Ashland Train Day 2019

Their wine glasses met
Their lips were sure to follow
She of undetermined glances
He an escapee from yonder hollow

A chance meeting in the Artmosphere
A renowned Cajun dance band
He asked for a dance
Later she took his hand

Up the forty-nine
A full moon recumbent
Light paused and cloud scattered
Allowances taken and full spent

A rainy morning greeting
Toast and coffee? Sure…
A drive around Alexandria
Another three hour tour

Returned to Lafayette
Keen promises to meet again
A thought: do you like trains?
Have you ever heard of Ashland?

Advertisement

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

Pas de Deux

Thought I’d write some blasted words
Of young love turned old and grey
And so I put on tangled up in blue
Hoping the muse would come past this away

But not much passes this way anymore
And all my exes eschew my zip code
Sometimes I’ll google a lady of the night
Hoping for just a little love a la mode

But after the passion storm abates
I’m still in Alexandria alone as ever
Maybe I can render this partitioned farce
Into another couplet fierce and clever

Or at least xomething polysyllabic
Or polyphonic to hold onto an AM radio past
So loaded up the merlot into the waiting glass—
Robert Zimmerman is such a blast

And DeGeneres can teach us to love one another
Without guile or an agenda smurfed and pc’d
But then she’s from New Wawlins, fer true—
Let’s squeeze a metaphor and make her bleed

So gel your foreign tense and parle
Come to Lafayette and pas de deux
Just passion danse on a dirt pad acadien—
You know you wanna two-step; yeah you do!

There’s Doins

There’s doins down in Lafayette
Time for some has beans
No chardonnay in CenLa
No lover in New Orleans
Friday growing older
Rains chasing the sun across the day
Only 80 minutes to a Wilbry sunset—
What will the neighbors say?
Need to hear a Weasel solo
Pierce another load of complacence
Need to find something real
To make any of this make sense
Sidewalks in the glen crest—
Where will the trees go?
Are you still drinking bad red wine?
Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know?
There’s something at the Artmosphere
And at the RocknBowl club too
Can you teach me to be discerning:
So, why is the sky so blue?

New Years’ Plea

Wannabe summers else
Fall into a new line
Get a rented house
That’s all mine
Leave this center
Of pompous lies
Creole up some love
Eat too many alligator pies
Win my own witchy woman
Neath a sly Cajun Moon
Get me outta here man
Before I do sumpthin stooped soon
Hours slow counting down
New Years is right oer there
Open the Mumm’s?
Not sure I very much really care
Just find get a new zip
Somewhere south of I-10
Come on man
Don’t make me beg again
Wanna be summers else
Listen to alligators stalking
Finally finish that cool book
By Mister S. Hawking
If you hear this plea
Text me soon—
Let’s all dance underneath
The next sly Cajun Moon