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Cellblock Row
This life’s a lockup that we’d best avoid.
Genetic blueprints are the prison clothes
we wear. But native threads have since alloyed
themselves with alterations guards impose
like chains which add to sentences we serve.
Some break from the ordeal; some stay in shape.
Delusions that we’re free afford us nerve
to entertain ideas for an escape
from what appears to be our destiny.
And books allow us prisoners to read
while we await release and liberty
to cash in vouchers from our chosen creed.
But all who burgle life must serve their time
till death affords atonement for their crime.
Cashing in the Jackpot
We win the lottery when once we’re born.
For no amount of youthful escapades,
where vim holds up mortality to scorn
and moxie proudly swaggers on parade,
can stay the hand of death’s advancing scythe.
No mesmerized attachment to this life
can help make aging ballerinas lithe,
or put the cutting edge back in the knife
that’s wielded past the season of its use.
But, notwithstanding palliative pills,
our bodies suffer limitless abuse
that undercuts the most resilient will’s
endurance. Neither can we long withhold
the winning ticket that we’ve once been sold.
Frank De Canio has been published in over 200 magazines(and/or e-zines); Danger, Pleiades,
Genie, Write On!!, Red Owl, Nuthouse, Love‘s Chance, Words of Wisdom,
Rook publishing, Illogical Muse, Writer’s Journal, The Lyric, Free Lunch, Art Times,
Pearl; Hazmat, Medicinal Purposes, Blue Unicorn and Ship of Fools,
Raintown Review, and Ascent Aspirations Magazine.
On the web I’m on POETZ, Contemporary Rhyme, Language and Culture, and
Thick with Conviction.
He was born & bred in New Jersey, and works
in New York. He loves music of all kinds, from Bach to
Dory Previn, Amy Beach to Amy Winehouse,
World Music, Latin, opera. Shakespeare
is his consolation, writing his hobby. He likes Dylan
Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost , Ginsburg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.
Email: Frank De Canio
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