My Richard is a closet poet.  He has several poems that are published.  He will never toot his own horn or share his own work with friends.  So I, with much pride, will do it for him.  Here is his latest poem written as his 44th birthday approaches next week.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POEM

—on my 44th birthday  by Richard Shaffer

Here is my breath.  Here.

Breath Marks the spot.

And here are my clumsy hands.

And this is the body my childhood died inside of.

My latest incarnation.

the many Mes inside this body argue from their rooms

My body now a hostel for thieves and homeless men

Dying of boredom is the longest dying:

A most inefficient suicide

The most common form of death in my country.

What would the toucan say?

Oh to be the bees

There was no parade.  Or I’d missed it.

I’d like to come back as a tree.

My wife and one two three four children hold the corners of my heart.  Place it down let’s dance and lie on it.

Some days feel like getting on the wrong train

continually missing my stop

The small part of me worried

there may be no more stops at all just motion.

I am alone.

Somebody blow out the candles.

Wildly and in spite of everything though

Including my best efforts to defeat it

the canary in the coal mine of my heart

Keeps coming back alive.

I Introduce to you my heartbeat.

This year, Father, keep me

Busily un stapling my own feet from the floor

So I might dance myself into a next new thing.

I give to me my heartbeat.