“Worthwhile” by Tom Pescatore

You type
what comes first,
then you print
labels, pull those out
of printer smelling of
heated glue and paper,
smelling like newspapers
and running belts and wheels,
smelling like childhood memories
you can’t quite recapture
with the smell gone so
suddenly leaving.
Afterwards you remove
labels, place on folders
and stamp times new roman
red letters once
for stampings sake.
Place the folder
in its categorized,
alphabetized place
between other folders
placed in their
categorized,
alphabetized place.
Then you leave it
alone, knowing
that you may
never go back to it,
knowing, maybe,
it’s possible that
no one else ever will,
knowing that this folder
will outlast you,
and your children,
and your children’s children,
knowing that what is in
that folder is less than
worthless,
knowing that all of
your effort is meaningless,
knowing that eventually
everything but those
folders will die.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia, dreaming of the endless road ahead, carrying the idea of the fabled West in his heart. He maintains a poetry blog. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally, but he’d rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia’s old Skid Row.