Poetry

A Selection from My Poetry Collection

Freeman Lake

My Life in Reverse

Zut Alors! Exclaimed my father. It was annoying

Yet also funny, like a child banging on a

Xylophone. Again, he had burnt our

Waffles and allowed the syrup to spew like a

Volcano onto the stovetop. However

Unintentional, he had turned my weekends into

Torture. It had now been two years

Since my parents’ divorce and my life felt

Ritualized in placating them, each day remaining

Quiet despite the lingering pain of our family exploding—

Poof—into smoke. I wanted my father to

Open up about the truth he was hiding—and hiding poorly.

No more flimsy stories about working late or

Meeting-up with co-workers at the pub. His

Lies had clung to everything like cigar smoke. I

Kept seeing his eyes scatter across the floor like

Jax, kept hearing him whistle country tunes

In lockstep with the strut of his suede boots.

Hadn’t he any self-respect? Hadn’t he the

Guts to tell me he had sought to dissolve our

Family? Maybe it was too much to ask. There’s an

End to everything, and with each end a new

Definition of existence, perhaps even happiness. If I

Close my eyes there are moments when

Burnt waffles taste like creme brulee,

And Zut Alors still sounds funny, even now.

The Funhouse Mirror

Looking through the funhouse mirror,

I am at once farther and nearer

to a reality that’s been distorted––

curved, tilted, and contorted.

My body grows––first large, then small,

ballooning onto the carnival wall,

then shrinking to a chemist’s mole.

There must be a reason that explains the whole

of why I’m here, a logical cause

bound by the physics of nature’s laws,

yet I find nothing that explicates

how time both slows and accelerates

inside a world both real and not,

that I know I know but surely forgot.

A head of curls, and I its wearer,

a painted face, and I its smearer,

a reflection, blurred, but so much clearer,

looking through the funhouse mirror.

Nano-vision

The scientist sees everything in nanoparticles.

He works in a nano-lab; he publishes nano-articles.

He’s guided at night by nano-stars;

he nibbles on nano-sized candy bars.

And what ill-effects come from seeing things so small?

The scientist claims there are none at all.

But he must prepare for the worst;

nano-droughts lead to nano-thirst.

Nano-countries issue nano-threats;

nano-bombs drop from nano-jets.

Nano-banks run out of nano-cash;

nano-stocks plummet in a nano-crash.

Though all of these problems are minute

the scientist has figured out their root:

we’re a species past our nano-prime;

our end is just a matter of nano-time.