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How Much Am I Worth?

How much am I worth now?
Chemically not much.
In spirit a little less.
How about the combination in stress?

Not to be dramatic but yesterday I robbed a bank.
Got in the news and killed myself.
It was very sad. I didn’t appear on the front page 
though a tractor ploughed over me
and in my place an apricot tree grows.

Don’t jump to conclusions. I hate apricots
unless served between marshmallows
and allowed to simmer for fifteen hours.
But who cares? They taste good
which is a matter of opinion.

Have we covered all the bases?
No, there’s still home plate looming in the distance.
And everybody is too greedy for dessert to live.
I will not tell you what I’ve been up to but I assure you
it’s no good for insurance companies.
They always try to distract us with funny stuff.
Let me catch my breath. It stinks.
And yet I inhale fighting for my life
at your expense if I have to.
And mine if I fear the landlord.
For you know exactly what I mean but won’t admit it.

Oh, if only we could start all over.
Everybody at the same time.
Horse-and-buggy whipped
with jets overhead spooking the skies.
You would think they’d lay off and despise accidents. 
But no. They follow the clouds looking light and fluffy.

Be patient, audience. The curtain is about to fall.
And you’ll all go home without a wrack of clothing
mumbling humbly I didn’t get it. I really did not.
While all the wilds are beckoning you to
move on to another stage.
Maybe Mars maybe Pluto and Daffy Duck
All searching for Bugs in the Machinery of Mirth.

Blithely gnawing on a carrot, spitting out teeth
and refraining from saying What’s up, doc?
You wabbit! Your goose is cooked
And it’ll be harder on you because you’re a wighteous wegetarian!

No, change your ways, whatever that means,
to a better end than evolution and who knows.
Maybe your brain will drop into your heart
and the feedback come back wholeheartedly.

No I enter the wood with my own pecker.
Search for the Nightingale and pray all the way
humbly and am gently for I am a wrecker
screwing and doing woodwork kind of in play.
Unworthy of you as I might be
reviewing the past as it nearly was.
Unaffected by any because.
No, future in you I just want to see
peeling off and on with me.

Published in Poetry