Poem: Smile - Poem: Photo ID

Hello, my 22 faithful readers!

First I'll beguile you with my poem Smile below.

SMILE

Anyone smiling out there?
As I rowed home from Hatboro
where Mark made me 50 copies
of my Guest Editorial

Gregg Whiteside of WRTI
said Jack Moore was
not smiling.

What? A little rain's
gonna make you glum?
Make you wanna mount
The Ark?

I was all gussied up when I
entered the grocery store,
red earrings, a revealing blue
tank top, and a perfect smile
for when I went to the Photo ID
place.

Closed today, Veterans Day.

Drink up the falling rain
my spacious yard that doth
not flood.

I'll go on my screened in
back porch, wear my rain hat
from the Baltimore Aquarium
and sail along on Pearl of the Lake
munching pistachios and reading
Terrorist by John Updike while
shucking off the world like
an umbrella collapsing.



***

When I arrived at the Photo ID place in Huntingdon Valley, I waited about 45 minutes before they called my number, which I believe was A 706.

With all those numbers flashing on and off I couldn't remember my number, so I kept looking up at the panel of three numbers.

GETTING MY PICTURE TAKEN AT THE PHOTO ID PLACE

Some people say, It's only a picture. A photo ID.
I walked in like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard
Red earrings swinging like a sweet cuppa tea

Took my seat in the back of the room, rather like a
concert, and saw the most marvelous people.

France Nuyen stopped in, we'll always remember her in South Pacific.
And Ruth Bader Ginsburg  with her lace collar like Rembrandt's Buergers

Perhaps you think I was enjoying myself. Using my imagination like
a POW or Mary Queen o Scots up in the Tower, praying to her God

Then my number flashed on one of three screens
In my shorts and tank top, I fled to the front, as if I
were a refugee making the final cut

Formalities were mentioned -are you a citizen, do you speak
English, are you an organ donor?

Blonde Leslie took my photo. Very nice. Friendly.
Every four years we take these, she said.

My hopes ran high for a picture suitable for framing.

Overexposed. Had I come in the afternoon when the sun
was shining over the fitness center, things would be
different.

My photo looks like Icarus flying too near the sun
and fell into the Icarian Sea.

O hubris. You made such a fool of me.

Some people say it's only a picture.
A photo ID. 

***

http://ruthzdeming.blogspot.com/2017/10/poem-smile-poem-photo-id.html


LANCE  cHAREN!