Secrets, by Kathy Boles-Turner

(Revised)

The trouble with going behind everyone’s back
to eavesdrop and save up juicy little secrets
is eventually you’ll discover a doozy —
something so dark, so big and threatening
that the owner of it would have your head if he knew
that you knew.

And knowing you, the intoxicating prize of being so clever
will wear off quick and you’ll get careless with it —

a week or so will pass
and you’ll be hurrying in from work, dying for a drink
and a half hour of good TV; you’ll kick off
your shoes, rush to the couch and leave that secret
laying about in plain sight, like the way you toss the car keys
just anywhere …

Or, you’ll get lazy at the end of a long day
and forget about it altogether, the way you forget
to bother with putting the cap back on the toothpaste.
Someone is going to find you out just because you’re a slob.

But the real danger lies in boredom, silence —
that moment you realize no one has noticed your mean little feat,
so you get cocky and devise a plan
like those self-important perpetrators on your favorite
TV drama — you’ll start acting like a creepy little sociopath
who returns to the scene of a  crime
in hopes of being mistaken for a helpful witness,

and it’ll go like this:

The cops will bring you in for a friendly interview,
introduce you to a sketch artist, parade a line-up past
a two-way mirror, and one thing leads to another
then you start getting cute —

you get real sarcastic, and smirk a lot,
then some rookie realizes that new pencil sketch
looks a lot like you and all of a sudden you’re led to a room
with blank walls where a nerdy little chick
starts strapping you to a polygraph.

“How dare you suspect me, I was only trying to help!”
is never going to get you out of it because that rookie watches
the same TV drama on Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

Next comes the DNA swab and you’re fucked.

No one has offered to read any poetry to me, so I’ve been reading to myself. All that reading aloud has inspired me to start recording a few of my own poems. Have I mentioned that I like dark humor? Well, my hope is that I’ve succeeded in producing some laughs (and not just at by my inability to enunciate the word ‘hurrying’).

I wrote this for APAD, Day 4, and have since gone back to revise and record it. Con-crit is welcome, y’all, and so are recordings of some of your favorite poems. Hit me up!