By Raud Kennedy
All these jackasses
who walk around
talking
into their cell phones
like the person
on the other end
is hard of hearing,
like everyone else
in line,
wants to hear them
go on and on
about their troubles
picking out a color
for the living room.
Paint it with feces,
I say, just hang up
the damn phone
and shut the f*ck up!
***
"Portland"
By Raud Kennedy
A man in a printed flower dress,
a winter coat with a faux fur hood,
pushes a Safeway shopping cart
through the rain down Broadway.
Another man, sideburns to his jaw,
a navy suit jacket over dungarees,
reads the ads for teeth whitener
in a Fred Meyer�s newspaper insert
like they were stock quotes.
He moves around the intersection,
a minute hand going corner to corner,
acting out this same tableau.
A bearded lady in running shoes
passes with her dachshunds.
Lyndon Johnson, black as a mortician.
A homeless man as a gnome.
No, it is a gnome. Homeless.
***
"Sweat Stains in Traffic"
By Raud Kennedy
Any exit will do,
even the shoulder.
Abandon the car
and be the eight
year old inside me.
Not 41, stuck
looking at the world
through tinted safety glass.
***
"Holidays"
By Raud Kennedy
Today
is one of those days
where,
no matter how nice or kind,
everyone
will make me sick.
Grandmothers
coddling their grand kids,
dog walkers and Samaritans,
whistling,
people who press the walk button,
and don�t wait
should be put in stocks.
Same goes for people
who fidget, stuff their faces,
and read newspapers loudly.
I�m exhausted,
wiped out from yesterday.
Who knew
forcing conversation with people
I see twice a year
could sap
so much life.
***
"House of Cards "
By Raud Kennedy
�Hello?� I answer.
Telephone silence.
�Hello?� Again but with false cheer.
Nothing.
I hang up.
Every few afternoons,
during the trysting hour,
the same call.
Ring, ring, but only quiet.
My wife and I joke
that it�s a ghost,
but I know better.
It�s someone who wants
to hear our voices.
A past indiscretion,
hers, maybe mine,
don�t know and don�t want to.
I�m worried. Instead of listening,
they�ll speak, and my wife and I
will look at each other
and never be the same.
***
"Stranger in the Mirror "
By Raud Kennedy
These days it�s all about quitting,
quit smoking, quit drinking, eating,
sleeping late. Old habits
that helped me know who I was.
One by one, gone. Now sometimes
when I shave in the morning
I wonder who that is
behind the steam on the mirror.
Where�s the old friend
I had so much fun with?