Bad Friday afternoon poetry... →[More:]inspired by the MetaFilter Billy Collins thread. Just for you:
The Three Stooges of Grief
By It’s Raining Florence Henderson
The stain in the urinal
looks a little like Moe Howard’s hairdo.
I pray to it briefly
before relieving myself,
just to be sure.
For the rest of the day
I imagine Death hot on my trail,
foiled repeatedly
by cosmic slapstick routines.
At the hardware store
he is cracked on the back
of his black-cowled skull
by a wayward two-by-four.
When Death drops his scythe to the floor
in pained disbelief,
the oblivious teenaged cashier
sells it to an organic co-op farmer
for twenty-four ninety-five.
Back home, he
nearly catches up with me,
only stepping on the rusty tines
of the strategically-placed garden rake
at the last possible moment.
Death’s howls of indignation
echo through the empty house
as I carefully double-bolt the front door.
Flossing before bed,
I almost feel sorry for him
when I catch Death skulking about
behind the blue Baywatch shower curtain
with the soap scum and the orange mildew
and the slow, hairy drain.
But I poke him sharply in both eyes, anyway,
and boot him right back
into the washed-out, monochrome night.
Wise guys are not to be tolerated.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
