#5 This is a Day Timer

I use this ancient method to keep track of appointments. Today, Tuesday February 23, 2010, we meet with our former partner and make the last payment on his buy-out. Done. Over. Fini. So wonderful but also like having a date with a Sith Lord on the books.

Love and anger seem the fuel of poetry or, at least cheap doggerel.






Out to Pasture

Well, old Frank, you creepy codger
Today we rid you from our ledger.
The last five years we’ve been paired
Have been so much worse than we ever dared.
Had we known sooner you were mental
Maybe we would have quit and rented
A little shack on a beach in Maui
And sold lemonade to all the haoles.

Where do I start with your indiscretions?
The list is long; I’ll need libations
To keep me fresh as I recite the tome
Of your crazy deeds that begin alone
With the day I met you at a meeting
Secretly I had been seething
At the amount of time the speaker’d taken
To discuss the over-valuation
Of a company selling school lunch trays
By then I know my eyes were glazed
And needing something to pass the time
It was then, dear Frank, you happened by.

“Are you the lady who owns a business
That needs a partner on commission?”
“That would be me,” I smiled and extended
My hand to the man who blended
Old school wit with folksy charm
Nothing yet to raise alarm.

We spent two months just business dating
Understanding the problems facing
Our business needs; hopes were great.
“He’s come along in time; why wait?!”

We made some calls; all good it seemed
Only one alone said, “ He’s not that clean.”
“What could be wrong?” we thought. ”How bad
Could it be; he looks like Dad!”

Then days stretched into weeks and months
It wasn’t long before we had a hunch
He wasn’t really all that aware
Of how business worked out there.
Oh, he understood things as if he’d been
Locked in a time ruled just by men.

He used to talk about all the ladies
Popping from cakes in the roaring 80’s
The frolicking, chasing, outright boasting
Of office trysts, make Tiger-roasting
Seem a warm-up act for this old geezer
Grandpa posing as a sexed-up loser.
“I miss those days,” he’d muse and moan
In shock all we could do was groan
And realize too late how much we’d missed
During our shoddy due diligence.

So to you, we were wedded by our stock
Ink was dry; too late to rock
The boat or change direction
To act on doubts and premonitions
That our new partner wasn’t a gent
But a nasty leprechaun instead.

By luck, grace and divine intervention
We found a way to unwind our relation
This, our last day of entanglement,
So happy are we to end this stint
In business boot camp, five years hard labor
We know now how to be more stable

So old Frank, your time has passed
For us, for others, it’s really quite sad
To think of all that has been lost
No one today can afford the cost
Of protecting someone just out to win
Especially if the price is in
The ruined wreckage laid bare to see
In lives, in dreams that will never be.
For us, we’re whole and stronger still
And I can guarantee that we will
Never again be quite that blind
Free today. So long, good-bye.