Mortaine’s Blog

Today is the very last day that you can enter my poetry contest!!!

Enter by midnight if you want to be in the contest. See the linked post for details!!!

April Fools jokes are funnier when I’m awake for them.

C’mon people! 4:58 AM, rah? Couldn’t you wait until morning?

I would hesitate to call this “done” in any meaningful sense of the word, but I put all the words down for now.

He’s faster than a bird or plane, in blue nylon socks
Pulled tight to his legs, a yellow
Cape fluttering behind him while he saves Captain Bunny
From the Troll Beneath the Stairs. His soda
Sits in front of the TV while he aims the fireplace poker,
Now a death-ray gun. Our hero from the pages of the comics.

His young mind absorbs nothing but those comics
Which become as real as life, as tangible as socks
As serious as a shark playing poker.
He halts, obeys the call to lunch, sips yellow
Apple juice from a tippy-mug; he secretly craves cherry soda.
Later this afternoon, he will pretend he’s a bunny.

Outside in his hutch huddles the soft-furred bunny.
Brought home at Easter, now ignored, except to change the comic
Pages that line his cage, or to dust everything with baking soda
“Because he smells,” says Mom. He has white socks
And black fur. His eyes are yellow
With hatred for the Boy known to the bunny only as The Poker.

The Russian sitter’s daughter loves to poke her
Big-baby nose in, her stuffed bunny
Hanging from tiny, damp fingers, its yellow
Ears wet, big-baby drool. She touches his precious comics
He jumps up, chases her yelling “I’ll knock your socks
Off!” Not knowing. Her mother laughs: “So. Da.”

She laughs, her deep European chuckles. “So, da–
You leetle ones, want to learn de poker,
Da?” Shuffles cards. Smokes. There are no clean socks.
He shakes his head, grabs the stuffed bunny
And runs until she shrieks and he trades her for a comic
To shut up. She can’t read, but likes the red and blue and the yellow.

Who is this little little boy, with the bright hair, gold and yellow?
Whose chubby fingers reach for his mother’s soda?
Who is this new slapstick, pratfall, standup-falldown comic?
Shiny new, he wears himself on his sleeve– no face for poker.
Not yet, anyway. He hops around the house like a bunny.
And does not care if there are no socks.

Someday, later, he finds the comics, stacked in the attic, pages yellowed.
Memories, socked away. A deep whisper echoes, affirms. “So. Da.”
Playing grown-up games: life’s like a poker hand. No more he saves Captain Bunny.