Fred Aiken Writing

Tag: Poetry

May 29, 2024

long hair, slightly care

i let my hair grow out,
but not because i wanted to,
it’s just because i cut my own hair,
partly to save money,
but mostly because it feels like a challenge,
and it gives me an opportunity to get
to know the landscape that is my head,
the grooves, the bumps,
reacquainting with old skateboarding injuries,
the surgery that had me bedridden for three months,
the time my 3rd grade crush laughed
at how big my head was when she handed out
baseball hats that were given to her for free because her uncle
was the accountant of some minor league team,
so of course i got self-conscious that my head was way too big
for my body,
which led me to start wearing clothes, in particular shirts,
that were too big for me, 
in order to give the impression
that my head isn’t all that big for my body,
that my head is reasonably proportional to the rest of me,
though when my cousin found out about what my 3rd grade crush had said about my head,
she went and punched her in the noise
before exclaiming, ‘your nose is now too flat for your face!’
all of which is to say,
i don’t like when people touch my head,
so i just go ahead and cut my own damn hair
Leave a comment
May 28, 2024

bookshelves

i ran out of shelf space for all the books
in my office,
so now there’s a whole bunch of books in the backseat of my car,
and when i see someone in need,
i toss them a book,

i just hope they’re not 
spending all the wealth i give them
on liquor and drugs
Leave a comment
May 27, 2024

planet of the anglerfish

my wife refuses to watch the planet of the apes movies with me,
though she won’t tell me exactly why,
rather she just tells me that she doesn’t like the idea
of apes and primates taking over the world,
the idea sounds too farcical,
which i tell her that’s kinda the point,
but personally i wish that when they rebooted the franchise
ten years ago, that those hollywood executives and creatives
would have chosen a different species this go around
to become the dominant species of earth,
like what would it look like if anglerfish
were to suddenly march up from out of the 
deep, dark blue
and organize an interspecies rebellion against their human overlords,
perhaps the we’ll never know

Leave a comment