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Friday, April 13, 2012

Just In Case (Prompt: Unlucky)

I avoid walking
under ladders
and will skid
out of the path
of a black cat.

I knock on wood
and scratch
the interior ceiling
of any car I'm in
when going through a
yellow light.

If the car radio
is playing “Respect”
by Aretha Franklin
I shut it off
because it was playing
when I was in
that car crash
back in 1985.

I don’t have
lucky lotto numbers,
but I do have
a lucky number -
anything that isn’t
13.

If I spill the salt
I sweep it up and
throw it
over my shoulder

and I always pick
my wife’s handbag
up off the floor,
so she’ll never be poor.

I always take tests
with freshly sharpened pencils
so I am using pencil points
that never made
an error.

And whenever
I have to do a
Power Point presentation
for the
Board of Trustees,

I attach and it send
to 3 different
email accounts

always with the memo line
JIC (Just In Case),

and bring the presentation
on two separate
flash drives.

And every Friday
I wish my wife
“Happy Anniversary”
mostly out of love
but a little bit
out of fear
of what’ll happen if
I forget,

because
you can’t be
too careful.

3 comments:

  1. So right.
    I never set foot outside today.
    All the more time to write poetry :-)
    Shoes on the table is another no-no. Not that we ever do. But now I know why we are poor.

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  2. ;)
    Love this. I don't have a superstitious bone in my body, but boy do I relate to the song one.

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  3. That's funny...and almost a complete opposite of the poem I wrote, haha. You manage to avoid the "bad luck" while it seems to come looking for me. Good luck with that. :D

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