22 Comments

an ensemble poem discovered on Facebook

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42 roller-skate

56 shoot a gun

38 whistle by blowing air out

51 and I can’t crochet

31 can’t keep my opinion to myself

37 and a somersault

36 blow a bubble from gum

31 can’t teleport

36 and I can’t count

I am 60; I can’t run

I am 48 but cannot breakdance

71 sing on key

30, seem to find partners in polygamy

50 get these damn kids off my lawn

49 can’t wink

I’m over 40 and can’t waterski or surf

46 could never cartwheel

37 state my age

59 dive

52 load a dishwasher properly

57 get a job

35 breathe

©2020

What is not Covered

Variations on a theme of an optical plan

Incidental
         (right alongside)
Consequential
          (after)
Including 
          (but not limited to) 
          time passing 
          while you cannot see 

Loss of use
           when you crash into the plate glass window
           because you cannot see
Is not covered

The repair center
the guy with all the lenses in a cushioned box
with all the expertise having to do with lenses
who tells you you look younger than you actually are
and you tell him maybe he needs glasses too
but thanks all the same
the girl who makes the frames
the person who packs them into a box
if they couldn’t make it in today
This is not covered

Time passing
while you cannot see
Things you crash into 
while you cannot see
Any shelf they’re sitting on
while you can’t see
Otherwise awaiting parts
Not covered

Pre-existing conditions, damage from abuse,
Introduction of foreign objects
           Je ne peux pas voir
Modifications or alterations
Failure to follow the care instructions
Are not covered

Third-party actions
Fire
Collision
Vandalism
Theft
Or Acts of God
War
Invasion 
A foreign enemy
          Embassy
          Bone saw
          A bathtub of acid
          These guys are good at what they do
          lorsque vous brisez une vitre de verre
These are not covered

Hostilities
Civil War
Unrest
Rebellion
          While all of these may on occasion be called for
          Remember: they are not covered
Likewise:
a Strike
a Labor Disturbance
a Lockout 
a Riot
or Civil Commotion
            If you fall on your face while wearing your glasses
            If you fall on your face diving under your desk
            Remember: this is not covered 

Preventive maintenance
           Curled beneath the desk
           Remembering
           That this is not covered

Damage which is not reported within thirty
(30) 
days 

Decorative Embellishments
          whatever you want: 
          glitter
          feathers
          pom-poms 
          antennae
          but remember:
          these are not covered

Damage caused by animals and insects 
          Finding your corpse, in a culvert, let’s say
          the nibbles
          the nesting
          ingested lens-shards 
Not covered

Unauthorized repairs
Sold as-is
Products that are lost or stolen
Also not covered

Cleanings, Adjustments, Fittings 
Outgrowth
          you can’t stay young forever, and this is not covered
A change in prescription 
          nor can your eyes (please see above)
Any other medical reason
          and someday, you will die
          beneath your desk
          in the culvert
          in your bed

What is not covered 
          will be laid bare
What is not covered 
          will fall away

©Melinda Rooney, 2020

I Searched

by Maria van Beuren

…a found poem, made up of hits I got when I typed the word “search” into Google

Today I searched

I searched for God and found only myself

I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross

and found Him not

And I searched for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one

I searched all over couldn’t find nobody

I searched the world over

I searched all over couldn’t find nobody

I searched for God and found only myself

I searched all over

©Maria van Beuren, 2020

Maria van Beuren graduated from St. John’s College in 1973. She’s been indexing and editing scientific and medical books for decades now. Lately she’s begun writing poetry and has had some published, much to her surprise. She is the founder and director of Toad Hall Writers and Artists retreats, in New Hampshire, which have attracted attendees from the US and Europe, including various Johnnies who shall remain anonymous if they pay her enough to keep quiet.

Keynote: Variations on a Theme of Steve Jobs

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(all lines taken from the transcript of the introduction of the iPhone in 2007)

Look at all the days I’ve waited
Gonna leave them here for now
Hit this little button here
And put them all to sleep.

Hit it again, and wake it up
And here it is: today
Portrait to landscape
Sleeping to waking
Here, in the palm of my hand.

Featherweight management,
Miniature interface
Takes you back home from wherever you are
Your life in your pocket,
The usual suspects
This stuff off a server
Up there in the cloud.

Look at all the days I’ve waited
We’re gonna leave them here for now
And skate to where the puck will be,
Not to where it is.

You know, I showed this once to someone
Someone who’d never seen it before
What do you think? I asked
He told me
Dude, you had me at scrolling.

©Melinda Rooney, 2020

Send Me Something!

…a poem, prose poem, or microstory, up to 100 words,
made out of something that used to be something else:
the label on a Windex bottle
markup language
ad copy
the Articles of Impeachment
a flyer on a telephone pole

…you get the idea

I can only pay in gratitude, but I’ll link to your site/blog if you have one. Links to posts also appear on the Facebook Recycled Page, on Twitter at @melroo62, and LinkedIn

I’ll start! Watch for Keynote: Variations on a Theme of Steve Jobs, (re)posting this Friday.

Tack on a brief bio and submit to recycledfiction@gmail.com

13 Ways of Looking at Collusion

With apologies to Wallace Stevens
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird
With no apologies to Donald Trump
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/politics/trump-interview-excerpts.html

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I.
Among Republicans and Democrats
Virtually every one has said there is
No collusion.
There’s been
No collusion.
Everybody knows the answer already.
There was
No collusion.

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II.
They walk around blinking at each other.
I have no expectation.
I can only tell you that there is absolutely
No collusion.

III.
A hoax,
A ruse
A made-up problem
An excuse for losing an election

IV.
A Democrat and a Republican
Are one.
A Democrat and a Republican and Collusion
Are one

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A Lover’s Quarrel, Lindsey Kustusch

V.
I do not know which to prefer
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes
That there was
Collusion
Or that there was
No collusion

VI.
I saw Dianne Feinstein the other day on television, she said,
There is
No collusion.

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Line of Flight, Sarah Yeoman

VII.
I watched Alan Dershowitz the other day, he said,
Number 1, there is
No collusion,
Number 2, collusion is not a crime,
But even if it was a crime, there was
No collusion.
There is
No collusion
And even if there was, it’s not a crime.
But there’s
No collusion.

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VIII.
The Republicans, in terms of the House committees,
They come out,
They’re so angry
Because there is
No collusion.

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What Is Gathered Will Disperse, Lindsey Kustusch

IX.
Every Democrat is saying it
Frankly there is absolutely
No collusion
That’s been proven
There is
No collusion.

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What Is Moving Will Be Still, Lindsey Kustusch

X.
The congressmen have been unbelievable in pointing out what a
Witch hunt the whole thing is.
So, I think it’s been proven that there is
No collusion.

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Good Morning, Ingrid Art Studio

XI.
But
There is tremendous collusion
Including all of the stuff with the —
And then whatever happened to the Pakistani guy, that had the two,
You know,
whatever happened to this Pakistani guy?
Whatever happened to him?

Whatever happened
With the two servers that they broke up into a million pieces?

That was a big story

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XII.
It makes the country look bad
It makes the country look very bad
It puts the country in a very bad position.

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Crow Study II, Sarah Yeoman

XIII.
There was collusion and there was no collusion
There was tremendous collusion
And there was no collusion

You know, we hear bullshit from the Democrats

[Cross talk]
[Cross talk]

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©Melinda Rooney, 2018

information for all uncredited images can be found at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/407012885045075486/

Artist Info:
https://sarahyeoman.com/
https://www.lindseykustusch.com/
https://myrntai.deviantart.com

 

Skeleton Prayer

Peter Breslin

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Guard the great lands of Ilium and Ischium tonight,
Watch out for trochanters and the dreaded acetabulum,
Arrange thy phalanges in phalanxes both distal and proximal,
Align all of thine intertubercular sulci and glenoid cavities,
May atlas and axis roll free
May the great iliac crest never fail or fade!
And so, dear fibula and tibia,
I bid thee goodnight.

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©Peter Breslin, 2018

Peter Breslin is a teacher, musician, PhD student in plant conservation biology at Arizona State University and writer who lives in Tempe AZ.  See his ‘Recycled Declaration’ here 

To 82 Women: A Former English Major Processes the Weinstein Scandal

First pub­lished in The Satirist
https://www.thesatirist.com/poems/82-women-former-english-major-processes-weinstein-scandal.html

[Af­ter An­drew Mar­vel­l’s To His Coy Mis­tress]

Would you had clout enough, or ties;
Your cringe, my dear, might not be so un­wise.
We would mu­tu­ally mas­sage, and think which way
To wank, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Roche-Bobois
Shouldst rub­bers find; here, I’ll take your bra
Turn down the bed; I would
Love you ten sec­onds be­fore the flood,
And you should, if you please, re­buff me with a sob
Un­less, that is, you want to keep your job.
My veg­etable love should grow
It some­times takes awhile, you know
(It’s partly why I do this)
A minute or two should go to praise
Thine ass, and on thy pussy gaze;
Twelve sec­onds to adore each breast,
And maybe twenty for the rest;
A fin­ger laid on every part,
I don’t give a shit about your heart.
For, lady, you de­serve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I al­ways hear
My class­mates’ voices: ‘Fatty! Zit­face! Queer!’
And yon­der all be­fore me looms
-I’m ugly, af­ter all-just empty rooms.
Say no and I will take it out on you
And in my mar­ble john, will coo
My echo­ing song: ‘please watch me mas­tur­bate,’
And it will be too late.
I’ll yank your con­tract; you’ll flee to Dubuque,
To moth­er­hood, per­haps, and tod­dlers’ puke
And your nascent gifts all turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
Un­til the next one.
Dubuque’s a fine and pri­vate place,
But none, I think, do there em­brace
(None with in­flu­ence, at least).

Now there­fore, while the youth­ful hue
Sits on thy skin like morn­ing dew,
And while thy as­pi­ra­tions war with self-re­spect
Now let us sport…look! Fi­nally erect!
And now, like a hooker vir­gin an­gel
Rather at once my junk de­vour
Come on, let’s go and take a shower.
Let me roll your un­der­wear and all
Your sweet­ness up into one ball,
And lift it to my face
De­mol­ish all your wishes with rough strife
Drag you through the iron gates of life:
Then hug me at the Os­cars: air-kiss, quick!
And keep it to your­self that I’m a prick.

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Ashley Judd, Harvey Weinstein, Vince Vaughn BEI/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

©Melinda Rooney, 2018

The Love Song of Kellyanne Conway

After The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with abject apologies to the spirit of  T.S. Eliot
Eliot’s words, with tweaks of my own here and there,  appear in standard font
Quotes from Kellyanne Conway in italics

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Let us go then, you and I,
When the polls close,
The evening spread out against the sky
Like Newt Gingrich, taking the wings off butterflies

Let us go, leave the school gym, walk through half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights
An Elks Club
Or bachelor party

If you have the time, if you have the inclination to speak to a stranger
If you want to divulge what is a very sacred, private matter
–the way that you just voted
An overwhelming question

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Those conversations never happened.

In the room, the women come and go
Weigh all of the issues,
All of the images,
All of the information
And make a choice
Almost at the last minute.

And indeed there will be time
(I want to do right, apart from my gender – I want to do right as a campaign manager)
There will be time, there will be time
(Women have been late-in-the-game deciders)
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder
Nearly two and a half million people die every year that are on the voter rolls.
It takes time to get dead people off the voter rolls.

And create
Every life should have a chance,
Regardless of race, socioeconomic status or circumstance

And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate:
Why would I hang a sign around Ted Cruz’s neck that says ‘Iowa or bust?’

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
An avalanche, indeed, an unprecedented deluge:
Negative,
Caustic,
Burn-it-to-the-ground
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Falsehoods
Alternative facts

Oh, do not ask
Why would I hang a sign around Ted Cruz’s neck that says ‘Iowa or bust?’

Because then there’s only two options:
Iowa, or bust.

I don’t sugarcoat things, but I’m very polite in delivering them.

In the room the women come and go:
“Please speak to me from the waist up: my brain, my eyes.”

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
I went out on my own, years ago, to try to create some additional choices
in a parallel universe.
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
I tell people all the time, ‘Don’t be fooled, because I am a man by day.’
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
I’ve noticed a lot of people are very bold and blustery on Twitter because it’s easy to do that With the poison keyboard
And a hundred and forty characters.

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My morning coat, red, white and blue with buttons shaped like cats, My collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My felt hat rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
There’s plenty of room for passion, but there’s very little room for emotion
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the Tappers, Cuomos, Holts,

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I have measured out my life with talking heads
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Above the chirons
Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

They say a bald man is trustworthy. He has nothing to hide.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
There are many ways to surveil each other.
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
I never knew how ugly and how stupid I was until, well, you know.

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin
To reject the spin
The overreach and distraction?

And how should I presume?
Sexual harassment is as difficult to prove as it is to disprove. 

And how should I begin?
Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.

Shall I say
Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?
Are you gonna look me in the face and tell me that?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

Women are trying to have it all but are trying to regain control
And, although it shouldn’t be, men behaving badly is sort of an occupational hazard
They think that they’ve got a monopoly on talking to women from the waist down.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the silver bullet, the magic elixir, the fool’s errand
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To say:

You can’t appeal to us through our wombs,
We’re pro-life.
The fetus
Beat us.
We grew up with sonograms
As if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen

We know life when we see it.

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That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
This whole biology-chemistry-abortion-gender agenda
Would it have been worth while
If one, fixing her makeup and fluffing up her hair, and turning toward the press corps,
Should say:

“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

We know there are lots of leaks everywhere.
There’s nothing we can do about that, except not leak ourselves.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I serve at the pleasure of @POTUS.
His goals are my goals
His message my message.
Uninformed chatter
Doesn’t matter.

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©Melinda Rooney, 2018