The Coin Toss
By Maurie Nord
I see the two sides of a coin
Heads or tails deciding
Flip of thumb and on the ground
The referee is minding
The toss of coin
The flip of thumb in air
By law he must be bound
But the quarter back has a secret pass
Touch down!
I received!
And I’m out of hiding
January 1, 2015
HAT ETIQUETTE
(“the terrorists are negotiating with grocery store hostages out of their respect for human life…” CNN)
by Maurie Nord
Hat etiquette
is there anyone alive
who remembers it?
or have they all
taken the dive beneath
cold soil
in marble orchards
now powerless to decide on
matters that are obviously right?
is anyone able to touch a brim
to pinch a crown
to politely brush it
or sometimes to respectfully remove it?
is there anyone willing to wear it on a wise head
over a heart brave enough to sail, fly or
to march into the night
upon some bloody beachhead and fight
for what is clearly the Truth
brave enough to capitalize the Word
and to even die for the right to do so?
I think there are many
but they sadly lack those
with a set big enough to back them
is there anyone unafraid to write a poem
pretentious enough to rhyme?
or to make any kind of sense at all?
one that leaves those sadly bereaved
of sanity to be pinned and wriggling on a wall
where some women still come and go
talking of Michaelangelo?
is there anyone left to understand
a sweat band?
perhaps we have only a bewildered band
grandsons of great grandfathers
who paid a great toll
the greatest generation
(we forgive their martinis
their digust for Mary Jane
long hair
and their refusal to seriously
touch their brims
except with wry grins
when they first heard the music
called “rock and roll”
EP CB and later some
bands that had only four)
for them a band was big
Benny Goodman or Lawrence Welk
but more than a-one-and-a-two
they were a band of brothers
or else, to them a band
meant a fancy
ribbon on a felt fedora
and before that a leather strap
they cinched around
a cowboy hat
Limericks, Jokes, and other poems by Clancy O'Lafferty and Maurie 