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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What would Ferena Ashbury say on National Poem Day?

It was one of those determined, inquisitive, tussle-headed boys;
Should she hazard a kiss to find out what he knows?
Dropping down from the Queen’s Tree on Honeysuckle Ridge
Sally Gossamer Wingstep bussed him one right on the nose!
First crinkled into asterisks, then the eye lids slid wide open.
The boy got up from his bedroom willow copse,
While Sally regarded safely from behind a toadstool—
A lad all alone out here? Where’s his Pops?
A half-walk whistle slung low caught her sharp ear:
Sally saw Evelyn over by the ‘Herroyalship’s Tree’.
Sally whipped over to her cousin’s hideaway.
Alright, so now we caught-lost number three.
Evelyn Eagle Wingtip was shaking like a leaf;
“What’s ever is the matter, Eve?
Why are you in such so evident grief?”
“Oh Sally, that boy chased me all morn.
He followed me into our fairie dome;
Now he is oh, so, so lost
And cannot find his way home.”
Sally then thunk some deep thoughts—
Then, smiling, beamed, “Not to worry!
We’ll just call upon our own sage fairie
And spin a spell taught by our Ferena Ashbury!”
Arm and wingarm together they spun
Ascatterin’ fairy dust and achanting as one:

“Take us where the willows glow,
Away from thy Darkness know.”

The boy wheeled and then headed back towards camp
Missing the fairies shrieking glee of joy.
Twas an older spell for the fairly Lost:
Kitten, pony, or overly-determined little boy.
Sally and Eve flew off, soaring on up high
Back to their own warm abodes in Fairie Dome;
Happy the boy was headed in the right way,
And they too were safe, aheaded home.

–thanks to Lillian Patricia Perkins Fedoroff for loaning me Ferena Ashbury
(and a line or two) as a character for this poem for National Poem Day 2015

Chopin Prelude Number 13

The pretext to context—
I’m not supposed to be here:
That’s what my father told me.
But here i am, dropping a tear.
Now, quit my next job,
As brother suffers the same.
How do i talk with you
To get out of this game?
i had a true love;
i failed her so bad;
Now i have a daughter—
Damn, how can I do ‘Dad?’
Pallbeared in Marble Falls,
A family ripped apart,
I can’t do this any more
With this ignorant heart.
Brother, thankfully, didn’t die,
Though anger rules his house.
I’d love to be of help,
But he only sees another louse.
So i put down these lines
To see where can I go—
Can we really ever help?
No? Yeah, I suppose I should know.
But here i am, dropping a tear.

Ankle Breeze

The angry drubbing from the cold January Sun

Has beaten all the trees’ leaves to the ground;

The peal by a distant neighborhood campanile

Offers but pastel respite from this new winter day.

After hours and an ankle breeze brushes cold
Times bear hard and thoughts scare appalling—
Late on a school night and we risk a third glass bold;
Excuse me, dear, but why is it hospice keeps calling?

Home—a far place unreachable, unknowable, except as

Errant memories allow.

Three score save one with 22 gray days to go,
Yet cannot believe one keeps falling.
Walked this way thousands of times but now…don’t…know,
But why does hospice keep calling?

Tomorrow comes to call as if knowing

Something…