“Answer”

 

c. 2024 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(2-24)

 

 

Answering the telephone line

Thought I stepped on a land mine

A cacophony of caterwauling like I had never heard before

A crazy crowing of dissent

Suggesting studious self-improvement

A chastising chase coming briskly in the out door

I found myself oddly deterred

From answering with a single word

The intellectual mashup of scorn and sedition turned my head

I tried to soberly contemplate

Tiny wheels on a roller skate

Just to clear my mind from these thoughts of dread

 

Answering a call and response

A flicker from the candle sconce

Something so slight and yet, powerful enough to see

I tried to think, not only react

With desire for what I lacked

I knew the best plan ahead was to greet this challenge graciously

But I found out soon enough

Being the better person was truly rough

It rattled my bones like a skeleton freely roaming the halls

I had it all dialed in

This evisceration of foolish sins

But then slipped on a secret, and met the stoic stance of a brick wall

 

Answering a universe

Stowed inside a sow’s ear purse

Made me tip into a new vista of careless flight

I looked upon the mirror glaze

Transfixed with images of yesterdays

And cried a tear for what had so long been denied

I took a place at the throne

Which had formerly been a slab of stone

Knocked out loaded, and ready for a restless repeat

Feeling groggy from bread and wine

A feast on pickled hog in brine

Stumbling home with canvas sacks tied around my feet

 

Answering a bold review

A sweeping, seething verbal spew

Something I could not have guessed would be my gift for the day

Bent and broken, in deed and name

Lost and lonely, all the same

Storm clouds trailed across the sky like a spread of marmalade

I laugh when thinking of the fate

That chose me now to mark this date

A calendar box filled with ink scribbles that no scholar could decode

Shake my head and spit in the wind

Thank God for my next of kin

To be ready when I slide off the cliff into what awaits, down below

 

Answering a prime directive

Peering like a private detective

Through a magnifying glass pilfered from a jeweler’s stash

Stepping, stomping over the streets

Like a constable on his municipal beat

Waxing up the ends of an 19^th Century moustache

I might have looked the part of a fool

Living large by the Golden Rule

Yet it gave me confidence to follow a rut dug deep into the loam

I figured that this course of action

Would create a split between the factions

That separate those who pay no mind from their opposites, staying home

 

Answering a mail solicitation

On the back of a ticket at the train station

Was a conclusion that provided a plot twist few readers would expect

I coughed and cursed and feared for naught

Over being seen and getting caught

While being busy with the midnight maze of a writing project

This last breath taken right at dawn

Let me slip away and be gone

I raised my one-fingered salute to the glow of a waking morrow

There came a cheer in return

Watching the solar butter churn

Stirring these elements of unbridled joy and sorrow

 

Answering the telephone line

Vertigo vamps leaving a sign

That my balance might have been flawed from the very inception

I thought at first it was a ruse

This yield of strange and mystic clues

But at the end I found a measure of spiritual protection

Cackling crones recited tales

Of seafarers seeking swimming whales

I heard their noise and had to look away with a sense of need

This rhyming rope circled quick

Like a chiropractor doing parlor tricks

It pulled tight at my throat and dropped me to my knees