Allons a Lafayette

Sweating professional faces
With medically induced cleavage
Gumming up the screen
With lard bottoms and tattoos
Glare at me with all their what’s what—
It’s not just songwriters and poets with the blues

Papa’s grown out his beard
They tell me it’s crisis de middle age
Greying up the texted screen—
Old man with a teener heart
Without a good hoodie excuse
Let’s just go all dancing
And shake your tit fille caboose

Best bring your Yves St Laurent hankie
Cajun dust will be floating on high
Everyone praying for some cleaner air
Broke-foot dancing or a zydeco reel, you choose
Try keeping up with the button accordion, cher—
It ain’t just gamblers who sometimes lose

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Summer Fancy

Across the dank protean mire
On the slope of a mowed field
The breeze rumples a page over
And the lass missed the poets last verse
Bewitched by the youth’s jogging pace passing by
She dared imagine his arms about hers
And pondered about passion’s cruel curse

The sudden rain scampered our lass
While the boy turned north and to dorm
The promise of Summer freshened newly
Like Latin winds bringing Mercury back to Rome
And a new Arachnida’s web is woven
Life and Death never pause nor long tarry
A half Moon finds the eve’s far horizon
Rooms aren’t the only thing empty back home

Shy winking stars spangle up
To make smart the Southern sky
Lass and lad miles apart wash dishes done
Neither knowing the others’ longing heart
Many mini plans made for reading nooks
A mighty edifice rises in the Tangipahoa
A counselor and her crook’s getaway suite
In a half-told love tale just at the start

Puzzling

Crimson currants scatter across the plate;
The ruin of his proposition dies on his lips—
The longing and the loss go begging, too late,
As two tired hands sag draped across her hips.

While puzzled puzzling puppies whimper without reason—
Is this the sure path to the higher parish ground?
Milady, crossed, throws vexed hurt blames and accusations;
Limped, the poet crawls away to contemplate a grayer sound.

Storm warnings fall, the sun finally peeks out;
The happy and free saxman takes the stage for his solo
Another rainbow dies unlit without a Southern doubt;
Can we sixters renew old loves, is it yet the secret go slow?

Leg raisers, push-ups, and the latest anti-cholesterol drug:
Guys muster what little left they have to play her knight errant.
Girls, wriggle and giggle, and deflate their swains with another shrug;
Boys, bluster and muster, try to achieve the ultimate, yet can’t.

Why is Love so hard to find and put softly in a peaceful space?
Why must Time dry up all dreams along with such a lovely face?

Hey There, I’m Jessup

Hey there, I’m Jessup.
Just an ugly old Burnet paddock hoss;
Caint hardly speak clear so I ast this
Jackass, Clem, across the way to git my thoughts down.
Yeah, a jackass, but at least he agreed, he being a poet and all.
I told him no rhymin, but who knows—
He’s a jackass after all, so sorry bout any rhymin.
Twas a time passed when I ran with the best
But my ever teener haid said go ahead, run,
but my geriatric apoplitic knee said uh uh and here I am,
On this old farm. Hay is good.
Caint say much about the company. Jackasses all over. [Oh, sorry Clem.]
Yeah and so I was thinking about Pan Wren, my one time heavenly.
Ast me if I was on her Friends list.
Gosh, I wanna be on her Lover list, but that aint happnin. Bad knee, worse ‘tude.
Anyway, thanks fer listning to an old paddock hoss. You been so nice and all.
Next time yer this away, come on over and I just might surprise you
With a
Hey there, I’m Jessup.

Sky Too Green

Sky so green
Grass too blue
What I may tell you
May not be too necessarily true
Poets often wrinkle
And scurry over the rhyme
So sue me tangential
Versification has never been a capital crime
Riddle me plastic
Cauterize those peeps of joy
Life tarries aslantlike
I hope they have a baby boy
Roses be red
For her with eyes so too blue
Oh, another butterfly release—
Could you free me one day too?

Am I Close

I would like to be a poet
Am I getting close?
Metaphors mixed and tenses slashed
Imagery by a nose
Broken hearts and thanes slain
Damsels worshipped ever again and again
Perhaps a cheery rhymester
Bereft of similes orange
Sunsets abandoned
By courageous estrange
Does my poesy suffer to suffice?
Are you moved to a nether coast?
Or do you need more fodder
To render the lonely heart closed
Pay for my lines
Don’t you dare wonder?
Most of the good stuff
Passes thru the penchant blunder
Like me stuff—
Or turn to a kindred page
Drinking the lines ethereal
Is all the millennial rage

Another Poet’s Power Trip

7pm Friday evening:
The loner ponders a new blank page;
You’d think he’d have better
At his now advanced presenile age.
But no prospects permit,
And no leads present,
All in all
He remained a proper gent.

7:08pm Friday evening:
Some words managed to flow
Out of prompt sinus gyrae
And across the page, to and fro.
The rhyme lofted well,
The context sufficiently obtuse,
Pondering current lost lovers
[As usual TV fare was of no use].
But no prospects permit,
And no leads present,
All in all
He remained a proper gent.

9:30 Friday evening:
The night’s offering to WordPress Publish—
He’d not edited much,
Twas all a spot of heartache and sly rubbish.

10pm Friday night:
Off went the power strip.
Another headache for morning,
But for now: another poet’s power trip.
But no prospects permit,
And no leads present,
All in all
He remained a proper gent.