27 Comments
User's avatar
Ray Zimmerman's avatar

My nemesis is the kiosk at my pharmacy. Lately I find myself wondering what would happen if I tased the kiosk.

Rebecca Cook's avatar

OMG YES! So many doctor's offices have put in those stupid kiosks. They slow things down. They are stupid. How decided this was a good idea??

Ray Zimmerman's avatar

Someone who thinks the kiosks will increase profits by reducing staffing costs made the decision. Funny thing. These offices still have the same number of staff, but they refuse to talk to you.

Jacquelyn Cisper's avatar

I love this and I relate, only in my case it is random kids toys always underfoot and in the worst places instead of kitchen equipment.

Rebecca Cook's avatar

I have moved past the mislaid toys, but I remember!

Mahdi Meshkatee's avatar

Out of all these inspired lines, the one that hits the hardest is "I cannot change it." Thank you for sharing, my dear friend.

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Because I just cannot. The laws of physics. If I had created the world it would be quite different. No tangle of cords!!

Ray Zimmerman's avatar

Poem for Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in its Human Feet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouqljb5g1eU

Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

Oh those last lines! Suddenly from the everyday despair, the reader is elevated to the grit of stubborn survival!!!

"and my enormous sorrow of knowing

I cannot change it

and that I will not

yield gracefully

to its inevitability."

Nazish Nasim's avatar

Such Immersion into the mundane. Beautiful Rebecca

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Thanks so much, N.

Lois Rowley's avatar

Yeah i feel that. The life that just keeps coming!

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Yep! Coming for us all.

David Kirkby's avatar

You made me smile, dear Rebecca….

I have a deep fondness for toasters, and the way they so often fail at their one, simple, transformative task.

They make me feel better about my own multiple failures :)

I also love the way they start out bright and shiny and clean and perfect seeming, then slowly tarnish and fill with crumbs, and lose their supposedly infallible settings.

Just like us.

Best Wishes - Dave :)

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Good metaphor!

Alex Dawson's avatar

The first stanza got me!! I am the type to throw a misfiring toaster straight out the window lol

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Glad it got you, Alex.

School of Blue's avatar

I love this A LOT, Rebecca. Such a talent for taking us places i never dreamed I could go to. I will return to this.

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Thank you, Richard.

Laura's Night Stack's avatar

As one who drops most of the things i try to pick up all I really love this. Oozes frustration. And what a great linebthis is..."the hard-as-nails soul of the biscuit cutter".

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Ain't it the truth? The tangle of cords beside my chair becomes epic in just 1 day.

Tanya Levy's avatar

love this

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Thanks, Tanya. Are you also in the group?

Sarah Thompson's avatar

SO GOOD!! How you manage to make the mundane both spiritual and hilarious. Loved hearing you read this yesterday.

Rebecca Cook's avatar

Thanks, Sarah. I decided to just post it. It irritates me that posting here is counted as "publication" by most journals. I have begun to submit again. I write so much now, and get so excited, that I forget to reserve some poems for submitting.

Sarah Thompson's avatar

Yes, I know that feeling! I get excited and want to share stuff right away, I have little patience for "hoarding the good stuff" and then waiting and waiting for a possible acceptance. It would be much kinder to writers if more publications accepted what's already been published on what is essentially a personal blog.