Pills

I ‘ve become a pile of pills

standing up here

waiting for my refills

I remember my grandmother

and her pills

they seemed endless to me

back then

“do you need your pills”

“did you take your pills”

they’d say and she’d obey

put them in her mouth with

a sip or two of water

her last days were like that and

I was too young to know what

that is like, couldn’t imagine

myself this old

passing my time waiting in line

for more pills for the pile of pills I have become.

Winners or Losers

Perhaps it’s a roll of the dice

Or a coin flip

Or one of those childhood games

Rock, paper, scissors,

But somehow, we end up winners

And/or losers.

It’s hard to tell where it comes from.

Perhaps it’s written in the stars

Or in the lines crisscrossing our palms

The Ouija Board or tarot cards.

Too often it seems like the luck of the draw

Some of us win, others lose.

I remember being given a book about

Andrew Carnegie to read.

Back then they thought that role models

Like that would move us along

Especially those of us who seemed to be moving

Off in the wrong direction.

Needless to say it didn’t work, but I still have

The book somewhere

Gathering dust in some pile of my lost projects

The millions I was going to make, the books

I was going to write, and all my inventions,

Inventions that never quite worked. All this must have been written in the stars.

Hiding Places

What happens when you lose

Your hiding places

And you must

After all these years

Move things, things you piled up

Put aside for another day

Sure you would need them

Use them

Two of this, two of that

Things you barely remember

Half empty, half full

Hiding away until now

And now you reach in

Reach over

Pull things out and try

To think of what you can do

There’s the rubbish of course

Or other places

New hiding places to set them aside

Again

Prizes you can accumulate against need

Against an uncertain future

Hiding places you won’t have to face

For years or

Maybe you’ll never have to do this

Again.

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J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Black Coffee Review, Literary Heist, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing and Highland Park Poetry.