Ponderable polemics, poetic

WordPress site of poet Mark Lucker

Contemporary Life

  • The Letter

    Dear Grandchildren: There is irony in that the last thing you will ever forget will be one of your firsts crush love kiss sex broken heart first to never be forgotten first to stick with you first to make you feel like that first to make you hurt first to make you feel alive knowing Read more

  • The Tragedy of Macself

    *Best read if imagined in the voice of say, Sir Patrick Stewart or Sir Ian McKellan Macself Act 1, Scene-hogger Is this a cell phone which I see before me, The camera toward my face? Come! Let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see me still. Art thou not, fatal vision, Read more

  • Bartender genome

    Sitting alone at a bar downing rows of tequila shots earns you your bar cred griping rights: politics, sports, love, loss, life’s inequities pour-out-your-heart privilege, at the very least knowing, indifferent nod, patronizing smile tacit agreement smirk ‘go for it’ shrug Sitting by yourself at Starbucks’ throwing back espresso shots buys you a hipster buzz Read more

  • Run on sentence

    Whatever it was I used to be running from sentenced to and for what… I forgot what I am now running to – at a slower, more mindful pace I may get to ‘to’ or I may not I don’t know youth was escaping on the run from, to…sprinting middle age finds me looking over Read more

  • Thanksgiving

    Gratitude the appreciation of gratefulness an understanding that you stand not alone mindful of abundance not dependent on it honest thanks is given freely, sincerely, often with malice toward none, charity for all true thankfulness is no appreciation of personal abundance never simply a pre-feast prayer of appreciation for a bountiful table True giving of Read more

  • Flying east at dusk

    The setting sun chases us eastward orange-scorched ripples of cumulus white race with us neck-and-neck ablaze, dying wisps of cotton embers envelop us while about to be snuffed out by rapidly encroaching nightfall fleeting light from behind speeds toward a head-on collision with onrushing darkness a mesmerizing train wreck at thirty-thousand feet I cannot turn Read more

  • Customer

    sitting at a  rickety card table a cloudy, droll Saturday morning yard sale boredom broken only by protracted used appliance deal negotiations with dubious dollar store Trump-wannabees dumping a half mug of stale coffee onto our cyclone fence-climbing Morning Glories a change-purse toting fortysomething housewife-financier chides my wastefulness, asks the price of the empty mug Read more

  • Waiting for Felix

    Quintessentially American; refrigerator door Louvre stylistically Picassoesque, Daliesque though Dadaism and Mamaism predominate as pudgy-finger tempera on newsprint evolved into more complex designs, bolder expressions of the artists vision in markers on white paper, macaroni on tag board, leaves melted in wax paper Like any good museum, the exhibits rotate; handsomely, haphazardly framed via magnets-on-white-enamel Read more

  • Three for the New Year

    Resolutions less revolution, more ‘what am I fighting for? and who will yell ‘Charrrrge’?! Pledges calendar decrees! resolutely resolving! inability Reality good intentions, all calendrical mandates change? calendar pages – Mark Lucker Read more

  • In (and out) of the loop

    local coffee place sipping my solitary cup checking email next table over a group of men older than I, age gap not of grandfather-grandson severity the six zealously swap tales of doctor visits with enthusiasm once reserved for one-night stands summer romances familiar names swirl through their regaling conversation; Alzheimer’s, Chron’s, Cirrhosis taking the places Read more