Allons a Lafayette

Sweating professional faces
With medically induced cleavage
Gumming up the screen
With lard bottoms and tattoos
Glare at me with all their what’s what—
It’s not just songwriters and poets with the blues

Papa’s grown out his beard
They tell me it’s crisis de middle age
Greying up the texted screen—
Old man with a teener heart
Without a good hoodie excuse
Let’s just go all dancing
And shake your tit fille caboose

Best bring your Yves St Laurent hankie
Cajun dust will be floating on high
Everyone praying for some cleaner air
Broke-foot dancing or a zydeco reel, you choose
Try keeping up with the button accordion, cher—
It ain’t just gamblers who sometimes lose

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Musing

You asked of late how I was,
I failed to answer.
I was in the company of Misery,
But not to fret;
Misery has been my companion long these short 62 years.
We are old close-kept friends,
But such marvelous blues:
Steel, royal, sky, ice, midnight,
And the pale blue-white of late sunset:
A miserable color as neither pure nor hearkening of dark.
But my friend—
I am well enough to run a half-mile
And smart enough to take a dosage of sufficient aspirin;
I no longer hurt so much,
But for the loneliness.
Misery shares such liberally with me,
We both explore the Small Empty.
In the fullness of Time I have shared great times
And small reverses with co-workers and patients and their families,
But no more.
I’m in between opportunities,
So I remain,
Yours truly,
Musing….