're yours.
And we are relieved, for we can now forget his birches
and binoculars, the rattoo on the right arm
of his left-handed waitress, his one-minute eggs,
the Count Basie Orchestra in the middle of the prairie
and the twelve small marinated mammals
served up on toast—all the sadly strange things
he has been going on about. We will forgive ourselves
for the moments attention lapsed,
and concentrate on .these last two gems
that will knock us out of our folding chairs—
that is, if he can find them in the scribble
that seems to be multiplying on the podium:
new poems, of course, hot off the pen, pencil,
greasy napkin, gas bill, envelope,
no, here on his laptop, iPhone or iPad,
if he can just find the little bastards,
and the facilitator is waving her watch
and making frantic T signs with her hands,
and finally the poet throws the mess over his shoulder,
he will find something, anything, two random poems,
these will do, and whatever they are, they are the end
we have been waiting for.

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Copyright © 2016 Lois Marie Harrod All rights reserved
from Nightmares of the Minor Poet
Five Oaks Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission