big money transaction

Poems hang out where life is. – Susan Wooldridge

If this is true, and I think it is, my life and Walter Mitty's are often quite similar. My poems sometimes hang out where my imagination goes. This week's Big Tent Poetry prompt was to jot down in a notebook words and phrases that you hear during the week. "'Pick me, pick me!' you hear the neighbor kid shouting. Write it down. '… no reading required,' you spy on your child’s Memory game. Write it down. Step outside your door and write down the first five things you see: cracked stair, beach towel, empty bird bath, overgrown garden, green plastic watering can. Go back inside and raid the pantry: cumin, ground pepper, canned spinach, lazy susan." In this way, we were to create own Wordle and write a poem.

I wasn't a very good poetry student this week. I didn't have much time to listen. The phrases I wrote down were, "big money transaction," and "floating above his body." I wrote this little story poem on those two phrases. I may work on it some more, but for now, the accomplishment was having the self-discipline to write something - anything - in a week with little time to breath.


big money transaction

it was a big money transaction
about to take place
but he didn't quite grasp how
it might change his life.

if this were real,
he would not feel that he was
floating above his body,
watching the whole thing happen . . .

money in hand,
he felt the prickle of cold sweat
on his temple as he walked away -
and tugged on his mask.

just when he thought it was done,
he felt his arms go up in the air
on the shout of, "FREEZE!"
it was a set up, and shake down.

the bad guys he trusted made
another transaction.
he was left with nothing
except the sound of the sirens.

nothing in life comes free.
freeze. framed. freeze-frame.
it was a big money transaction
-- only real for an instant.