by Jim Bohen
10 Poems You Won’t Survive . . .
- the chute won’t open.
- the oxygen is running out; it’s outer
space, no rescue ship. - you’re on the list from Robespierre.
- a new gestapo’s cornered you;
it’s only a matter of time. - your army lost to Genghis Khan.
- the bounty hunter “Never-Alive”
is on your trail — his trigger finger
itches; you’re getting very pale. - you’re Julius Caesar, Ides of March.
- lifeboats gone, ocean’s cold,
Titanic’s cracked and going down. - your name’s Macbeth;
the wood to Dunsinane has come. - the cancer has metastasized,
containing it is done.
. . . and 10 You Just Might
a lightning strike, a head-on-crash,
a mass shooting, the London Blitz.
a Nazi concentration camp,
a nasty fall, Moby Dick.
a terror attack, barrel bombs
dropped on your town, Mrs. Peacock
in the hall with the candlestick.
Jim Bohen is a poet/songwriter from St. Paul, MN. His poems have appeared in the Minnesota Daily, Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal, Conclave, Third Wednesday, Cracked Walnut’s “Threshold” chapbook and elsewhere. He’s been short-listed twice for the erbacce prize (an international competition). I travel in rusting burned-out sedans, his first collection of poems, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2018. A music CD, entitled “Never Too Late,” contains his vocals on 12 of the hundreds of songs he’s written (samples can be heard at iTunes and cdbaby; search for “J B and the Phantom Band”). Jim and his wife Bonnie have two grown children and do daycare for their two young granddaughters.