Two Poems

by Linda Imbler


Bandaids
 
Remember when bandaids came in a tin box
instead of flimsy cardboard?
It’s as if the hurts
don’t need to be protected as much as they once were.
 
The glamour and illusion of safety
in childhood is today dispelled
 
whiskered chins
and palsied hands
offer no safekeeping
 
and the mitigation of unhappiness
is no longer a hope
 
the illusion of size to security,
shattered
 
falling is still an option,
but now it’s so much harder to get back up.




To The Dead, We Are Monotonous
 
The dead have no interest in being alive again.
 
They don’t hang out in cemeteries.
They go other places,
find more interesting locales.
 
They hold their cycle of conferences
and do all manner of deft plotting
with only their own future in mind.
 
There is no opportunistic uprising
being prepared by those gone cold
in order to wipe us out.
 
So, while the night wind croons
and we worry we will have visitations,
while our seamy superstitions
force us to light bulbs and candles
and wring our hands,
as these demonstration of our fearfulness
consumes our dark hours
 
the dearly departed stand apart,
impartial to our world.
 
They see us as monotonous.
 

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​Linda Imbler’s poetry collections include Big Questions, Little Sleep, Lost and Found, The Sea’s Secret Song, and  Pairings,,a hybrid ebook of short fiction and poetry. She is a Kansas-based Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee. Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found here.