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

A Safe Place

I’ve lost that place to let a tear;
My heart’s gone to its safe place.
How could things go so wrong?
What new horrors must we face?

Barricades fall from Seattle town,
But nothing’s better, not at all.
I’ve no stamp for my letter
Begging to be allowed to call.

Things today sing with a minor key,
But youngin there’s just one thing:
Passion stills, for just a moment, the longing—
Yet loneliness in old age still prides its sting.

Did she survive the novel virus?
Will she return to us fully alive?
Glasses for all to share the sauterne!
Breathe the air! Dance! Sing! Thrive!

I’ve lost the time to shed a tear,
My words go without a decent rhyme,
The End: how will we deeply know?
What new pain unfolds with wrinkled time?

Happy Valentine’s Day Faye

So at the Gates stood Conor
Awaiting his newest best friend.
Faye joined him eager yet sore confused,
This was no one’s idea of a good end

She’ll never be seven
She plays now in Heaven
And our tears yields no answers
To the never answered Oh God, Why?

Why did that thirty-something
Lose contact with his humanity?
Just playing outside in her front yard
These things are always so damn hard

Are we all so willfully and totally blind?
Is this some new flavor of miswrought insanity?
Our ocean awash in pain and despair—
There’s no satisfying answer, ever, anywhere.

Bad parenting, bullying, party drugs?
A chromosome split and expressed wrong?
Just why can’t this stop, just…please…stop!
Do we just let this go and let Pain chase erelong?

Faye and Conor skip off into the sunset,
We here, head in hands, perplexed and twisted.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Faye, and to you who still love;
While our tears coalesce with a countenance sorely misted.

Transylvania

Yay hooray
Achieved intoxication
Sorta kinda in-home vacation
Stay home, don’t alive
Avoid tickets and all that kinda jive
Thursday night
A faux start weekend
What will the future subtend?
Muscles, tendons
Fascia in full alarm
Tho’ never meant you no harm
Need a haircut
And a full-time occupation
Please a reprise in a better situation
Breathing in
My book arrives from Amazon
Still here, tho’ rather’d be gone
A wonderful moment
Aspirin and merlot do attest
Brunettes t’embrasse really are the best
Yay hooray
Encountered Beatlemania
But there are still no vampires in Transylvania

Avec Toi

I miss walking Paris
I miss Washington DC
I really miss those nice things
You used to think about me
I really like my neighbor
Even if I don’t know her name
Such things can’t be helped
There’s no one left to blame
The cat wants to meow outside
He doesn’t care much for Amelie
He just likes chasing whatever
Presents far away from me
I loved a Nordic goddess
I danced at her only wedding
We reconnected somehow on Facebook
Now I must vacuum, Jack keeps on shedding
I have seen true beauty
And felt arid with bottomless pain
I cannot understand the darkness
Kathy sees in Ashland’s daily grain train
I want to return to New Orleans
And lure the regard of a new pretty head
But I just write small lines in Austin
Watching Amelie avec a glass of Fonseca instead

A Different Truth

False leads, false steps,
False love
Leading to devastating effects

Round about now
I haven’t a clue
Round about know
I really miss you
Round about now
The sky is growing dim
Round about now
I’d bet you’re dancing with him

Happy times, happy days
Happy pills
Rewriting how this all plays

Round about now
Things begin to rhyme
Round about now
I’ve forgotten the time
Round about now
I’d take a second glass
Round about now
Sanity takes a pass

Rock stars, rock songs
Rocky relations
Yielding a space that prolongs

Round about now
The page is full
Round about now
It’s all a buncha bull
Round about now
The whole world is getting high
Round about now
Time to type goodbye

False leads, false steps,
False love
Sowing old devastating effects

A New Adventure (Same Old Story)

Chasing happily-ever-after
Miles and miles over the road;
Hoping the fair princess
Can discern in this hapless toad

Inside loom love and kindness
Along with old pain and mischance.
But to worry a bit of brie
Along with, just maybe, a dance,

Would be any true man’s dream.
So, a road trip in a new September
A start of something special—
Or an adventure to long remember?

Two empaths to closely encounter
And perhaps co-mix their life stories;
High hoisted on tenterhooks,
Dreaming of better glories.

So All Ye, All Ye, In Free! I’m going to fair Slidell.
Wish for me your best and let’s see what a fortnight can tell.

–“It’s still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.”

Answer True

My lady asks
Have any fairy wings?
My lady asks
For the most strangest of things
How is your breathing?
Have you any pain?
My lady makes such inquiries
Again and again and again
My lady walks
Toward sunrises and sunsets
My lady talks
About lost causes and yesterday’s sure bets
Have you made your plans?
Have you made your peace with goodbye?
My lady bravely faces a future
When it will be her turn to let herself cry
My lady asks
Have you any fairy wings?
My lady asks
For the most wondrous of things
How are you?
How are things going?
My lady shares her heart
With a love that’s flowing and flowing and flowing

Hope and Future and Chance

The pain of his past rested on the front of his eyes,
Memory tempted then mocked and let loose in droplets.
Where now can pale usefulness express its wont?
How will tomorrow find reason inside old couplets?

Full-time folly found rest upon the other slack shoulder,
And swirling, the promise and the lie presented opportunely;
Yet a path coursed beyond the copse, bidding one to follow;
New memory scorned to breach history, to grow jejunely.

An old minstrel parsed a chord, and improved;
The song of song that choirs failed yet chimed aloud;
While pan wrens sauntered and soared ever above,
Dodging the eagles, falling, sprinting to eclipse yon cloud.

Tears will dry with hope and future and chance rekindled;
Goats may prance upon thatched roofs, high and mighty,
But the parson-chaplain rises early to great the new day,
And pale usefulness finds expression, keen and rightly.

Just Dance

Some poems are wine lyric
Two goblets Clos du Bois
Others are simple syrup
Just so much blah, blah, blah

Now some too-humble wrought lines—
An old wrenched heart softly pines

Heart-tears gathering inside
Aching to let go and fall;
Words mocking a conscience
Of feelings so cold t’would appall

Terpsichore blanches, and then wilts,
Suffers in her marble a new deep fault:
Who can answer for these deaths?
Young stars ripped from the celestial vault

Haruka and Meechaiel pas de deux—
What are we all ever going to do?

The pain lingers…
The words won’t come…
Broken thoughts slip chalky fingers;
The glib finally struck dumb

How to unsee a sunset?
How to unhear the rain?
Where do we put these feelings?
Where do we plant the pain?

A far lightening pirouettes across your glance—
Dance for Haruka, dear friends…just dance