Avocado On Ritz Poem by John Lyday

Three times the whistle blew
past sirens of fire trucks and cops.
Passenger or freight-no clue.
An animal on the track.

A bucket of ice cream beckons.
Liquor, nachos one block away,
Indian owned, Mexican tended,
friends who sell the junk.

Read a novel and two plays,
Allende, Glaspell and Miller.
Hit like a Stevens poem.
An explication of Witt.

Phone call-nurse practitioner.
The blood, sodium, potassium
too high-out of whack
An early morning sample.

Think about the gas pains,
the twenty pounds of ice cream.
Could it be the kidneys
or thirty years of smoke?

Past ten, past disillusionment.
Chugging glasses of tap water.
Threatened with unending dream,
or spend the night awake.

11/10/09