This Week by Paul Handley

This Week
The highlights in my hair serve to
complement the rest of my day
that I describe to my fellow
commuter. Discreetly yanking a strand out,
after each anecdote
as symbolic block ends to underscore,
what he will relate to his lover that evening.
They are that good.

Magnet people seem irresistibly drawn to you today.
As a magnet person also we never quite align.
This is the appropriate
degree of intimacy for now.

It’s subversion day and all that is held in high esteem
by others you recite in the subconscious
with a heavy accent on second syllables
of elongated words. “Thaat’s noat thaet greayt.”

Surfing for fast cars
impounded by law enforcement
I see my profile redacted
with my arm crooked in the window.
A boomerang tattoo with the wings
meeting at the elbow.
I wonder what happened to that guy.

You trip someone
with a male voice
without seeing his face,
based upon his well reasoned
and articulate argument to
a companion about the virtues
of common sense and how it is impervious
to time, space and religious orientation.
Silent applause registers.

The union of a couple
where one creates TV series theme songs.
The other advertising jingles,
anticipates offspring that will run a
media conglomerate.

You explain the development of talent
as wisdom imparted as the ying and yang
of dialectical machismo.
You either keep kicking butt
or become a lag indicator on the sliding scale
of entrenched powers seeking medieval stagnation
due to placement at the apex of tool supply.
Just tools. But all of them.

– Paul Handley

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