When hail fell from the sky
as if God’s hand
pulled the lever
on heaven’s slot machine,
we ran over open fields,
garbage can lids over our heads
as pellets banged the metal helmets
we laughed and slipped
on ball bearings of snow
and kissed with our eyes.

Ritch Kepler

Stuck again at closing time,
last calls for final drafts.
Another flirtatious poem
sits alone across the room,
twirls the swizzle stick of memory
in the glass.

Like all the women of desire
I have known
she is a constant mystery.
She curls her hair
around her ear and orders another,
the seductive glance
that pesters the night.

Once again in perfect cadence
I’ll climb the stairs
to bed without the perfect metaphor.

Oh, but for a clever simile,
a flirt from a heart as big as a whale
that would make her smile,
convince her,
that this is my kind of guy,
like,

“Didn’t I meet you once in a poem
late at night?”
and she says,
“I don’t recall ever being in one
of your poems late at night,
was I drunk?”

“Why yes, yes you were! We both were,
and we felt something in common,
a need lonely people at night only know.
For a slender moment we had it right,

we ran it through spell check
and clicked on print.”

“I remember now,” she says,
“And you didn’t look so good
the next morning.”

Ritch Kepler

I’m hiding in the janitor’s closet at work
April 29, 1975

I sit on a bucket turned upside down
and look at the fire sprinkler
in the ceiling
and ponder,
how much water it would spray
if I was on fire.

Two mops upside down
hang on hooks,
their strings fall loose from
their heads.

I listen to the drip
in the sink
next to the long box containing
large plastic bags,
and I am quiet
thinking how men
can listen to their own breath
in silent dim cells.

The brick wall blurs
and all I can see is the
rotary buffer darkened in the corner
with its cord wrapped around its neck.

Ritch Kepler