What Time Have You

So here I am at seven o’clock
Umm, that’s not the real time
Its where in my maze I’m lost at
Is really 9:20am to fix the rime
Lost inside this place
Of my own making
So I am amazing
Ain’t anybody here faking
Two glasses gone
A merlot for moi
What’ll you have—
Muscadine for toi?
Truelove went to Maine
Chances favor the Bentley
But we‘ll go home alone
Just saying truth, incidentally
No answers from my imprudent text
Who knows what’s coming next,
Chances swarm and the mind reels,
I wonder is that how kismet feels.
Around the bend and around the corner
Such nights as these I could be a goner
But the parade comes thither and anon
Beads, doubloons, and lingering glances and I’m so gone
Over my head for the goddess up ahead
Only to return solo to my Lysol-kissed unmade bed
Cat gets his insulin in the morning
Nine units to keep him alive
You think live isn’t fair
Well, I can’t disagree Clive
So here I am at nine o’clock
Umm, that’s not the real time
It’s just where in my maze I’m lost at
Is really midnight to fix the rime

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Do You Mean Me?

Are those soft words meant for me?
Is it now safe to settle into tranquility?
Icy rains ahead on roads fog-wrapped
Fleeing a love wherein I was once trapped.
Twelfth Night revelers muster at the Carrollton barn
Their annual trek to recover their childhood yarn:

Hey, throw me something mister!
Hey, don’t look that way at my sister!
Meet me at The Avenue and Seventh
Of course! Bring your cousin Kenneth!
Doubloons, cups, beads, catch the daylight;
Oh baby, kiss me good; sweetie, hug me tight.

And so Hump Day with ashes full arrives
And recriminations cut with dull knives—
I only kissed her once on a day care forgot.
We’re done, that’s it, you’d rather not—
Why is life in the thirties so stupid?
Aren’t we adults, who killed Cupid?

Why do we think ourselves
Into such boxes of darkness,
Into that snare of wrong turns;
To put down hard roots
Into a newer unloved land;
Grasping, weak and missing—
Another lost kite string over the hedge;
Another lost thing we swore to keep;
Living a clueless life over the edge
As now I lay me down to sleep?

Are those soft words meant for me?
Is it now safe to settle into tranquility?
Diseases and ruin now arrive to drag us back home.
My armor was never silver but warehouse chrome.
O, to die in Ashland, intox’ed by her clackety-clack.
Just to home return, but you can never ever go back.

Mardi Gras 2015

long, long ago the warmth of your touch faded away
and all other memories all scramble the same,
your’s has drifted into a far pale grayscale
and now I cannot remember your name.
there was something about a Tuesday parade,
beads filled the crisping Southern air,
babies snored atop their ladders
and everyone had properly ceased to care;
but I remember you, behind that mask,
my forever lover who’d never flash your chest
just to woo Mardi Gras beads and doubloons:
o, my love burned hot for you in my breast.
then, your crowd moved off to the Quarter;
and I, left there without a dime to my name,
dragged it on across the Avenue to go on home
and things returned to a faded everday same.
as scripted, we agreed that it was for the best,
but today, I facebooked and googled so very hard
trying to re-refind what was long totally so lost;
tomorrow, turning sixty: what, a birthday card?
“age is just a number:” that’s what they say;
o, the hell with it: Laissez le bon temps roulez!