Five Line Billiard Poem

my stuff gets better, i think
i bank my shots
with more ease and laughter -
i've stopped preaching
& if i lie, i don't mean to.

Feeling my age

the good conservative, if i recall my shaw,
wanted worker-bugs like me to have anxiety
about my obliteration, so as not to become complacent
paying my bills, going to junk jobs, living in a one-room paradise.

well, this bug is without work, health going south,
& aching too much to load horseburgers all day through the windows.
i couldn't convince anyone to hire me!
i speak 6 words & the boss spots me for a troublemaker.

here, at the dawn of the twenty-first century,
it may as well be the middle ages floating in a soup of computers.
i have more than a little anxiety about this paradise.
i am full of pain killers. i have signed up to go to mars.

^

Biography

I'm first generation American; father born in Dublin, and mother raised in Leningrad. I grew up in Seattle, and in Detroit, and in Albuquerque,New Mexico since 1995,making my bones as a writer for various reference books (Gale Research items), and as an antiquarian/first-edition book dealer (Shank Books). Three books of poetry published, two still in print, available online, SURVIVAL, EVASION, AND ESCAPE, and FOOTSTRIKES AND SPONDEES. Many chap books published, and poems over time in NEW YORK QUARTERLY, QUARTERLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, PARIS REVIEW, BOGG, EPOCH, many others. Two regional books in print, NEW MEXICO HAIKU, and a collection of essays, EXPERIENCING NEW MEXICO. Received NEA grant, American Academy of Poets grant, and listed now in POETS AND WRITERS and CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS. Always drawn to mavericks in poetry, BUKOWSKI , GEOFFREY HILL, MARINA TSVETAYEVA