Poems

Unless you're ambidextrous -- and who is --
your melody is favoring the right,
until it's played with habit forming ease,
each keystroke made to thrill and to delight.

There's strength in it, there's purpose and technique;
perhaps a hint of genius or gift.
It is as if you hear the music speak,
you revel in it, wholly, mind adrift...

But on the other hand -- since you have two,
and one much more familiar with pleasure,
which leaves another without much to do,
accompanying solely for good measure,

and feeling, for its part, so left, ignored...
Do give that hand a chance to strike a chord.

To figure out who's pot, who's kettle,
no need to use a color chart.
Whichever one is tougher metal,
the clue for telling them apart
is neither color nor complexion;
nor is there need for vivisection.
For the solution, look for sound.
That's where the answer will be found,
because you see, though both may bristle,
too hot to handle without gloves,
do not let pushes come to shoves:
the one will boil; the other, whistle,
and you will see, as like as not,
which one is kettle, and who's pot.

Pray tell, but have you heard of any prophet
predicting nearly anything but doom?
Today they're likely running a non-profit,
reach followers on TikTok and on Zoom,
or flying out to Davos on their jets,
to party and test out their new toboggans,
while heretics, still smoking cigarettes,
build barricades and circle up their wagons.
What's left then for a modern Jeremiah,
when everyone who's willing to be saved
is praying to a different messiah?
To free them, they must surely be enslaved.
Good news, though, there's a sale on doomsday clocks.
It's tough out there, for prophets, and their flocks.

If God be Love, and Love be kind indeed,
then isn't He the God of tender mercies?
Dispense then with your virtue. Let's proceed
with pleasing Him. I've had enough of curtsies,
of furtive glances and of deeper sighs --
an abbess would be proud of your resolve.
But hunger, real hunger's in your eyes,
a hunger no confessor could absolve.
Shall I then be the shepherd, you the sheep?
Or would you rather have me in the saddle
and let love run its course, so very deep.
Perhaps you're not a stranger to the paddle,
lips reddened by another kind of rush?
A slap? Oh well, at least I've made you blush.


Author notes: Prompt 1

With labels like "fair use" and "prior art",
Derivative defended its existence:
"Oh surely you can tell us two apart?
This nitpicking, this insolent insistence
that every sentence be a pure creation --
are alphabets exempt from this demand,
or do they too require a citation?
How would a reader try to comprehend --
without a common canon on their tongue --
the latticework of paragraphs and commas
that place a given writer's work among
those that transcend their periods; the dramas
that we still cherish -- and their use is free.
How are we then to be, or not to be?"