by

2 Worlds

The outsiders blew into town drivin
just a little too fast in their fancy foreign
car laughing at our roadside yard sales
and our little café, Lita’s Chicken Shack, where
you can get a blue plate special of turnip
greens, sweet potatoes, cornbread, your
choice of three meats, sweet tea and a
slice of Lita’s caramel cake every Friday of
your life for $5.95. They stopped and nosed
around the 45’s and the LP’s thinkin we
wouldn’t know a “vintage” Blues record if
it hit us in the face but, truth is, we’re the
ones been singin that tune since
we sat in the pea-pickin basket along side
our mothers in the fields, daddy plowin
with Ole Daisy pushin up clods of red earth
gettin ready for the next crop to be planted.

They rifle through the clothes on the line makin
faces and actin like we might have cooties but
then they set their city asses down in the
best corner booth in Lita’s , the one where the
boys from the shirt factory in Pontotoc
usually eat on Friday’s – they gonna be fit
fit to be tied when they come in and find
outsiders in that booth. But, bein brought
up with good southern manners, they’ll
just tip their hats to ‘em and take a table in
the middle of the room where they have to
watch out for the young’uns playin on the
floor with their legos.

Seems like they don’t much like the menu
but, bein’s this is the only place in town
to eat, they ask for water (probly don’t
know it’s from the tap) and eat most everything
but the greens, makin their funny faces again, I
guess they don’t know what real southern eatin
is (like they don’t know real blues) but they sure
did eat up that caramel cake, well, you’d have
to be crazy not to like Lita’s cake anyway. They
pay the check and flounce outa the café, get
in their shiny foreign car and drive off, just like
that. Us, we just smile and talk amongst ourselves
‘bout the funny ways of city folk, always livin’life
in a hurry and thinkin the blues is just “vintage music”
played by some old black men in the country, never
thinkin any day they could be singin that tune too.

by

Thirteenth Summer



A chestnut horse rides better
bare-backed with sun burned
hands giving him his head, mamma
said you couldn’t come in the
house when she was workin’ but
she didn’t say I couldn’t go out.

Beans grow fast, most morninins I
go out and pick ‘em, being careful
that they’re filled out before I pull
‘em from the vine. Sometimes I’m
not sure so I leave ‘em and worry
they’ll grow old and dry before the
next pickin’ and something bad’ll
happen to me for my misjudgment.

I like to watch when you curry your
horse, brushin’ him till his coat shines
like an old copper penny. The barn’s
mostly dark with just a little light
comin’ in the door way at the end and
it smells of sweat and mash – I like
the smell, it’s a comfort like the animals
who don’t expect anything from you.

You’re all dusty from ridin’, a thin layer
of red dust has settled on your clothes
and the hair on your arms. I saw you ride
by at a canter when I was pickin’ the beans.
I watched out of the corner of my eye cuz
I didn’t want you to know I noticed. I was
listenin’ to Bob Dylan on my little radio
tucked down into basket with the beans.

“His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean
And you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen”

by

Unknown/Unknowable 2006-2009

I’m finally saying good-bye,
to you of the laughing blue
eyes that hide the dark purple
of bruises and crimson of clotted
blood. I thought you were one
thing but you were many instead.
The lushness of passion and the
thorns of disparagement were all
a part of you, but I didn’t know. I
only knew that I became entrenched
like a log caught in an underwater
world of clinging reeds until I
became the one who was clinging.

I say good-bye to you now when
I couldn’t before. As the years passed,
the current tugged me loose and
I floated gently away without
even realizing it. The shore that
seemed unreachable is solidly
underfoot now so I can turn and wave
good-bye and never look back again.

_____________________________

Shared on Poets United.

by

All Out Of Happy, Passed

This house is starting to feel like
home again in spurts and starts –
not all the time every day, but
more often than not. It’s been a
long time since I felt at home.

This house felt like the underside
of an overpass and I felt homeless
in my own skin. It crept up on me,
this feeling, it crept up and took
over my life, my thoughts, my emotions
and held me hostage for nine long
years, invading my very core and
changing who I was until I didn’t know
who I was.

This house waited with the patience
of bricks and timber and roots that
burrowed deep into the earth with
each passing day that I was absent.
This house knew better than I that the
balm of home, of solidarity, of safety
would bring me back to myself,
one day.

by

Lethargy

This fierce wind is blowing all
my energy down the street –
there it goes, skipping down
the sidewalk like a little girl
in black Mary Janes clickety-
clacking a triple step.
Meanwhile, here I am collapsed
on the sofa like a lazy cat lying
in the sunshine waiting for someone
to feed it.

by

Hank and Karen

You’re the kind of man
mamma warned me about –
always with the sexy smirk
and your hand metaphorically
in the honey pot when it’s
not handing some chick
her fourth dirty martini or,
no, I take that back – especially
when you’re handing her that
fourth drink because you know
it’s the one that’s gonna tip her
over the edge of judiciousness
and into deliciousness.

Yeah, mamma said don’t trust a
man with caramel-colored eyes,
especially when he calls you his
Muse and says makin’ love to you
breaks loose the words and they
all come a-tumblin out through
fingers as nimble on the keyboard
as they were on your skin, the words
skippinn’ outa his mouth as he’s lickin’
your neck on down to your toes and
across that bright white screen shinin’
like the eye of the Lord on the
mountain top.

I told mamma I was leavin’ you –
you and your hard drinkin’, devil
writin’ ways, and I didn’t give a damn
about being no muse and I didn’t
give a damn about your caramel-colored
eyes and your smooth talk that was
s’posed to be for my ears but ended
up in everybody elses. You can nimble
your fingers in other women’s honey
pot all you want but one day you’ll need
your muse again and it’ll be just too
damn bad.

________________________________

Shared with dVerse Poets Pub.

by

A Day In The Crescent

 

It’s another balmy day in paradise.
I push down the plunger in the French
Press, inhaling the earthy aroma of
the blackest of coffees called Community.
The morning paper lies on the coffee table
waiting for its unfolding, opening and
adjusting shake. “Sneaking Sally Through
The Alley” is dancing out of the Boze, WWOZ
accommodating its listeners with the
best music in the country, bar none.

Noise from the street wafts through the
open French doors: the rummmm-rummmm
of the city bus, the high-pitched laughter
of kids on Christmas break, the artificially
cheerful greeting of “order when you’re ready!”
coming from McD’s drive-through so often
that it’s become just another sound like
the bus or the cat’s meow.

The newspaper serves up last night’s murder
du jour as well as the professionally whitened smiles
of the uppercrust partiers of the Social Scene –
Not on the same page, of course.

I get up from the couch, look out the front window
and marvel how the bad and the good
co-exist in the same city on the same
day and how complacent we all are that
it is so.

______________

Shared on dVerse Poet’s Pub.

by

The Time In Between

It’s the day after Christmas and
the rain falls, first a light mist just
to get us used to it, then a steady
falling like the currents of the river
two blocks away. The air smells
clean and wet, the birds are
chirping and fluttering in the old
pear tree – are they singing good
wishes for the New Year as the
rain washes away the doubts and
regrets of the past to make way for
the hopes and anticipation of the
future? Or is it only my foolish
daydreaming once again, wishing
away reality.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Shared on dVerse Poets Pub.