“The Reckoning”

To seek the sacred river Alph

To walk the caves of ice

To break my fast on honeydew

And drink the milk of paradise

-“Xanadu” Rush 2112

________________________________________________________________________

Doc Holliday and Wyatt, arm-in-arm.

Friends immortal-there’s the charm,

For any ideal know to man

For a future, real, foreverland.

I’m your huckleberry,

Blinded by facts and time.

I’m a ghost in Denang, or maybe Derry,

Yet your friend across blood and wine.

Afterlife, we all go somewhere,

I want to be with friends I hold dear.

I’ll take a song, a story, a beer-

With the people I love, forget the cheer.

We make our own reality.

It can be heaven or hell.

The secret to true immortality

Is a penny in a wishing well.

Weep not for the dead,

They are freed of our human bonds.

Some for good, and some for naught,

Unfettered from the Earthly fronds.

I may miss peanut butter,

I may miss wagon spokes,

I may miss thoughts of clutter,

I won’t miss wasted folks.

I want to cross the river,

And see the other side,

With a smile, a joy to deliver,

To the ones I lost who died.

Remember the good,

Forget the bad,

Reunite with the should,

Shed the guilty skin of sad.               

Missions

Earth mass covets a permanent endurance
Like the guillotine liberty-frenzied France.
Continents drift apart, just meandering
In nostalgia, fading in virgin springs.

Fires seek warm companionship of Angels,
Sadly discovering temporal tangles
Of mortal coil caches of immortal lust,
Turning ashes to ashes & dust to dust.

The winds, forever yearning, searching for love.
Yet failing soul quests lends to death from above.
The strongest whirly monsters even get named,
To fear/track each full-force-failed passionate game.

Water craves knowledge in journeys ne’er done,
Consumed in abandon, enslaved by the sun.
Surface tensions drown or give life, all perchance,
At a soundless concert, a motionless dance.

"Fat Girls Love Frappes!-Happy Birthday Momma on Your Birthday"

You died at the right time.
It wasn't a bright time but nighttime.
Yet you were spared to see
Gelationaous gals seeking fat immortality...
Simply because they lost their reason to be...
Hard work...disappointments...discouragements...
You weathered them all astonishingly...
But the fat girls just order their frappes...
Uninterestingly...and fat as mud and twice as dumb.
You were spared the world we have become !!!
Idiot food savants with NO self-respect...sitting in an office like the fat chick from #Carlex that consumes a 1k calorie (ShandaSugarShot) McCafe drink daily...a future Wal-Mart parking violationer-FAT PIG!!!
Oh, and I voted for you yet again! The republicans remain fat pigs too!
Siddhartha!!! I miss you Momma...
At least you never were the paradigm of a fat pig drinking her frappe!!!

"Carnival Ride"

Shelley has died-
Unjustified!

(She seldom tried,
Displayed no pride...)

A suicide!!!
(Orpheus lied)

...the red child bride,
Star Mountain-sighed,
OakTree strung---cried.

#Omaha

Our graves, they all face West.
We gave our lives, our best.
Brave men all passed, this test.
Joined in battle, joined in death-
Garrison Valhalla!
Where mighty heroes rest.

"Eighteen Angels"

AV the WalMart door greeter. “Hello Fred”

Richard Parker

Crumb-in

The invisible one…

The Count of Monte Carlo

Wendy’s girl

Seatwarmer and his Ford Custom

The Freeport consigliore

The ridemate at Goldrush Junction

Gillespie Ave

Doug

Bob Ross

NightHawk

The GoldDust Twins.

M&M/hard-boiled egg forest picnics.

Lee & Harris Inc.

Creek bank jumping

Smeagol

"Fallen Statues"

Hurry home centurion-

Get thy family out of Rome.

Another failed Caesar, another torn heart,

Stone columns and monuments shattered apart.

 

Sail fast seamaster, pitching homeward,

Coursed for Malaga, fleeing parts unknown.

Save for black night to ponder the strength

Of savage arrows seeking hearts to rent.

 

Run away from the eastern day,

Go henceforth west, o pioneer blessed,

With no distance awareness past

How many rivers till journeys end at last.

 

Bridges…crossings ne’er contemplated,

As we hurry life up, down, around and about.

Akin to tangible ancestors of concrete & steel;

Scarcely ere’ regarded…or honored as real.

"Sailing"

Will going West deliver me?

Will Grey Havens departure save me?

Or am I an upstart Sam Gamgee,

Hoping for unearned redemption?

 

(Tolkien’s refusal to allow Frodo and Sam’s

Friendship to be unbroken is so English.

Sam should have gone West too,

But he was not loveless as Frodo was.)

 

Unless-Frodo had a love, which he did!

Courtesy of English Major Deconstruction,

Frodo loved an Elf, who loved him back..

Whom I will not divulge, study the story grasshopper!

 

(She bore the Red Book of Westmarch West)

 

We are the West. As such California Is the Westest!

Who dares look at his destiny in the face?

I do, and I am prepared for the horror or the bliss!

There is no fate but what we make.

 

No waybread, no Elven cloak,

Nor even the comfort of Sting.

I journey West, naked in the sun.

With faith in the Valor to see me not undone.

 

The Hill now mourns the absence of Mr. Underhill.

"Roads"

Some roads we travel for pleasure,

Others from practical need.

Sometimes just for awareness,

Now & then for greed.

 

The old rough road has been home,

While “our sign” is long since gone.

Getting lost in Atlanta is one thing,

In pursuit of beloved song.

 

Now I follow a forkless path,

Bereft of motherly guide.

All I can hope & imagine,

Is longing her advice to abide.

 

Following these highways, byways-

Like veins & arteries on skin of Earth.

I pause to wonder what you saw,

In the days & years since my birth.

 

Walking alone is less than zero,

In the equation of happy life,

Belief in the golden destination,

Is where faith can reward my strife.

 

Decision roads are one way,

No Thermopylae Spartan came back-

Lest on his shield & spiritless.

Honor-freed of a warrior pact.

 

I doubt that there are easy roads,

Just illusions which we choose.

Treasure maps, routes to Elysium-

Mere masquerades in a lifetime ruse.

“A Brief Essay on the Death of Romance”

Trampling oyster shells on the floor,

Dueling with a windmill,

Dear Romance,

You died a homeless death

Before you were even born,

 

Love worn like an albatross,

Forms a bond like non-dairy creamer.

Dear Romance,

You were traded for vitriol,

Cast into the sacred river Alph.

 

Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, Byron & Shelley-

Is not a law firm or Wall Street trading company.

Dear Romance,

Just ask anyone! Well perhaps not a good idea.

Pallbearers all were they at your funeral.

 

Revel society in your hollow modernisms!

Soulless people, food and aps.

Dear Romance,

We sing "Auld Lang Syne" scarcely aware of Burns.

And tear-up not for the lost year but our lost selves.

 

Pity that your poetry doesn’t show up on Coke cans,

Or at the very least a Super Bowl ad.

Dear Romance,

When we stared into the abyss and you didn’t stare back,

Was when we knew that we were dead too.

“Can I Be a Cowboy?”

The fever of getting a parking space,

Watching insolent children misbehave,

Seeing the broken people strive to abide…

I have to believe in my heart and soul,

That being a cowboy was meant for me.

 

Oh to ride the open spaces,

Unbound to machine, or foreign places.

To see sky unlined by man’s devices,

Riding the range at an unmeasured pace.

Enjoying membership in the human race.

 

What is lost cannot be regained.

Sometimes it cannot even be remembered.

I remember, and it saddens me outright…

It is the reason we all like Clint Eastwood,

The reason that sunsets still trigger our heartstrings.

 

Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tom Mix, and all the cowboy poets,

I salute you!

"Bad Elf"

So a Hobbit boards a ship in the Grey Havens...

The Elf-Captain notices…

 

“I am sorry dear Hobbit, even though you saved Middle Earth

From Sauron, you cannot go West…”

 

 

Middle Earth didn’t have a Constitution apparently, yet NO one

Reveling at the sign of the Prancing Pony could care less!

"The Quantum Clearing"

Walking the road, I noticed a tree in a yard-

Then I saw the vast forest beyond that scraggly statue.

The enveloping green mass had an unusual quality,

Behold! An apparent clearing-

Beamingly inundated with the virgin light of mourning.

 

I proceeded with my early tract,

Concerned that I had seem the unseen, and perplexed.

Then I blinked and knew.

This clearing was mine, made for me,

Eschewing the materiality of the known, for an unknown egress.

 

I rest my eyes now, confident that still sounds

From windless branches fill my consciousness with forgotten

Lullabies filled with empty promises and illusory dreams.

People die longing for nothing, why would life struggle anon?

Being discovers a way, even without course, reason, or helm of trust.

“Richard Parker”

Pushed.

Asked.

Excuses.

Avoided.

Make Up?

Lost.

Disappointed.

We all tend to do what we want to do.

Meet me in Church Sunday.

 

We are each of us a kernel of sand.

“The Adventure of the Big Hill”

Bandit was a good dog.

He was a morning patroller,

As many dogs are-

Notice them as you drive to work.

 

One early summer morning,

Bandit was tracking the scent of a cat

When suddenly a shadow scurried past his side,

The game was afoot!

 

Bandit gave chase, albeit he was no longer a pup.

He was deep in the woods near a wet weather spring.

The rustling braches ahead of him went uphill,

He knew where he was now, climbing the Big Hill.

 

The grey-streaked white/tan dog with the blue left eye

Now earnestly gives chase to the unknown racer on the Big Hill.

Bandit feels more alive now than when he lays at his food bowl-

He feigns interest when his Master offers evening platitudes.

 

Bandit tops the Big Hill and sees his opponent, a cat, a huge cat.

Bigger than any cat on a Meow Mix bag, a very LARGE cat.

“My adventure must now end, be it good, or be it bad,” thought Bandit.

He knew his match was standing before him, fatigued yet defiant.

 

Bandit knew no fear, and raised a practical paw and said-

“Be gone from this Big Hill and my domain, else I must kill you.”

The giant cat bared his fangs yet remained, staring curiously and said,

“I go this time challenger, the next time I may NOT!”

 

Both turn and amble down their opposite hill sides,

Bandit returns home to lie under his favorite bush.

When supper time comes, Bandit eats with a flourish.

He acknowledges his Master with a furtive glance, then a smile.

 

Bandit was a good dog.

“Orchard Bandits”

Bleak skylines offer nothing,

Like good rest or hot meal steam.

This troupe of four (remnant clan),

Move at random, without plan.

 

 He bears disappointment

Under his brow, head bent low.

His youthful smile now faded

-Memory pools well waded.

 

Mshe  keeps vying through pearl

Dreams worn within and without.

Pale worn crêpe newspaper dress,

-Striving for strength to confess.

 

Youth keeps both feet and eyes dry.

Hunger inside mimics stings.

Hope, running among fruit trees,

Eating apples in the breeze.

 

Baby coos at circling birds,

Unfettered by illusion.

Comforted by family,

She carries the hidden key.

“Remnants”

Leaving Englewood, I am the reiterate or!

Someone get me water.

We eat that which we cannot defeat!

I lost my appetite!

 

I am a remnant of

The “days gone by”,

Help me! Help me, Amadeus

I am adrift in the matrix!

 

This is like a roadside cross

Denoting senseless death!

A marker for the futility

Of doing what is right!

 

All things want the same,

They want your name,

I refute the dread while

I embrace the One.

 

We love what we understand,

We avoid the otherwise…

Love the inarticulate beggar,

Abhor our fate!

 

"Kenneth's in a Coma"

It looks bad.

Why was he out past 10 p.m.?

Buying vegetables to become one?

Kenneth never ran with the mumps…

 

Minivans never crash well,

Has anyone else noticed?

Trucks do, SUV’s too-usually…

Kenneth is in a coma.

 

Church, check!

Work, check!

Wife, check!

Coma, check!

 

Kenneth is in a coma,

And no one, not even the Mormons,

Can bring him out-

Magic Underwear fails sometimes.

 

Kenneth bought tomatoes,

He wanted fresh tomatoes!

He smashed the fresh tomatoes on

Four corners of his unconscious face.

 

No eggplant, nor mushrooms.

A few zucchini-why is that?

Did Kenneth feel a need to exceed?

The borders of his forced universe?

 

Kenneth is in a coma,

His wife remembers him with his best friend,

The gothic grocery clerk misses him-well almost!

Kenneth’s in a coma.

 

Tra la la la lurie,

Tra la la la lay,

Kenneth’s still in a coma,

On another Mother’s Day!

“River Red, Highway Blue”

Too many cars in Tennessee,

Back to the Red River, that’s for me!

Leave the crowd of look and see,

Find a real lonesome dove, bank, and tree.

 

West of the Mississip is better now,

Straggle grass and straggle cow,

No big ways to read and know,

Just dried up rocks to plow and sow.

 

Flee from me ole shuffling death,

I’ll meet my maker cards unwet,

Laid on a table in prairie suite,

Reckoned for trials of Maker meet.

 

The desert ne’er discriminates,

All souls are equally reaped then raped.

Dullness never wins the day-

Here o’er-working brings dismay.

 

Salute! Dear work friend Timbo

Safe passage o’er Palo Duro.

I won’t see you again, but I’ll ne’er forget-

A cowboy’s heart never dies-you bet!

“Death of an Artist”

Granite is an easy stone to carve,

Compared to stone heartsbeating in unison to a time/clock.

We become our dread when we have no goal.

Children carry a name, but they carry not our dreams.

We remember Michelangelo, yet

We have no idea of his heirs or lack thereof.

Whether he had many or any children is as moot as

The depth of conscience of a lawyer in heaven or hell.

To create art-that is the lifeblood of an artist.

To create life is consequential, like scones with tea.

An inspired quilt or laundry line is the result of an artisan.

A bevy of babies in hospital newborn ward is merely a result.

My art is here. Naked on paper, unarmed with quaff or sword.

When I die, my child will cry, my friends will be troubled, and

Community may pause in a brief moment of sadness.

But my art will live on, unencumbered by grief, guilt, expectations.

Shakespeare, Shelly, Bryon, Poe, Thomas, Yeats, Faulkner, Salinger…

What of their children do we consider before we challenge the abyss?

NOTHING…the nothingness of the end of space, time-shadowless light.

We remember their art, their ageless artspawn, as we go not gently…

Into that good night.