Three Alternative Poems For Your Morning Commute

by Josh Lefkowitz

Greetings! Commuter!

Wherefore art thou awash

with the sticky salve of sadness?

Is it because of Brenda?

And what she said at the company-wide

lunchtime seminar yesterday?

You know what?

Brenda needs to learn to shut her mouth.

•••

When the sea is calm and green

And the sky grins in its darkened eternity

Offering numerous numinous starry winks

I feel at home in the world

and I also feel like telling you

That when you clip your fingernails on the train

We all think it’s absolutely disgusting.

You’re like Jared from those Subway commercials:

Nobody likes you.

•••

Please don’t run!

Another train’s a-comin’!

Listen — can you hear it?

It’s motorin’ and hummin’!

And anyhow, that one you missed —

It really ain’t so grand —

In fact, it just got hijacked

By a mariachi band.

•••

Photo via superamit/flickr.

Josh Lefkowitz writes poems and sometimes plays and/or essays. But mostly poems. He won the 2013 Wergle Flomp humor poetry prize.