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Click title to download microchap
Cover collage by JanK
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1
The world is going to the dogs.
It's crazy out there.
Gonna buy a house by the sea
next to the water,
go fishing for my breakfast.
Live long enough and you
will be fishing in your kitchen,
I say, but the problem is
it really is crazy times.
You don't have to be old to know
the only thing the old folks got wrong ̶
the dogs.
2 The Rules, Part One
Being crabby is the idea.
Put a little muscle into it.
Scrabble along the sand
discovering beach lovers' lost treasures
and throw them into the sea
with your right front claw
(the one that hates)
while the left one sleeps on the job.
It's a sonnet to pain in the morning
slipping out of that hole
under the ebbing tide.
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18 Half Life
Wake up.
Check for signs of life.
Find some.
Get up.
Wash brush eat
Wash dress write
Eat wash drive
Mask shop pay
Drive stow wash
Think write phone
Mail pay
Clean wash cook
Brush wash sleep.
9
If your life is growing wild
like the lilac bush outside your office window
tries to eat your house alive
take a cross-cut saw to it.
Trim it here and there.
Saw off the small nuisances
that eat up your time and energy.
Then drag them out to the curb and forget them.
You will feel lighter then.
The sun will warm your office window.
First published:
https://www.coloradoboulevard.net/poets-
salon-reinventing-ourselves/
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25
Colorful bad actors perch like vultures
atop your family tree.
Were there no hummingbirds or warblers
among this shady crew?
There were ‒
the ones who wrote diaries
owned newspapers
fought wars
delivered milk or mail
raised potatoes
taught
died of TB
harbored biases of their times
(though some rebelled).
I do not count the lawyers.
53
when climate change floods your yard,
drowns your oaks and kills your lawn,
write a poem
when your life is long and you are forced
to see your friends and family die,
write a poem
when wildfires block the stars and dim
the moon, and paint the sky
with red and yellow strokes,
write a poem
when pandemics flame
across a world dumb to facts,
write a poem
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Martha Deed © 2022
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Martha Deed has published ten books, and seven chapbooks. Her most recent poetry collections are Under the Rock (FootHills, 2019) and Climate Change (FootHills, 2014). Hundreds of poems in print, online, or included in anthologies.