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To Happiness -- Carl Dennis

 
(Poem #250)To Happiness
 If you're not approaching, I hope at least
 You're off to comfort someone who needs you more,
 Not lost wandering aimlessly
 Or drawn to the shelter of well-lit rooms
 Where people assume you've arrived already.
 
 If you're coming this way, send me the details—
 The name of the ship, the port it leaves from—
 So I can be down on the dock to help you
 Unload your valises, your trunks and boxes
 And stow them in the big van I'll have rented.
 
 I'd like this to be no weekend stay
 Where a single change of clothes is sufficient.
 Bring clothes for all seasons, enough to fill a closet;
 And instead of a single book for the bedside table
 Bring boxes of all your favorites.
 
 I'll be eager to clear half my shelves to make room,
 Eager to read any titles you recommend.
 If we've many in common, feel free to suggest
 They prove my disposition isn't to blame
 For your long absence, just some problems of attitude,
 
 A few bad habits you'll help me set to one side.
 We can start at dinner, which you're welcome
 To cook for us while I sweep and straighten
 And set the table. Then light the candles
 You've brought from afar for the occasion.
 
 Light them and fill the room I supposed I knew
 With a glow that shows me I was mistaken.
 Then help me decide if I'm still the person I was
 Or someone else, someone who always believed in you
 And imagined no good reasons for your delay.
-- Carl Dennis

They Should Have Asked My Husband -- Pam Ayres

 
(Poem #249)They Should Have Asked My Husband
 You know this world is complicated, imperfect and oppressed
 And it's not hard to feel timid, apprehensive and depressed.
 It seems that all around us tides of questions ebb and flow
 And people want solutions but they don't know where to go.
 
 Opinions abound but who is wrong and who is right.
 People need a prophet, a diffuser of the light.
 Someone they can turn to as the crises rage and swirl.
 Someone with the remedy, the wisdom, the pearl..
 
 Well, they should have asked my husband, he'd have really gone to town.
 With his thoughts on immigration, teenage mothers, Gordon Brown,
 The future of the monarchy, house prices in the south
 The wait for hip replacements, BSE and foot-and-mouth.
 
 Oh, they should have asked my husband, he can sort out any mess,
 He can rejuvenate the railways, he can cure the NHS
 So any little niggle, anything you want to know
 Just run it past my husband, wind him up and let him go.
 
 Congestion on the motorways, free holidays for thugs
 The damage to the ozone layer, refugees, drugs.
 These may defeat the brain of any politician bloke
 But present it to my husband and he'll solve it at a stroke.
 
 He'll clarify the situation, he will make it crystal clear
 You'll feel the glazing of your eyeballs, and the bending of your ear.
 Corruption at the top, he's an authority on that
 And the Mafia, Gaddafia and Yasser Arafat.
 
 Upon these areas he brings his intellect to shine
 In a great compelling voice that's twice as loud as yours or mine.
 I often wonder what it must be like to be so strong,
 Infallible, articulate, self-confident.. and wrong.
 
 When it comes to tolerance he hasn't got a lot,
 Joyriders should be guillotined and muggers should be shot.
 The sound of his own voice becomes like music to his ears,
 And he hasn't got an inkling that he's boring us to tears.
 
 My friends don't call so often, they have busy lives I know
 But its not everyday you want to hear a windbag suck and blow.
 Encyclopaedias, on them we never have to call,
 Why clutter up the bookshelf when my husband.. knows it all!
-- Pam Ayres