Luck

By Joan McNerney

Wearing designer clothes
and sleek jewelry,
she traipses along willy nilly
throwing golden kismet
wherever whimsy calls.

 

Some think Luck chooses their
goodness or hard work. Perhaps
they were blessed at birth?

 

The wise know luck wears a
visor tripping over herself
favoring both mean and lazy.

 

Luck has a toxic twin called
Misfortune covered with
gloom. Dressed in dusty
rags, stupor-like he selects
unsuspecting victims.

 

Stomping helter skelter
clutching the throats of
both meek and mighty.

 

Everybody who gets in his way
will be pushed down, their
muffled cries barely heard.

 

Last Chance

You must come before 9 p.m.
(miracles can be quirky)
to the high way drug store
where pristine pharmacists
feed scripts into forked
tongues of computers.

 

Neat rows of sterile packs
and crutches wait attentively.
Herbal medicines, vitamins
pose with gleaming lotions.

 

One squat wobbly table
marked “Last Chance”
offers up my cure. I must
salvage a phenomenon now.
Here is a miracle I can believe in.

 

A tinted jar of aroma therapy
filled with flowers grown in California.
To be cuddled safely under my coat
taken home far from fists of winds.

 

My glass bottle of jasmine mist...
pink, yellow, white petals.
Night blooming jasmine
whispering perfumed nothings
at the 11th hour.

 

Joan McNerney is a US based poet. Her poetry is found in many literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Poet Warriors, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Four Bright Hills Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Journals, and numerous Poets' Espresso Reviews have accepted her work. She has four Best of the Net nominations. Her latest title is The Muse in Miniature available on Amazon.com and Cyberwit.net