walt whitman's niece

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? Do you care? I don't really read a whole lot of poetry, but on Saturday I was inspired to write a poem. I guess it is free-verse which I have always thought is the laziest kind of poem you can write because there's no rhyming or counting syllables or anything. But that is how this came out.

Waiting for the Comcast Man
-a love poem-

Between eleven and two
I will wait for you.
I hope you come early.
I might be missing a Seinfeld rerun
or something.

One hour down.
I hope you don’t come in the next 20 minutes
Because I am going to eat some pizza
for lunch
and I don’t want to share
and I don’t want it to get cold.

I don’t know what to do with myself.
I’d hate to get really involved in something
and then have to stop.
Maybe I will read a magazine.

The minutes creep from one to two.
Any minute now.
Still nothing.
Why do you make me wait?
The agony.

What is Barack Obama doing right now?

Now you are late
At what point do I call Comcast?
Maybe you came and I missed it
But I’ve been sitting on the couch the whole time!
Still I doubt myself.
Did I write down the wrong time?

You make it at 3
(an hour late)
You do not apologize
You track some dirt in
You reek of smoke
You head outside to look at some wires.

All the work seems to be outside
Fiddling with these wires.
It makes me wonder
why
I even had to be here at all.

You come back in and ask for the remote.
I guess it is time for the complicated set-up.

You turn to me and say,
“Look, I changed the color of your menu screen.
I made it prettier.”

Frankly
I preferred
the old color.

As you leave, I think
“Isn’t this the way it always is with love?”
You wait forever then it’s gone so fast
Just like the repairman from Comcast.