Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Poetry Pecker

tell me to stop writing poetry
this useless mind-fuckery
the all consuming journey
to self-discovery through artless muses
crafted by idle hands
from a troubled mind
as life could suck the yolk from a man

aiming and pointing his words
at the world like shooting at woodpeckers
that go round and round the bark
while i blasted a stubborn tree
with a hand-me-down 4-10 gauge-
whatever-shotgun i'd be given one winter
to drive deer toward his blind

in a white out i fired and fired
at the annoying bird echoing his labor
in that pine edging my trail
pristine morning path to shack
where he sat and drank coffee
read porno magazines he thought hid
probably wondered about that firing from
a flannel fifteen year old without
a red trappers hat to call his own

feet dry because of sandwich bags
to protect from holes in tight boots
damaged from kicking too much snow and ice
my invisible march clomped toward him
he with loaded, high caliber rifle
his long, metal casings could pierce an animal
my size and put me down
put him out of misery from a meandering boy
bored with his fires, bees collected
in Bell jars, severing brother's thumb
with hedge shears

took way too long to arrive
dispensing every shell before deciding
throw the gun away before i kill someone
and returned to camp to clutch the pen
circle and combine jumbled letters into visions
i would find my own way to put meat on the table

life's not as easy as a gun.


12.17.22
42 lines - poem, prose, story, puzzle

or something like that. took less time to explain with this notion.

did i mention if you understand a poem after one read it's not good?

I had to stop editing this after nearly completing poem, assisting wife with car after my son drove into a snowy ditch.
no worries. i got the poem finished better than expected.
oh, he's fine. so's the car.