Bad Poetry

Counting Thumb

This poem has a completely different vibe to it. It is currently in the editing stage, a stage in which I stare at a poem and try to figure out what is wrong with it. At a certain point, I am forced to make it a read only file and put a password on the file that consists of numbers tapped randomly (in a sequence that I can do with my eyes shut so I can type the password the required two times). Over modification has killed more than one of my poems. Here goes.

counting thumb


My French office is on the second floor.
Second if you count like the French
with your thumb as one
starting on the second floor
saying it’s the first.

I’m there now. Or rather here.
Not there where you are, but here where I am
and you are not.
Unless I happen to have gone home
which makes this whole argument irrelevant.
Just like the French way of counting floors.

Second or third, there are still stairs involved
or an elevator I rarely use.

I guess I never liked elevators
especially in buildings with fewer than four floors.
Laws that require elevators seem cruel
Because in the event of a fire
when an elevator can’t be used.
how will the handicapped get down?

The problem could be solved if we learned to fly.
The handicapped would soar above their wheelchairs
and their canes
and our now useless elevators

Just imagine: in the event of a fire
we’d break the glass
then take a flying leap
to soar like sparks out the open window
past our second/third floors
above the distant wail of sirens.

In all honesty it does sound better to say:
My French office is on a floor above which
we would soar
if we could fly.

posted by Andy W. Anderson, Ph.D Candidate @ 8:22 AM