The Grey

She, the woman, isn’t insignificantly pretty
With her heart made from aluminum foil
Easily malleable to mold to any occasion
Eager to tweet, post, bake, and/or broil
Do you have a clue what you’re doing
As you try to stay around in the game
With dubious knees and thinning hair
Knowing all that’s new is still the same
Can you manage the latest yoga pose
With your nasty case of a SLAP tear
I’d still chase a skirt, perhaps even flirt
Though nothing much happens down there
I should have married that pretty Craddock
I should have done lots of other better things
Now, waylaid on the exalted road less traveled
I now know what bitter loneliness brings

A Gulf Storm Warning

We know nothing much good happens after the midnight hour,
So I hold little hope for these late writ lines.
Knocking about my Alexandria, at last, cleaned bower,
Remembering a lost love this old heart forever pines.
Storm warnings now up all along the Gulf coast—
Flash floods looming to wash away the humid mire.
I believe still it’s you that I miss hardest and most.
Reunite? Tis ever beyond that which I could hope to aspire.
Dribs and drabs of longing sated in your Facebook posts,
Whether mountain stream or shells along a sandy beach.
How is it we manage to pass young memories to graying ghosts,
And that one true love flies off to be forever beyond reach?
Dishes all washed up and time to take scant wishes to bed;
Today’s crossword awaits there to challenge clue by clue.
Though instead of the Los Angeles Times, I rather be with you instead,
And on the nightstand next to us were your newest daisies blue.
This storm will pass, and Summer blue skies will again find the coast,
Though it is ever you that I will miss the hardest and the most.

Morninglory

So, well…yes
I suppose, I must confess
That I’m just a single simpleton
Never a race I have entered have I won
Not even a single one
Not one
But, once upon a time:
I shall venture with this little rhyme
(Or, maybe a true life’s story)
Of a friend aurora’d in golden glory—
Shall we call her Morninglory
OK then, M’glory
Twas in the frozen North,
Anchoring away such and so forth,
I chanced to follow a fellow swabbie into a shop
Where hot hip transfers are pressed onto one’s top
And oh, my heart did stop—
Full stop
Alas, of course, such a joy couldn’t last
As it happens: the many-many years have passed:
Morninglory had her own full Life’s path to travel,
As I sailed after green seas and trod flat rutted gravel,
Witnessing some dreams coarsely unravel,
Bang, the gavel
Now, upon these here internets
Where youngish oldies can place new bets,
Allowed I was to restart with a believed spent story
And became friends again with my Morninglory—
Never again to be sorry,
Never sorry
So, a Winter wish to all readers of this raggedy rhyme, and so-so story,
That your wishes come true and you again find your own Morninglory

Maple Leaf Dance

Faraway from the witnessing sun,
Escaped away from reproving glances of dead roses never sent,
Once dared think our love might grow,
But crushed beneath small expectation to answer for a knee unbent.
Loose laced shoes carry old feet forward on,
Stumbling with a book of ill written rhyme to find you there—
Polite as always but with nothing to add.
Assaulting the ramparts of indifference, I wonder if or should I care.
A frisson of longing ever lingers—
Some memories of dancing in our Maple Leaf Bar;
Happily ever after slips from old fingers
While an indifferent Moon grandly outshines any old star.

Love In Reverse

Clad in regret
And coif’ed in despair,
Another day has passed—
You, uncalled by the phone by the chair.
Cobwebs adorn all
My old dreams forlorn;
The rains did fall,
And refreshed, the pasture of the lost awaits the morn.
Wick wagging,
A candle mocking—
Here, the only flame that burns
Lights a keyboard click clocking.
Poet bent double,
Love in reverse.
Is the regret or the rhyme
Which tarries for the worse?