Three Pocket-Poems - Kathleen Bechtold

Tearing the plastic casing off of batteries with my teeth;
I have to sink back under the water just to find some way to breathe.
If the world's a stage, there must be dust on every audience seat,
but if you turn your back on playing, then the curtain falls on me.
-
We're eating oranges in the winter, just before it starts to snow.
You say, 'for too long it's been winter, isn't there somewhere we could go?'
But there are trees with arms like nightmares waiting outside our window,
and so we gather up the orange peels as the wind begins to blow.
-
Why do I waste my time
with rhyme?
The answer is still the same:
I'm lame.