The Old Belfry

Bartleby Bumblebee
Buzzed The Old Belfry
Hoping to find curds and whey

Bartleby Bumblebee
Descended said belfry
Flying smack into Sally Ann Mumphrey Mae

Sally Ann and Bartleby
Found they enjoyed each other’s company
Buzzing about the other each and every day

Bartleby Bumblebee
Was to take his leave from the belfry
But Sally Ann requested that he might stay

Seems Sally Ann Mumphrey
Had news for dear Mr Bumblebee—
Hurrah, she was in the family way!

Bartleby Bumblebee flipped over his wings
Lost in happy thoughts of a million things
Like the everjoy Love can bring

So next time you peruse an old belfry
Think of Sally Ann and Bartleby
And the joyful buzzing of Spring

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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

Poor Little Sweet Tooth

What? No petit fours?
Tres triste tous les jours!
And no fruit cake?
For goodness sake!
And nary a praline…
How absurdly obscene!
Poor, poor little sweet tooth
Not a thing to satisfy your craving—
It’s just enough to drive a little kid
To squander that Snickers he was saving.
How about some sufganiyot?
Anything sweet have you got?
Or perhaps a coffee attending a beignet?
Please, please, something sweet for us today!
Poor, poor little sweet tooth
Such sufferings for you, forsooth!
For you such a paltry slog—
Not even a single Yule log!
So when comest these holidays,
And tastes edge toward the saccharine,
Better be good and don’t even pout—
They’ll be no sugar dusting for your chagrin!
So poor dear little sweet tooth
When sweets seem rare without reason
Best bend your little craving thoughts
Towards why deeply sweet in this December season.
Peace and Shalom!

In the Dark We Know

At times, at night,
Oft after midnight,
My mind won’t let loose the words,
For fear lest I might let fly,
Spiced brocaded prose one cannot call back—
All those burning bridges
Built to serve and to smolder.
What must you think of me?
We’re all getting quite older.
Truths unsaid,
Curses not cast,
Happily ever after—
Will this wrinkled love ever last?
Give you space,
I take the time,
Lost in the meaning
Inside this sorry rhyme.
I desire to once occupy your keen eye
While I hide behind a sordid old lie.
Turning 50,
Turning 60,
70 and 80 come now too soon—
Can we teenagers ever see past the besotting Moon?

Marathon to Mariupol’

I died at Mafeking
I died at Khe Sahn
Do you really care all that much
If I would just carry on
So I fell at Marathon
And at the Angle
Who knew war would ever be
Such a bloody tangle?
Then there’s the Ardenne
The bulge and countless fronts
But Xmas in Germany in Worldly One
Supreme Command doesn’t cotton such stunts
I died in your arms
I died in your eyes
Giving it your all is not
Often all that wise
But then you turn 50
Or sixty if you dare
And it’s not only youth
Lost with one’s hair
Twas born to love you
But arrived this wrong century
Now it’s all tears in the gutter
And so much fiddle dee dee
But back to the honorable dead
And all that attendant filigree
Do you wanna dance and then stay up
And catch the sunrise over the Mississippi sea?
Married, quartered, and drawn
Spinning verses all day long
I love that smile stolen this away
But I never ever would want you to be wrong
Now all Ukraine sobs unheld
All those ‘standing with you’ so very far away
Stille, all those eager Carpathian kinder
Await breathless for a next different new day

Oh to be an Earthling

Oh to be an Earthling
They got golden sunrises and blood red sunsets
And they take their cats and dogs
and pigs and horsies and turn them all into pets

O to be an Earthling
With rain and sun and snow and humidity
But also smog and traffic with jams
And all sorts of songs reminding me of other stupidity

Oh to be Earthling
Hope Taylor Swift finds sleep some fine day
She seems to do her best fretting at four am
But after Red I’m sure we’ll all find a much better shiny way

Oh to be an Earthling
Football, marriages, first dates, birthing babies—
Which I don’t know nuthin about—
That glance from you while looking at me, all these maybes

Oh to be an Earthling
Christmas Day, El Eid, Chanukah, and Wesak
Glorious celebrations and the food
And the presents we never wanna ever give back

Oh to be an Earthling
The rivers and hills and dales and the coasts
All hidden behind borders and lines drawn in distant sand
All to support some tyrants tired mistaken stupid boasts

Oh to be Earthling
Who can learn and grow and extend hands in love
After posing, thinking, weighing, and looking for the high road
When all is so small beneath all those stars twinkling in a night sky above

Oh to be and Earthling
Music, books, movies, fudge, crawfish, gouda, and more
Champagne, merlot, chardonnay? The heck you say.
Such a plethora of plentitude with second helpings galore

Happy, healthy, safe and free
Won’t you be an Earthling with me?

Idano

So
There I was heading to
Haplee, Evraftor
And decided to
Take Aroad less used
And now I’m stuck
In Ushudna, Idanno
Yep twas a USN tar
Held spritely in the eye
By a winsome cradockadileefilly,
But I blinked,
And for many moons—
And now I’m a sworn Ushudna-ite
All by my lonesome
Unless occupying the Artmosphere
Unabated by company or reason,
Looking for a chance to try a dance,
Idano
Tis an old old affliction
For oldems looking aways back
To figure where they went amiss;
Ofttimes it’s about a miss
Or a missed shot for a miss,
Idano
But I’ve tons of free time,
Free to see time
And total the misses,
Down Aroad not much used,
Idano

Musty Heart

I shouldn’t have opened the door
(I decided I couldn’t take it anymore)
Shouldn’t have flung open my heart
(She said she would just come once more).
Left again, leaving me all ripped apart.
Not knowing the reason: a scrabbling on the roof?
I just had to go and see this storm’s proof,
Now gelled into rent and hidden autumnal leaves
Akin to slighted tricks up magicians’ sleeves.
No time like now, like the present, some day or this hour–
The gravity of the empty not knowing drags with such majestic power.

I shouldn’t have opened this, my old man’s prison door,
But creatures such as we must go out and must explore.

Protocol

Want to toss you from the window
Kick you on down the hall;
Totally because of another Covid Solstice,
Songs will blame you for everything and all.

Twasn’t quite all the lies
That drove me deeply into the mad,
It was lingered honeyed phony histories
That made us all go aware into the bad.

Acid lyricism beat upon ragged congas—
Tattoo played upon my head that storied eve:
Another sterling child father moment never ending,
Still now for your passing, and embrace, I still grieve.

Six feet under is the agreed protocol,
Yield thee to the last cool embrace of Death;
Whether or not you’re ready or not at all:
Lastly arrives the time to draw one’s last breath.

Don’t cry , don’t blink—
Missus Vera is buried today.
Of course I still love you;
I’m just alone and have lost my way

Storm Warning

So it was in an old era of insufficient chocolate
And there wasn’t a whole lotta love going on too
I remember she had packed her oh so pretty face
Which left with her name through International Departures Gate Two

But it was really really raining, coming down real hard
Tropical Storm June was plying her blowing trade about town
The lights all went out when all the lines all went down
As luck would have it the red candle sputtered, caught, and glowed
And there’s lotsa lots of fish in the sea, or so I’m told

So we gotta get us a Whitman’s Sampler
And perhaps a new forever love, for true
Blonde, brunette, or gray, even a gambler
But she’s gotta know as I’ve not the least clue

Next morn the tree killers buzzed through the hood
Cutting away the branches, clutter trees, and opened up my road
Twas a new Time for more insurance claims stories, a la mode
But I shredded all that old paper, I’m retired ya know
And the cat needs his vet shots and now I really gotta go

It’s a rough finding you’ve only two M&Ms
And which would be the wrong color, just to be sure
In this odd time of insufficient love and chocolate
Perhaps in a wrapped Arc d’Triompe we can find a cure