Michael Estabrook- Three Poems

live large, live crazy

Have your beloved

Starbuck’s iced coffee

after dinner, go ahead,

even up to 8 at night.

Yes, the caffeine

may very well keep you up late,

later than you should be up,

so it will be difficult rising

for work early

in the AM, but tonight, tonight!

it is caution to the winds –

go ahead live large, live crazy,

as if tomorrow doesn’t matter,

as if tomorrow may never come.

Nincompoops

And what am I doing with my time,

the limited time I have left

being alive on this planet

before I am thrust forever

into the eternal abyss? What?

I’m going to work, that’s what,

5 days a week, frittering away my time,

frittering away the only thing I have –

the limited time I have left

by performing a stupid, useless,

meaningless job for money,

trying to please

a bunch of mediocre,

lackluster nincompoops,

just to bring home a paycheck.

Seriously! Is that the best I can do?

So be it!

She almost began crying

when I said we’d have to sell

the house if she couldn’t

get her spending under control.

What’s wrong with me?

DAD: You’re simply not allowed

to make this woman cry ever

for any reason, ever,

do you hear?

Yes, Dad, I do hear.

You’re right and I’m sorry.

DAD: If you have to work until you’re 90

to keep this woman happy – so be it.

Do you hear? So be it!


Michael Estabrook is Marketing Communications Manager by day and a struggling poet by night who began getting his poetry published in the late 1980s. Over the years he has published 15 poetry chapbooks, his most recent entitled “When the Muse Speaks.” His interests include history, art, music, theatre, opera, and his wife who just happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.