Water bottles
Check
Canned foods can opener pot to
cook in
Check.
Still ain’t ready.
Come on, readers, you know you can do better than that tripe, up top. Here’s the gig: It’s National Poetry Month. In a lot of states, including California, it’s Earthquake Preparedness Month. It’s also Wednesday afternoon and there’s been news, yes, but it’s time for a break — a rhythmic brain quake — so combine these dutiful celebratory themes and write yourself an earthquake poem. Or an earthquake preparedness poem. Maybe it’s sad. Maybe silly. Doesn’t have to rhyme but if it does that’s dilly.
Hit it.
(What do you win? Jeers and accolades! Perhaps, even, smugness.)
This article appears in Re-Imagining CR.
I sat at a bar in West Texas thinking of all the things in West Texas
that can hurt
or kill you:
Tornados
Lightning
Hail balls (as big as softballs)
127 degree heat
-50 degree cold
“Dust” storms full of rocks
blowing by at
80mph
Rattlesnakes
Scorpions
The women
The beer
When an old guy down the bar
rouses up and says,
“I’d never live in California!”
“Why not?”, I ask him, and he says,
“Earthquakes!”
Earthquakes?!
Hell, I’ve lived through FIVE
seven-o’s
and one six-five
I can’t imagine living through
five tornadoes
or five rattlesnake bites.
I’ll take earthquakes
anyday.