Winter Haiku

by Kenneth Pobo

Icicles
stand-up comedians
falling down drunk

AIM, FIRE

by Kenneth Pobo

When Tom says,
You’re a dick!
and I get huffy,
he says nobody means anything
by it, I’m too sensitive.

I claim that I’m not
a dick,
that I’m a warm wool blanket
of a man. I say he’s
too sensitive. Red

as toaster coils, he says
You really are a bitch,
spits the word out
like bitter coffee. If

a word could be a gun,
he’d load it, fire it
directly in my face.

THE MINUTE

by Kenneth Pobo

Villa Park, Illinois found out
I was gay, the whole town
caught fire.  The mayor ran
down Oakland Avenue beating
a pan.  Respectable Repubdads
dashed outside naked,
carried their kids’ bikes back
inside, careful to lock each door
and bolt all windows
even if meant burning
alive.  My friend Dippy had
blurted out my secret.  Firetrucks
clanged from street to street,
evaporated.  Fire shaved its legs,
slowly devoured everything.
I thanked Dippy on smouldering
ashes, gave him my
peanutbutter and jelly sandwich. 

NAMES I WANT TO BE CALLED

by Kenneth Pobo

Groovy. I want to be groovy the way a waterfall is groovy just as it slides
over the edge, groovy as in a dictionary that gets a new word
and doesn’t mind if it’s sexy, or groovy like a mall
when every car has left and a blathery old moon plops on
an anchor-store roof.

Hip. My grandmother said “hep” but she meant hip. She didn’t like it.
It meant you were into drugs, sex, and… I never could be hip.
My hips aren’t hep. I might aim for novice hip
and work my way up. Or down. Or maybe I can be hip-notized,
a hippo Hippolytus, a hiphop hoppetyhophop hip.

Outtasite. Once upon a tyme, I was almost outtasite. Crows
skidded over my wheatfield blond hair. I had a body
to dye for. When you’re close but not quite outtasite,
you know how a mountain feels when
the prettiest leaf blows off you onto a rinkydink hill.