three poems
by Howie Good
The Adoration
I have enough pills already put away to do the job. Tramadol, Tizanidine, Oxycodone, Gabapentin, prescription muscle relaxers and painkillers to take in one go. I am not as terrified of death as I am of irreversible decline. H. L. Mencken, who once said, “A good phrase is better than a great truth,” suffered a stroke when he was 67 that robbed him of the ability to read, write, or speak. He lingered in that devastated condition until he died at 75. The radiation I absorbed two years ago during treatment has transformed into burning lavalike streams that creep along the nerve pathways in my back and chest. Sometimes the pain becomes too much, an absolute inferno. My face twists into the anguished expression Christ wears on wall crucifixes – but, of course, without my being worshipped and adored.
A Siren Whoops
The first time I ever got pulled over, I was 17, with hair down to my shoulders. It’s possible I was still high from the night before. An overweight, bigoted, middle-aged cop, his hostility obvious on his doughy white face, ticketed me for having an obstructed view out the rear window. The view was obstructed by a peace sign decal. Crime pays, just not a lot, 86 cents a day if you’re picking cotton on a prison farm in Louisiana.
Textbook Example
In a wilderness area outside Coeur d’Alene, an armed man lurks in ambush. I’m not like him. His brain is cold, dark, grimy. Some trekkers are coming down through the trees. The first law of thermodynamics states that in a closed system, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only converted into other forms. For example, when a gun is fired, the potential energy of the gunpowder is converted into the kinetic energy of the bullet. No one in the example is concerned about who the bullet hits.
Photo of Howie Good
BIO: Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose poetry collections include The Dark and Akimbo, available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. Sacred Parasite is scheduled to publish his newest collection, True Crime, in early 2026.