Beware of the little Devil in You

I wake up at dawn
to the voice "Choose!"
Choose what? Who are you?

little devil in me?
Wonk; far too long?

  In stupor, I go through
  the mental to do list:
take the vacuum to the repair shop;
replace the old sneaker with new one;
take the badly behaving cat, tossing the poop
and talking back to the shelter;

O the last one; I've been dragging?
"You've taken it to the Moon."
I flung open my eyes.
When?
  Bolting up on the bed, look
  at the empty one in the corner.
Shoot! It's not too late. I'll go get it back!

At the shelter office, I shout, "I take him back!"
The girl calmly says, "He got a new home."
I shake, in disbelief.

"Tell them I want him Back!"

"No, Ma'am. Only in your dream."

That was three years ago; and I still dream of him;
how long? Ask the moon. 

©Byung A. Fallgren


 

Some of my poems are published in this Weekly Avocet. 
Thank you, Charles, Vivian and Valerie, for taking them. --Byung 

Winter, short poems #2

Below zero
yesterday
spring-like today
capricious 
old soul

Snow coated
street light
stands
musing like
a homeless man

©Byung A. Fallgren

Winter Remembered
John Crowe Ransome, 1888--1974

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of absence, absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks
And parts the tight board hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat, my center.

Better to walk forth in the murderous air
and wash my wound in the snow; that would be healing,
Because my heart would throb less painful there,
Being asked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.

Which would you choose, and for what boot in gold,
the absence, or the absence and the gold?

Born in 1888, in Tennesse, the poet John Crowe Ransome founded 
The Kenyon Review and guiding member of the Fugitive. 
 

Winter short poems

The neighborhood
in the deep snow
sleeps
and dreams 
of spring

Snow coated pine trees
stand vigil
like
the sentries
of the forest

 ©Byung A. Fallgren 

Busy Tongue

If i speak as fast as my thoughts
i would be too chatty,
like bubbles a child blows out from the straw,
pop and disappear in the thin air; or a bubble 

or two snagged in the witch's wand.
turn to snake around the neck of an innocent one. 


©Byung A. Fallgren