First Cab Off The Rank

You would say it is crazy to see
the entire, stupid event spread
out before it even happens.

Not the actual affair, of course,
more a scenario-like series of
graphics, each obvious so the

imagination doesn’t have a role,
joined together in a succinct, if
somewhat compressed, statement

of the whole. It is too late for immunity,
infection has spread and changes wrought
with scant evidence to support them.

Thus the poem I liked fades from the
tender scene where I might add a
complimentary thought for the poet –

to become an anguished case of demur,
withdraw, ignore and beware. There
I see the flaw, those words were writ like

the fawning hands of another man before
me, who stroked the fair breasts I sought
to claim – and thus queered the pitch.

So I say no thanks, nor will I play
with that. She’ll just have to
take the first cab off the rank.
© 26 April 2007, I.D. Carswell