Damn Distraction

Damn Distraction
by Steven Crisp

My thoughts are like gymnasts,
gracefully jumping between e-mails,
swinging to the cell phone, and
pummel-horsing on my to do list.

Then all of a sudden,
announced by a soft chime,
dressed in a revealing little outfit, she calls me over
to my dual screen display to find ... a poem?

But it doesn’t fit,
like the Ringling Bros clown car
flooded by a river of Buddhist monks,
it just doesn’t fit.

My purpose slips over the threshold
like the coolness of my basement office
when I open the door on a hot summer day.
Why did he send it to me?

And why am I now so drawn to it?

Let’s play some hide-and-go-seek, tag-you’re-it.
Why don’t you cover your eyes
and begin to count,
one-mississippi, two-mississippi

And when you reach one hundred,
come search for me in vein,
and I will stick my fingers in my ears,
pretending not to hear “ollie-ollie-in-come-free.”

Don’t blame me for my disappearance, it’s all His fault.
He broke the shell of my candy-coated existence
He pounded my chest and restarted my heart,
for surely I was flatlining.

Damn distraction, that blessed reminder