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Double-Entry Deletion
The other day, I deleted, one by one,
all the dead people from my e-address book.
Turning to the print edition, I erased
the deceased there, too, except for those in ink.
For them, I made do with single lines through names,
addresses, and phone numbers: home, cell, work.
Most of the inked entries, I noticed,
were older than the penciled ones.
This fact, I wrote off to experience,
having long since learned to husband space,
especially the A’s, M’s, and S’s.
(You don’t want A’s bleeding into B‘s.)
The eraser bits, blown off each page
of the print edition, were like dead skin.
Deleted bytes from the computer
may enjoy an ethereal after-life.
To those few entries, electronic, print,
where I wasn’t sure a person had died,
I added a couple of question marks.
One particular enemy, I found,
to my surprise, was missing from both lists.
With special glee, I keyboarded him
into the computer, eschewing epithets:
Bastard, Dipstick, Slime Ball, Asshole, Prick.
Highlighting the entry, I hit “DELETE.”
(Just once, I tapped the key, delicately.)
Not even to enjoy erasing this man,
who had once insulted me grievously,
would I dignify his name in print.
Ron Singer: Poems by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) have appeared in numerous magazines, e-zines, and newspapers. Some of these poems have been anthologized and/or set to music. His three published books are A Voice for My Grandmother (Ten Penny Players/Bard Press), The Second Kingdom (Cantarabooks), and The Rented Pet (Piker Press/Kindle Select/Akorin Books). From 2009-11, he traveled to six countries in Africa to interview pro-democratic activists for Uhuru Revisited (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press, 2013).
Email: Ron Singer
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