Bob Lucky


Philosophy

If ignorance were bliss, surely
more people than me would be
ecstatic. Instead, I’m surrounded
by mopers and moaners who
keep raining on my parade
and pissing in the flower beds
of other ignorant gardeners.
Clearly through the ages dark
and golden, philosophy slipped
off the edge of some flat earth
idea and bobbed up as if nothing
had happened, flashing that eureka
smile, and ever since we’ve been
excessively proud of our ignorance. 



Days and Nights at the Tavern

(Blackout poems based on Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1907) by Robert Louis Stevenson.)

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The Lesson

Why didn’t my parents ever give me 
accordion lessons or bagpipe lessons 
or musical saw lessons or Theremin 
lessons or harmonium lessons or 
violin lessons or even bongo
or harmonica or ocarina 

lessons? It was the crooked-tooth smile ploy
they always used to hide their poverty.
Well, son, would you like that old horse-doctor 
dentist to yank out a few teeth, take some
long needles and jab you in the gums so 
you can flash your pearlies at the girlies, 
or find a girl who likes a buck-toothed smooch?

In the end I opted for the banjo
that no one ever taught me how to tune.

Bob Lucky is the author of Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019), and the e-chapbook What I Say to You (proletaria.org, 2020). He lives in Portugal with his wife and a jangle of ukuleles.

 
 

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