Saturday October 16 (Poetry Challenge Day 12)
Poetry is in my blood.
I remember when I was in High School.
I got a job as a painter in a shipyard.
We were converting a WWII era Landing Ship Transport into a cannery.
The foreman sent me below deck
to paint a shower room.
He forgot to send me down with an exhaust fan.
Marine paint is bad stuff.
By noon, my buddy and I
were writing poetry on the walls with our paint brushes.
It was a contest of sorts.
We took turns composing lines.
When the foreman came down to get us,
he was surprised…
…we got the afternoon off.
Note: The point about poetry being in my blood could be a slight exaggeration… but at least it was that day for a period of several hours, accompanied by a splitting headache after coming back up on deck…