The Channel Surf
We watch with urgent need to learn
What happens in more famous lives.
Yet what makes these things our concern—
Like how much does a player earn,
And does he speak with former wives?
We watch with urgent need to learn
Which models will the judges spurn
And which express their stress in hives.
Yet what makes these things our concern?
A mess of starlets flash and yearn,
A singer crashes when he drives.
We watch with urgent need to learn
When actors’ stage-fraught stomachs turn
And comics dull their wits in dives.
Yet what makes these things our concern?
Once posed, these questions swell and burn.
One’s answered, and the next arrives.
We watch with urgent need to learn,
Yet what makes these things? Our concern.
Segway Patrol
An officer is called
And rushes to the scene,
To serve and to protect,
As fast as he can lean.
Goldfish Confidential
A lap around the bowl and, then,
A quick tour of the bowl again,
Which I repeat without regret.
Those were the best three seconds yet.
J.D. Smith‘s poems have appeared in several previous issues of Light, and his first humor collection, Notes of a Tourist on Planet Earth, which includes both poetry and prose, was published in March 2013. His third poetry collection, Labor Day at Venice Beach, was published in 2012. He buys insurance only from fellow mammals.