Fastidious

Starched shirt paisley tie
Both frayed
Worn with dignity

Suit shining witness
To countless years
Service

White silk handkerchief
Mottled as ancient cream

Shoes cracked
Polished to a glow

Meticulous

He is seminal
To the community

A profession
Of great regard
And universal need

His chambers
City Hall square

The town mendicant
Providing
Chance for giving
And receiving

Gratitude

The ordinariness of the day
contrasted to the
epiphany
that followed...

Another tedious chore
the packet of false
images
stayed on the bathroom
floor

Always led to believe
youth captured
now held ransom
to self- fulfilling prophecy
of age intrigue

The beauty peddlars
stupid suits
but women pardoners too
convinced us
with trickery
that grey hues
were meant only
for the truth meddlars

When we first moved in here,
there was a bag man,
well, an old age pensioner,
who passed by the building every day,
carrying a white plastic bag,
stopping occasionally
to rest on a bench;
he was to be seen so regularly
that one looked out for him.

The story goes, in haste they flew.
A sudden urge within them grew
to conquest and for glory's sake;
to win the day, the prize to take.
With Tantalla, they swiftly made 5
their way through many nooks and shade
and under boughs and over tree
they sped like wild birds, swift and free.
Their larking made her break to song
and Tantalla raised up a throng 10
of dancing trees and bowing leaves.
The notes she sings with magics weave
to life the ancient grey lit trees
that rush in chorus, twos and threes

VIRGIN BUTTER

I never liked re-heated espresso
stale Italian bread for the dunking
spread with early morning butter
pricked by an onion stick
the night before.

Burnt rubber and rancid
nausea and acid.

How I miss those year’s
my very best years
of continental breakfast
all together.

sitting
in the corner
of a pub

I write vows
and eulogies
I speak
of the dead
visiting
the departed

speaking of love
waxing of life
on the breath
of a baby

I take minutes
of hours
I wrap my hands
in cheesecloth

stained with black
my fingernails
have loosened
from their beds

life passes through
my pen, surging
and ebbing
with each tragedy
or celebration

I read lips
hear tones
watching from afar
the faces

Sometimes I think
I am a bitch
In what I say
In words so rich
With cynicism and rhetoric
With harshness
Which makes you sick
And evil thoughts
Wishing death
On the worst
of my soul mates

When storms wrack me in my life
you bring back gentle breeze.
When cold acts cut me like a knife
we walk to set my soul at ease.

During times of pain and doubt
I feel you right here at my side.
As my journey takes me all about
like earth, I know you will abide.

The church where I prefer to go,
hand made by time and sun and rain,
Mere chemistry won't make it grow
or let it heal a tired man's pain.

poet’s final resort!
this singular site tis
of the worlds best
here self styled poets
self mutually praise
and double their comment
those like you and i
we finally lament.

don’t be amazed
it’s not like other sites
where they only praise
and
money you do so raise.

you have to read a lot friend
and
don’t leave with tears
towards the end

as tears can be discomforting too
then don't say
loved
didn’t warn you

I spied a Sylph upon a lily leaf
and watched her sail- a Captain on the sea.
She dared at speed the knife edge of the coral reef.
She fought the squall with laughter cold and free.

A lotus bloom her banner, spider’s in her lines,
their weavers by the dozen were her crew.
Her emerald gaze was sharper than the flashing tines
of Neptune’s triple scepter sea steel blue.