Tag Archives: pain

Childless Father’s Day Redux: Revolutionary ImproVerse Rhyming Poetic Lament

Mere minutes away,
but they’ve got no money.
Don’t our children know
that their dads would mow
their lawn, take out the garbage,
or clean their garage,
to be with their children on Father’s Day?

Anything beats sitting at home
all alone,
staring at the phone,
waiting for their call.
Trying not to bawl
or feel dumb
When the message doesn’t come.
Feeling sad,
I wonder: “How bad
was I as a dad?”

Eating Out Alone: Romantic Free Verse ImproVerse Poem Lament

I love to eat out,
but this was a different
type of meal,
a spiritual Feast, really,
and I longed to share it
with somebody I cared about,
someone who enjoyed the same cuisine
(or so i thought.)

I reached out to her
time
and time
again
but there was never
any response;
never
any indication
that she
was having
the same feelings.

At last,
as I waited for dessert,
(knowing she was not
going to partake,)
I realized
that she and I
were not looking
at the same menu.
I thought
that she might not even
be hungry.
Or that maybe
she might be eating out
elsewhere.

I learned,
again,
and was reminded,
again,
that the gut-wrenching feeling,
the butterflies,
in my stomach,
that familiar feeling
that had come around
for over a decade
was not caused by her,
nor by my hunger,
but was a result,
as it had been
so often in the past,
of my silliness,
my over-indulgent intensity.

So I asked for the check
and left.

Never Saw It Coming: Revolutionary ImproVerse Free Verse

As he listened to his daughter
rant
about what a terrible father
he had been while she
was growing up,
he couldn’t help
but recognize the same words and complaints
that his new love had claimed
about her ex-husband.

It made him sick,
and it made him run.
He didn’t think he
was that terrible person, but maybe he was,
and he had just never seen it.

Everybody else had,
but he couldn’t.
And isn’t that
the narcissistic
way?