This is another prose poem.
It's called, "I Would Have Told You".
"I would have told you, but we were caught up in the meantime.
Even the jokes fell flat.
What's bright orange and looks good on a hippy?
Fire.
And yesterday, my son bombarded me with lies.
Neptune's summer lasts forty years.
Zebras and ostriches like to pal around.
Shoofly pie is a breakfast food.
Are you surprised that I sleep for eight days
straight, stagger into my shrink's office wearing
nothing but Saran wrap?
My son, when he was five, told me things I'd known forever.
Alligators can't stick out their tongues.
Junk food was once called lubberwort.
But now, he asks harder questions.
About the meaning of melcryptovestimentaphilia.
About where you went.
I say, a fascination with women's black undergarments.
You say, well start from the beginning.
My psychiatrist says, I can clearly see you're nuts.
My fear is you'll read all this as an apology,
or as a request for the return of my robot novels.
My lifetime supply of oranges.
Really, I'm just sitting here trying
to get a phrase out of my head.
'Cheerios, sucka,' which is what a kid told me again and again
last holiday season."