Turn off your iphone.
Come to my world.
Feel the mud ooze up
between your toes
as we cross a soggy meadow.
Learn to tell small lies
that can’t be verified.
Have a chance encounter
with a handsome stranger
in a dimly lit café
reeking of Gauloises.
Expect the unexpected.

Stop texting that u luv me,
I have trouble understanding
the clipped prose of the young.
I want to court you with
a dozen antique phrases
from the time before
my hair thinned out and
turned from chestnut brown
to leaden grey.

If you post this on your wall,
I’m going back to
older women.

(originally published in Paradise Review and in a different version in Churn Thy Butter)