Daily haiku / senryu : visceral

It’s so visceral
he said, on reading my poem
huh? what does that mean?

Back in my twenties, I shared my poems with my friends at work, the post office. Mike B. made that comment. We were so young back then, in our twenties, a bunch of us.

Mike wanted to be an actor and eventually moved to New York City. I saw his name once in the credits of a Jazz documentary. I hope his dreams came true.

I left to go teach English in Koriyama, Japan. Others got married, had kids, bought homes.

Funny how one word  can call up so many memories.  I remember our crew, that Christmas month working 12 hours, 7 days, and the crazy shenanigans including hanging my stuffed dragon from a ceiling conduit.  How Mike and Jeff got it up there, I have no clue.

Colleen, my roommate at the time , studied medieval history.  Our crew had a potluck and she made a dragon roast for me to take.  She shaped ground pork mixed with loads of herbs into a dragon.  It looked amazing but the taste …. Everyone had a bite; no one had seconds.  It was awesome.  Too bad I lost the picture.

I’ve come full circle.  Moving back to Arizona when my dad passed to live with my mom.  Now she is gone too.  It’s easier to be the one going some place then to be the one left behind.

Ed is still in Phoenix, hand pollinating his single date tree to grow mouth-watering fruit that taste just like caramels.  Linda, widowed recently, is a blogger now. Pam, another person who loved traveling, became a therapist, married a guy from New Mexico. But with so many people, over the decades, I’ve lost touch. I wonder what happened to those folks, where they are now.

 

Reference:

Visceral
Daily Prompts
The Daily Post

Amazon reads: A few of the mystery writers I love that write about Arizona (ok, Medium is a tv series but it counts). I just threw in the Kitchen Sink book because it sounded interesting but I haven’t read it yet. I didn’t realize the writer was a local so am thinking of getting it now.


Betty Webb: Desert Noir

Elizabeth Gunn: Cool in Tucson

Medium: the first season DVD set

Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink : Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest

disclaimer: I signed up as an Amazon associate. I should get a percentage back if anybody buys anything at Amazon through my links. (Amazon doesn’t decide if they accept you until they look at your site after a first purchase. No first purchase yet, so still in the acceptance process. It’s been a month but I think they give you time.) Books are 4.5% but other things vary from 0-10%. I think Amazon requires the following text: “We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.”