the hoa told m e i needed to do
some y a r d work, clean up my property,
in a verbose email sent to me repeatedly every third thursday of the month;
and so i responded that because i paid them a monthly due each month
that i’d either the h o a would need to do the yard work for me,
or i was requesting a refund,
which is why i’m here today,
requesting you not foreclose on my property
just because of this hoa issue i’ve been having
when i was in preschool,
a rumor got spread around that if you read for 48 hours straight,
no break, no meals, no sleep,
then your eyes would either
a) pop out of your skull and kids could kick them around like bouncy balls
or b) your eyes would melt, along with the rest of your brain, and you’d be the eyeless, brainless
kid of the 21st century wandering the halls in search for nothing because you could no longer see,
neither of which are reasons why i don’t read enough books now that i’m adult
that can reason that those childhood rumors were just that,
though no matter how many new years resolutions i make,
i can’t seem to read all that much,
so i guess i’ll just pretend that my eyes might evaporate if i read more than a sentence at a time
i don’t go around telling people that i write poetry,
in fact, i use a pseudonym to stay even more anonymous on the internet,
and i lie to myself that i don’t know why i do that,
though really it’s because i can gossip about myself
without seeming too egotistical,
which might, i realize now while typing it out, sound even more egotistical
Fred Aiken Writing 