Do You Mean Me?

Are those soft words meant for me?
Is it now safe to settle into tranquility?
Icy rains ahead on roads fog-wrapped
Fleeing a love wherein I was once trapped.
Twelfth Night revelers muster at the Carrollton barn
Their annual trek to recover their childhood yarn:

Hey, throw me something mister!
Hey, don’t look that way at my sister!
Meet me at The Avenue and Seventh
Of course! Bring your cousin Kenneth!
Doubloons, cups, beads, catch the daylight;
Oh baby, kiss me good; sweetie, hug me tight.

And so Hump Day with ashes full arrives
And recriminations cut with dull knives—
I only kissed her once on a day care forgot.
We’re done, that’s it, you’d rather not—
Why is life in the thirties so stupid?
Aren’t we adults, who killed Cupid?

Why do we think ourselves
Into such boxes of darkness,
Into that snare of wrong turns;
To put down hard roots
Into a newer unloved land;
Grasping, weak and missing—
Another lost kite string over the hedge;
Another lost thing we swore to keep;
Living a clueless life over the edge
As now I lay me down to sleep?

Are those soft words meant for me?
Is it now safe to settle into tranquility?
Diseases and ruin now arrive to drag us back home.
My armor was never silver but warehouse chrome.
O, to die in Ashland, intox’ed by her clackety-clack.
Just to home return, but you can never ever go back.

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The Granite, The Bouquet, and The Sad

The light followed the star over the hill
As the fog rolled in with the cold
Twas a different kind of Christmas story
At least as far as I remember what I was told

A deep abiding affection afflicted the old man
And finally had the means to fulfill a promise
And many, many lonely miles he did trudge to deliver
A last bouquet of daisies to lay before his one fair miss

In younger, luckier days our man had paid fervent troth
To she who now dwelt in yon granite sarcophagus,
But a wrong spoken word had ended it all forever;
Such a piteous loss as to be endured by any one of us.

But our Vanity is a grievously jealous mistress;
And he could not, would not forgive, the slight by his true love.
Such tragedy our old man had scripted in a cold bile ink,
Disparaging of her and placing his wounded veil above.

Carole, the second beauty born of Marble Falls
On one lank Christmas Day between the great wars,
Loved above all Nature’s beauties the blue daisy—
She would fill her Mother’s pots, trestles, and jars.

Silas, our poor fool from a far crescent city east,
Would bring bouquets of blue daisies to ply his troth,
And won her heart, and a date sure was firmly set—
What could possibly set aside such as this Love’s oath?

A sorry, sad mistake came to undo our lover’s story:
Carole observed unartfully our Silas over harsh tone:
As blasted to the quick, Silas cast off his cheery mantle,
And demanded keenly by Carole to be left forever alone!

Oh, Silas! One word passed without art has chilled thee so?
And bereft of her future, our shaken Carole turned to leave.
Only alone, later in his poor ivory tower of hot wind and pride
Would he see his error and allow himself to grieve.

Carole, the second beauty born of Marble Falls,
Would later, at last, marry fairly well, if not too grand.
Silas, alone, tended to his vanity and found old age,
But twas Carole to first find her final rest at Death’s hand.

Silas, hearing of Carole’s passing, fell slow to his knees
And swore a prideless oath to take every Christmas Day,
In honor of Carole, his cast-off joy, a last birthday gift:
A simple arrangement in a pristine blue daisy bouquet.

The light faded over the hill after the star found its new home.
The old man had placed his bouquet when his heart beat its last.
The fog blanketed the granite and the bouquet and the sad.
Is loneliness the grand prize for a wrong word lost to the past?

Not all Christmases are all tinsel and cheer—
Silas and Carole speak to us in more mature themes.
Please, this Yule, find it inside you to forgive and forget
Or woe may scuttle your fonder, finer, future dreams.

[Shikoba]