‍ A Live Dog is Better than a Dead Lion

“…even a live dog is better than a dead lion—since the living know they will die.  But the dead know nothing.”                                                                                                                    —Ecclesiastes9:4-5  

Monty looks dead, but he is really just stretched,
like a sidelong glance, with his globe belly heaving
as if to prove he is still in charge
as he bakes upon my neighbor’s back deck
under today’s laughing late October sun.  

When his humans go on their adventures,
it becomes my privilege to feed him
precisely one-half cup once per day,
let him out to poop and pee, throw the tennis ball for 15 minutes,
then wrap up with one whole chewy treat.  

Once he got through a gap in the fence
and tried to eat our cat.  Eleven stitches
in my thigh, and seven in my neck.  

Moreover, I had to stuff four dollars
into the bad word jar, not really,
but that’s what I told Monty’s humans
because they witnessed the whole thing
and they have bibles all over in there.    

Monty, warm under the benevolent October sun,
watches me watch him: watches me
scrawl these words on a yellow legal pad
between bites of a mustard slathered ham on rye—
watches with his hungry marble doggy eyes
misting, “I love ham, and I once loved
to break the necks of slow squirrels
before it all got so foggy,
and now it burns my hips even just to walk.  

Mug-n-Bun

“Now, I found woman more bitter than death; she is all traps, her hands are fetters & her heart is snares.”                                                                                                                            —Ecclesiastes 7:26  

As a damn surprise she got a pool table
and made our semi-finished basement
into a sort of rec room lounge,
and that’s how she got to calling me
Cue, after the cue ball, me being bald.  
She put in a tv and a fridge
and bar stools and a boom box,
and she said, “Now we have to play at least three times a week
to get our money’s worth,”
which, until she got sick, we did.  
But even then she could be merry,
like when she remembered
how—on our first date, I spilled my malt—
and she said, “Just take those pants off,
no one will see you,” which was true since we were at the Mug-n-Bun
in my Pontiac Catalina Convertible
which I do also miss.  
We held hands on the way home,
me in my duck-print boxers and her—
although refusing to kiss me that way—
said, “Let’s go see The Sting Saturday,”
which we did, and kissed hard,
kissed a lot, very a lot, and held hands
which might be what did it for me— that and her laughing and talking
the way she always did.      

Mylar Balloon
“I set my mind to study and to probe with wisdom all that happens under the sun.”                      —Koheleth, 1.12    

I thought it was a jet for a sec
while laying on my back on a stone slab
outside of Innovation Hall
reading a book about a midget
and insects at war in a jar.  

But then there it was  
twisting across the blue void—
puffy cloud perfect—as if crayoned by a kid waiting to see a doctor.  
It might have said Happy Birthday
or Get Well Soon or Congratulations!   
No way we will ever know,
it got so high so fast as it towered past
the raised blade of a skyscraper’s
blinding sunshine flash.