I watched 'Buns of Steel'
'cos I wanted the real deal
Did all the exercises
Brooked no compromises
But when I sneaked a little feel
My hot cross buns began to peel
They brought their music to the hills,
brooked no softening,
yet in time, the Appalachian mists
grew softer, the work less dire.
Their tunes recalled one Celtic root,
one that had broken the will of nations
to ever own them.
When they left those lands
they did not abandon them
but sought the high hills.
Now they are assailed
by their own young
who have forgotten to be free,
yet the very earth is planted
with their unyielding bloodlines.
They will be the last to surrender,
their history grows deeper
in each age of sorrow and joy,
for they’re an elegy as old and green
as distant hills everywhere.
Our daddy said we couldn’t get our driver’s license
until we passed our teens.
He also said it didn’t matter what he said,
it only mattered what he means.
Our daddy was a coal-mining man of the old-fashioned
pick-and-shovel kind, and
It surely made things a lot easier
when we learned how to read his mind.
When our daddy came home in the evening,
after a hard day at work,
He inspected the chores he had left for us,
and made sure we did not shirk.
We carefully watched what we said
and kept a lot bottled up inside.
If our daddy got even the slightest bit angry
we found a place to hide.
When Saturday night came at our house,
the TV was turned to wrestling.
It did not matter what might be on other channels,
sports always got his blessing.
Our whole family watched what our daddy watched
and liked it very much.
Daddy took no talking back,
and he brooked no other opinions, as such.
4/27/2021
Each visit was looked forward to,
Always new flavoured sweets,
For me to chew.
Whether it was chocolate,
Or Haribo,
Anything will do,
We were desperate ya know...
We went to the park.
On the swings,
Until dark.
When I wouldn’t show.
I was scared ya know…
He always came round,
And made nice dinners.
Though in the background,
A cast of sinners.
Objects he’d throw,
But I kept it quiet, ya know…
He kept us safe,
So it looked.
He was our raphe
Although was brooked.
He would always come,
But never go,
It was just accepted, ya know…
Locked in the bathroom,
Just want to cry.
I must stay quiet,
Must lie.
Always, now, feeling so low,
It will all be fine..., ya know…
That lonely feeling,
No one to help you,
No time for healing.
Hide the shade of blue.
The days get more slow,
You’re giving up, ya know...
The writing on the wall
Explained it was “degenerate”.
Don’t ask me.
Nazis can be crabby.
He took it for the sign it was:
‘If they’d deface some matter of taste,
it’s only a matter of time ...’
So he booked and brooked the Rhine,
And came to Boston
And showed the kids
How he made his herb garden.
And when I was a kid
the kids he showed showed me,
Because there were no nazis in Boston.
Be like Karl and watch for signs:
Employees must wash hands.
Slippery when wet.
Wrong way.
Danger.
Stop.
The nazis wrecked his herb garden.
He never brooked a lie that couldn’t be spoken
Spiffed up with a good spit shine
Tin promise made was a buffalo wooden token
Re-tale sale, it ain’t worth a dime
From Niagra Falls to the debt edge of Hoboken
Every creditor had to wait in line
Trust placed on a cash glass ceiling got broken
China dolls loved the crash chime
Tone deaf to the truth, to some it don’t matter
Baby rattlers crying in a viper din
Mad Hatters talking a walk up the dirt ladder
Judas tears, a dissembling offering
With a flick of the tongues, cluck of the clatter
Some like the taste of tawdry lying
Like an indolent sloth I lay effortlessly in my mother's womb
With a cry I floated out into the devilish world of harbouring sins
As a dwarf gluttony kept me in peace and in a happy mode
Wobbling on my toes I showed violent anger at my mother's divided attention
I grew envious at the arrival of little siblings that brooked in all my tension
The joy in my world often corroded as I lusted for love and over possessiveness
Over the years the dwarfed sins grew up into a gigantic pride
After conquering and strapping in my wilful sinister vices
All frustrations burnt down to ashes for a fulfilled life of virtues
January 28, 2016
Contest: The Deadly Seven
Strip them bone dry
Of myth
And find
How suddenly we all are blind
For man must believe
In something more than
Mere measurements
When all tangible visions
Like twin towers fall
In the audible abyss
Of their faith.
This self
From the serpent spiraled tree
Before the ashes
Of the Enlightenment
Fed us gall
This self
So longed to become
What it could not see
And raptured in rebellion
Brooked no authority at all.
I cannot subscribe
To myth as my alternative
To paradise
But I will something
Like an umbrella
Under which insecurity could crawl
Measure how finite
It compares to the infinity
Of its belief
And tumble down its Babel again
In utter delight
To tongue the rain.
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