Ponderable polemics, poetic

WordPress site of poet Mark Lucker

life

  • Rider less

    What goes around comes around life more Tilt-A-Whirl than Merry-go-Round Symmetry, overrated repetition needs expected spontaneity no matter how it goes down up…? Nobody waits in line just anticipating the thrill of getting strapped in and staying grounded save the poetically unenlightened dreamer on the rumbling quarter-a-ride, in-front-of-the grocery-store horse – Mark Lucker Read more

  • Driven

    Waiting for an oil change customer area big-screen TV Rachael Ray cooks pasta something a grandfather across from me texts the coffee is respectable volume on the TV isn’t but Rachael is Rachael it doesn’t matter she cooks rhythmically zzt! zzt! zzt! the unmistakable garage sound of tightened lug nuts al dente oppressive smell of Read more

  • World Serious

    In the game of baseball, a great hitter will often explain his success at hitting a thrown ball three inches in diameter with a round bat a quarter-inch smaller around saying “I slow the game down” – some even claiming that they can actually see the red stitched laces as the ball hurdles toward them 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

  • Here on scholarship

    “There is no honor amongst thieves even less with trailer-park debutantes” Early life lesson from a bartender who worked his bottle opener like a scrapyard crane operator dumping rusty Chevys spun a corkscrew as a master drill press operator teaching an apprentice But that was years ago, when the price of a drink was considered Read more

  • Resolute residues

    Sometimes I ponder my legacy picturesque footprints in beach sand casually, photogenically left behind, impulsively signed with flotsam stick left to the whim of waves, rising tides? Existence as an Etch-A-Sketch frozen in time via cataclysmic event fossilization rendering me ancient to a distant archeological future? I cannot say Hearts, initials clandestinely written whimsically defacing Read more

  • Q-and-A

    I am aging gracefully as is my faith like the gray replacing the brown in my beard pesky questions have been quietly replaced not with answers but the earned ease that comes with the confidence of blithely ignored uncertainty, There is grace in abandoned worry, freedom in letting go the folly of life mastery comfort with Read more

  • Playing on

    Faded are July’s warmth, summer’s cheers. Supplanted now by the encroaching hints of cooler days, forgotten expectations, procrastinated chores shelved, he can only now muse without dwelling on what won’t be. Could-have-beens and maybes aren’t statistically meaningful; they never really were, except to others in relation to their expectations and dreams for him. Regret is Read more

  • Distance

    The expanse is self-inflicted a self-exiled expatriate; I am here, not there answered a calling, have since done my best at least pretty well considering restraints with which I had to work sometimes I feel my work here done my time here over needed elsewhere, so I try to believe but the work here is 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