Sunday, February 12, 2017

What Have I Become?

Once an endurance athlete, and now a bowl full of jelly,
I hardly gave a thought to work; now I work in front of the telly.
Between my fur and my taste for cold, I was once a polar bear.
Did I migrate? Yes, and south at that. To a tropical island, that's where.
Mine was once the almost-famous name of a blazing ace of test-taking,
and lately I've found myself unable to memorize a thing.
(In my mind, ideas are illegal immigrants—that's how head-blows affect a poet.)
At some times, under some, I was a patriot; now, I'm nearly twice an expatriate.
Some years ago, I worked with passion, on fire for teaching
Now I spend half my week just waiting for the weekend,
Longing for time to write, and the time I wrote, and the quiet.
From would-be novelist to erstwhile storywriter to dormant poet,
and now neither prolific in the first nor productive in the other,
I've become a motorcyclist, though that one only shocks my mother.

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