Recycle

“Love is like tartar sauce; it looks like hell, you have no
idea what’ in it, but you always seem to find it tasty”.
– Me, circa 1990

Witticisms, coined phrases of my
younger years linger around me
trailing like stray dogs following
me home from the butcher shop

‘scat! go away! don’t follow me’!

But I am not that stern in rebuke
and what amused others in the
ubiquitous then often stagger
occasionally into the now

which I oftentimes take as
permission to trot out my
verbal dog-and-pony show
sans pony, awash in dogs

blank stares quizzical looks
remind me that as times change
so do my own sensibilities
though at times logic succumbs
to temptation falling off the
cleverness wagon with a thud

“life is an accordion” I have oft
noted “the harder you squeeze it,
the more discordant the music”

offending more than a few
aficionados of squeeze box music
puzzling others of a musical ilk
tone-deaf to my whimsical bent

With age comes fresh insight new
opportunities, chances to start over
with new audiences who have yet
to hear my-one-about-the…

everything old becomes new again
keeping me in the spirit of going green
salvaging scraps for one more turn

instead of leaving them on a pie pan
outside my backdoor for the stray
benign dogs they are to come nosh

– Mark Lucker