Craig Kirchner

PROCRASTINATION

I put everything off, stack it,
restack it, move it to another room.
I’m particularly put-offish,
sometimes rude, when told I need to,
have to or must do something.

Pondering emptying the dishwasher,
maybe after lunch,
thinking of the guys in the trenches
in World War 1, with a helmet, a rifle, the rats
and being told to go over the top.

I’ll just be a moment here,
y’all get started without me.
Nobody knew why they were there,
what they were dying for,
or if they would ever see home.

I might have jumped up in WWII,
an inglorious bastard wanting to kill Nazis,
knowing it needed to be done and why,
willing to roll through Europe with Patton,
thinking of myself as Vic Morrow.

But once again, I’m holding off
on the Bhagavad Gita and my reread
of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I’m building momentum though, reminiscing
about the wars I didn’t have to be in.

Pulled a good number in the Nam lottery,
wasn’t in New York for September 11,
and was too old to be needed
looking for weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq
or Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Fortunately, we’ve all seen enough of such things.
Take the trash up, get the mail,
can all wait until tomorrow,
and there is no possible way anyone not Russian,
would start another war in my lifetime.


Craig's YouTube reading of "Procrastination"


Craig confesses: I have missed serving in all of America’s wars but have often thought about what it would have been like. I’ve been opposed to all in my lifetime, Vietnam, etc. I would have thought after the idiocy of Iraq that no one would consider a war in the Middle East.

Craig Kirchner loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart. He has been published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag and dozens of others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop; these words help keep him straight. Craig has an interview up at Spillword and can be found on Bluesky.