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Copyright: Fred Robel, and Fritz365 2010-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Fred Robel and Fritz365 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Fritz the Improbable Prognosticator

I  dreamt I was a time traveler to the past
With nothing but modern money in my pockets
Thousands of dollars in worthless cotton based paper
Coins stamped with the wrong world leaders
Dates impossible for others to comprehend

So from an oriental carpeted room
On the fifth floor of an impossible brothel
I set up shop
As Fritz the Improbable Prognosticator!

With all my memory of history
Fed from grade school and high school
Community college
And Wikipedia since

I offered stock tips and sports bets
World events warnings
Natural disaster forecasts
Local election conjecture
And an editorial column in The Times

With a bowler hat and moleskin coat
I tried to grow penicillin in my bathroom
While dodging the bubonic plague
Skirting the mass graves
Being mocked for wearing a cotton mask near death
And washing my hands several times a day

Twice I was accused of being a witch
Once I hid from an inquisitor
Tripped up in a tavern with a modern turn of phrase
Forgetting myself
Trying to act out the local ways

Retreating at last to an isolated spot
Somewhere near a desert
In my mind a brown robed noble Ben Kenobi
But to the locals just another insane hermit
Writing upon scrolls and tablets in a language unknown to them
My story for my future self to find
For I was a time traveler with a major handicap
As only further into the past could I ever go


Saturday, September 26, 2015

Disease Vector

A common carrier
Of most uncommon disease
Measles mumps and whooping cough
Cancer and the ragweed sneeze
Flying in upon spidery spores
Supported by a breath of breeze
Darting into your open moist suckhole
Infiltrating weak defenses with ease

Anthropologists from the next great species
Will deduct that an asteroid was to blame again
Though this time it wasn't one that hit the ground
But just one that passes nearby now and then
Taunting us until we sent a robotic probe
Bringing back samples dropping on silver chutes
Which fluttered and flailed as they failed to extend
Spilling contents across the desert floor
Spelling humanity's end


Friday, September 11, 2015

The Biggest Lie I've Ever Told

There is a blank spot in my life
A little gap
That my historic timeline always skips
A lie by omission
That never passes my lips
Or flows through a pen to the waiting page

Thirty years of building up walls
Strong and true
Though their footing is shaky
Spanning that gap the way that they do

Husband
Father
Aerospace Professional
School Board Trustee
Poet
Author

All those words I use sometimes to describe me
Just age old theatrics meant to distract
Obfuscating one important fact:

It was all the biggest lie

That I was me
And the past didn't matter
And that being me
Was fine


Sunday, September 6, 2015

Budding Love:

Falling again
Heart in throat
Pain receptors dulled
Logic circuits suppressed
Flaws overlooked
Tasting a taste so foreign to the tongue

This must be love
Until the cute opens
Applying gravity once again

Hating the way he chews
The annoying way he snores
Never listens
Always apologizes
Blood rushing
Vomit rising to wash the love away

This must be hate
Until a new scent wafts our way
Clouding the mind again

At least long enough


Saturday, September 5, 2015

F=ma

Shafted again with the shitty shovel
Hands burning with the uneven grip
As blisters popped upon popped blisters
Gravel scraping in a one-four beat
Irregular and halting
An awkward waltz in motion
Always seeking a more steady pace

Blade worn shiny by contact with the pulverized rock
Fading to a fine rust as it went to the top
Curving in a lover's grip
Firm to the wooden shaft
Gripping to the death
No matter whose it may be

The joules pile up steadily
As each metal cart is filled to the brim
Rolled out by metal donkeys
Lashed with electric wires
Glowing eyes piercing the darkness
The only light in this goddamned place

When the whistle blows once
The time to push is at hand
To get one last load into the hopper
Steel animals frothing at the joints
To get the job done

Then the whistle blows twice
And it's shovels down
Time to count our day's output
A yardstick to determine our pay
With the second law of the land
As work converts to coins
In this measure of a man's worth


Foolishness In Poetry

Full of 'Thee's and 'Thy's 
Ushered by 'Thine' and 'Mine'
And 'For so art my heart be true'
The Fool published his poems of true love
To the foolish acclaim that they deserved

So full of emoticons 
And lacking real emotions
That the page filled up
Before the idea fleshed out
Scarring the eyes of those who read them

Leaving them blind as blind can be

So The Fool
He switched to braille
Enthralling himself with carefully placed textured bumps
Until he fell in love with images his fingers revealed
Masturbating ideas right into and through the pages

Feeling more the poet
And less the fool
His readers pressed their fingertips
To what he had left for them
Burning their pads and prints

Leaving them as fingertipless as they could be

Finally understanding the err of his ways
The Fool of a poet pondered his rules
That the way to rhyme this with that
Was with a tall top hat
Full with curled cues in a row
Glittery and stolen from a crow

The simplest of half stolen rhyme
Filling up all of his leaking time
With the wonder and the question
Of whether he was truly a fool of a poet
Or only wrote poems fit for fools