Ken Poyner
Ken Poyner’s four collections of brief fictions and four collections of poetry can be found at Amazon and most online booksellers. He spent 33 years in information system management, is married to a world record holding female power lifter, and has a family of several cats and betta fish. Individual works have appeared in Café Irreal, Analog, Danse Macabre, The Cincinnati Review, and several hundred other places. Check out www.kpoyner.com.
His permit specifically says:
Out of the way.
There are local officials on hand
To decide what constitutes
Out of the way.
I’ve been sold down the river before.
I’ve learned the best reaction to it
Is imagining an enjoyable boat ride.
Fax a copy of your driver’s license, fax copies of the death certificates of long passed relatives mentioned in the debt paperwork. Fill out the questionnaires, all of them. So many people to please, so many people to pay. All those supplying required services require compensation.
But forgive me if I see clearly,
And underline the fact, that what
Did not matter might have mattered,
And that this deafness is still full of single
And irrefutable caustically crystal notes.
The no-tell motel just one street
Off the lot at Chrystal City Four
In Washington, D. C., is not
Doing the business it used to.
The songs are a civilization that at some point
Collapses, the singing dissipates
Into noise, the aliens grow thin
And blow out of our lives with the next thunderstorm.
Other people have better heroes, heroes
That break down less often, that come with a warranty.
But this is my hero, and I’ve gotten used to him.
He can, of course, murder his enemy’s
Children in their sleep, re-educate
Entire societies, round up all the passable
Women in a village to create a forced labor brothel.
