NOTE: Over on the gotpoetry.com forum, where poems are so frequently misinterpreted, someone called this poem “cute.” Am I missing something?

o is for opiates on my
hip, just for kicks.

d is for drink, drink
all over my lap and belly.

s is for smoke,
the color of her eyes.

l is of course for love
that comes too easy,
a young trail i’m nonetheless
holding to as close
as if it were a meridian.

g is for a gold rush,
the hope of easy street, the fine wares
of gangster and greedyguts, and g is for
groaning under the weight of pretending
that i expect something to go well.

s is for spill and sorrow,
second guessing, susceptible.
c is for cleaning up
stains left on the floor
no matter how c for careful i am.

a is for afterglow,
abstraction, absolutes.

i would someday like to say i’ve run the gamut
from a to z,
but there is so much left to do
and what’s already done spells nothing
i can even pronounce.

right now, z stands for zebra,
and i can’t see how a zebra might fit in here

except that after all this it might be good to be a zebra
running like a fire across the grasslands,
doing things without overthinking them,
never doing much of anything alone.