New poems by Frank C. Praeger

 

Constantly

 

Each constant recalled, ladders pointed
somewhere,
convicts pardoned, time lengthened,
and midways steeped in sinkholes;
ties completed, archways connected;
a game, trade, tortoise shells contemplated,
someone's
mishaps
ignored - banners flaunting,
wind and purpose
daily drift;
red or was it green
segueing, unapologetically,
toward gain.

 

 

 

What Else Could Follow?

 

Dull,
vacuous,
was moaning,
was in need of
someone, anyone, to attest to;
so,
but abetted,
despite a parakeet's warning
that same someone still lunged,
laughed as if it was fun.

How many sought for
complied with?
Never
completely specious;
in gratitude
circumvented;
nothing further
than yesterday,
than a motherless child.

Tourniquet or noose
delimited,
dealt with;
caretaker or warden
paid off,
dispensed with.
Another vignette,
another scam.
Who tolerates whom,
who delivers?

Acrobats' unwarranted discomfort,
confronted, refurbished,
rebutted.

 

 

 

That Same Old Sadness

 

Small change, nickeled-and-dimed,
unending tallying up of who came out ahead
of who were bested.
A namesake, many
crowded out by the dead.
Tomorrow insisted on,
today, satisfied,
matchless as demotic green,
purplish red,
a treeless top to wherever.
Geese scuttling across a beach,
grapes memorable and ripening
register.
Echoing through my head
yesteryears,
neuronic traces that I, too, once was.
I am about as teary-eyed as ever.

 

 

 

To Have Gone Somewhere

 

Driftwood and toil,
the moments totaled,
sun-racked mindless endeavor.

Again,
drinks,
salutations,
dream and departure,
a tentative wave of the hand
and whatever nomenclature
there may be

for,

for tomorrow,

besides

'forever'.

 

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