My Lonsdale Cap

My Lonsdale Cap.

I found my Lonsdale cap.

It was scrunched between the passenger seat and door.

But it’s okay now.

I’ve pummelled out the dents.

I wish it were that easy to pummel out mine.

Life isn’t a car crash.

It’s a series of dings

and plain old wear and tear.

My car smooched a green fence post once

while doing a tight turn. Some of the green glows

through the matte grey like an early Spring.

It’s bright outside today, high UV reading.

I’m putting on my snazzy Lonsdale cap

so I don’t get sunburn

& my kiss curl doesn’t get blown around

too much.

Your Hair Looks Nonchalant

Your hair looks nonchalant, she says, as we get out of the car.

Nonchalant? I say. My hair?

Yes, she says. Unfussed, loose like a kaftan, happy in the way it looks like some of your poems.

Happy hair? Isn’t that a good thing?

Yes, she says, but couldn’t you …..?

Comb it? Of course, as I pull my little comb out of the back pocket of my jeans,

And that’s another thing, she says. Why pink?

*pic courtesy of Pinterest

The Girl with Incarnadine Hair

“Sorry, you have to move.”

“What?”

“You don’t belong here. You’ll have to move.”

“But I was here first. You saw me walking up and down with my multitudinous strands of hair incarnadine.”

“That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“You can’t have ‘multitudinous strands of hair incarnadine’ in a poem about waiting for a poem to pull up like a bus.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too heavy, too overwritten. Too Shakespearean. It changes the tone of the poem totally. It’s like two colors that clash.”

“But …”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to move. I can’t fit you in.”

“Okay”, she says, shaking her multitudinous strands in a flurry of petulance, “I’ll write a poem of my own and guess what?”

“What?”

“You won’t be in it.”

And with that she gets out her notebook from her backpack and begins writing, furiously as Lady Macbeth cleansing her blood-soaked hands in the basin.

What I Am

Let’s start with what I am not. I am not a poet. I am not a flash fiction or short story writer. I am not an essayist. What I am is a writer. I do not want to be confined to genre or form. Like Bob Dylan in 1966 I am freewheeling. I write what I want as intense or relaxed as I feel the need. I want my writing to shine like freshly gelled hair. And I want people to look at it. And then read.