Two Poems
Steven Kent
As Long As We’re Dropping Names
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My friend is really, truly kin to Søren Kierkegaard
(A fact some local skeptics might consider a canard)
And so I can’t amaze him, though I’ve tried my very best:
I said I met Bea Arthur once, and still he’s unimpressed.
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Drinking for Two
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My darling’s a dear one; I love her most madly,
Though friends, I’m downhearted and blue:
She’s now on the wagon (alone, rather sadly),
And here I am drinking for two.
She’s hot to have children and won’t say how many;
She’ll make a good mother, it’s true,
But good times we had, and today don’t have any,
So lately I’m drinking for two.
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Our nights on the town tend to end by 8:30;
For me this is certainly new.
She’s prim and she’s proper, she’s not at all flirty --
No wonder I’m drinking for two.
The doctor just told us that triplets are coming;
Big changes expected, a few!
My nerves will be needing a whole lot of numbing;
I’ll have to keep drinking for two.
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I spent so much time as a carefree young lad once;
The debt for those days has come due.
I’ll never get back the lean body I had once
As long as I’m drinking for two.
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Steven’s notes: “The first line of ’Dropping Names’ is true: I actually do have a friend who’s related to Kierkegaard, which I still find pretty cool. (The Bea Arthur part is my own invention.) ’Drinking for Two’ plays on the old expression that an expectant mother is eating for two; this one comes from my most recent collection, Home at Last.“​
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Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside (www.kentburnside.com). His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.
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