Some of you have asked a fair enough question:  why am I working on a poem about gas?  Today, I was in touch with a man named Jerry Finley who promotes a great eighties cover band called “The Breakfast Club.” In fact, my wife Megan and I had our second ever date, on New Year’s Eve, listening to the band at Amos’s in Charlotte.  Jerry and I discussed the possibility of me opening up for the band on a couple of their concert dates in the spring.   It is a little intimidating to think about opening up for a band with a book in hand rather than a guitar.

I wrote another draft of this, long gone, back in college when my love life wasn’t as blissfully happy (thank you Megan) as it is now.

If you think any part of this structure is genius, credit Langston Hughes.  I have closely followed the structure of his “Dreams Deferred.”  That’s a poem I love and read with many middle school students back when I taught in Charlotte.  Thank you to that poet’s work who helped me tap into some laughs when I wasn’t feeling so spirited.

Love is Like a Fart

What happens to love passed?

Does it stink up

Like a port-o-let in the heat?

Or stain your shorts

With a big brown streak?

Does it ribbit-ribbit like a frog?

Or cloud the future—

Like a dangerous fog?

Maybe it just cuts

Like a big fat lie.

Or does it just die?