Poetry | Fred Aiken Writing

September 19, 2023

THE SONG PLAYING DOWNSTAIRS

i woke up to a dolly parton song blaring,
that one about working 9-to-5,
and i immediately thought it was my alarm on my phone,
but i don’t remember setting it,
and it’s saturday, and i don’t have wake up early,
the sun isn’t out, the night sky blinks iridescent dust through
the curtains on my bedroom windows,

i realize the ms. parton’s soulful melody
emanates from downstairs,
someone else, someone i did not invite into my slice of hoosegow
made from drywalls, concrete, and 2×4’s, with a dab of paint,
snuck right through one of my doors
and began playing dolly parton,
maybe to mock me, maybe to suggest that i don’t have enough groove in my step,
or perhaps dolly parton is the burgalar’s favorite artist,
and hearing dolly parton inspires them to rob better…

i guess,
i might go downstairs to ask

September 18, 2023

JUNGLE LIFE

life is like a jungle gym in your backyard,
one day you wake up to it being built
by your beet-red, sweat-ridden dad,
who cursed the gods of instruction on how small of print
the instruction pamphlet was,
who he blames foreigners for, for some inexplicable reason,
then you play on it all summer long, maybe a little even into fall and the first few warm days of winter,
then you wait, anticipating next summer,
only to forget about it for the next fifteen years,
go off to college, the jungle gym set deteriorates in the backyard,
birds defecate on it, spiders make silky homes in its crevice,
the foundation sinks into the ground, further, deeper,
when you go home during break
and look out into your childhood home’s backyard,
you don’t even see the jungle gym, it blends into the background,
then your parents retire, your dad wants to move him and your mom into a retirement community,
a cul-de-sac of townhomes where all their neighbors are 65+,
and they sell your childhood home to a gentrified couple
with modern taste, who wear overalls ironically, and drink homemade beer,
and they tear down the old jungle gym
that you no longer miss, because it no longer exists

September 17, 2023

ONCE UPON AN ADULTHOOD

i thought when i became an adult
i would no longer get acne,
though i don’t know why i thought that,
it’s not like anyone tried to convince me of it,
but i just assumed, i guess,
that acne was an adolescent problem,
like having to go to class to learn things i would not retain,
or having peers snicker at me because of one such thing or another
as i walk down the hallway,
though i suppose high school was just preparing me for
the inevitable train of thought to come,
nothing would change,
but taxes seem strange