I was standing next to an African swamp the other day
When the wing span of a dynamo spread a shadow my way
It covered my body length, and I was lying down flat.
I said to my husband “What do you think of that?”
“It’s a shoebill stork,” he informed me with a hush.
Don’t excite him, because he will come out of the brush.
The shoebill was at least five foot tall, standing on his feet.
Which intimidated me, as I know shoe bills love to eat.
What do they consume? I asked my husband, worried.
He whispered “lungfish,” and his voice sounded hurried.
The blue gray shoebill began to stare me down right away.
I thought we were both goners on that horrible day!
Too late Charlie realized she should have listened to the internal voice
that had been yelling “NO!” when the large black truck stopped for them.
She knew it was now too late to get out, too late to run, too late to do anything….
She saw the glow of the devil’s eyes in the dark, and she knew this was the end.
He was handsome, and there was no diabolical laugh, but she knew.
Her heart was beating six beats a second too hard.
Almost the second he had hit those door locks she knew they were goners.
Why had she followed her cousin Dolly into this guy’s truck?
Oblivious to the danger, Dolly in the middle, chattering nonsense.
Her persistent run-on sentences were filling up every second of silence
Char could feel the tension, and knew the monster was exuding anger.
Dolly’s constant blathering was not helping.
Char said she had to go to the bathroom and asked if he would unlock the door.
This is when she heard the laugh, and the chatter stopped.
Greeting the day's offerings, we cat souls
Were watching for scampering voles and moles.
Five vigilant cousins and I, perched up high,
watching the sun rise in the eastern sky.
From our perch in the gnarly gumdrop tree,
We surveyed the meadow, calm as we could be.
The grays and tans of a gentle morn,
Brought forth tasty mice, who were soon forlorn.
September day, offers so much lively meat on the ground.
We sneaked up stealthily, me and my brigade, profound.
We pounced, and the critters were goners for sure.
Their meat tasty, and fresh, and decidedly pure.
Our daily hunt, is so much fun, in this tree.
My cousins, my brother, my dad, and me.
We all do this, every single morn.
Making the little creatures feel forlorn.
Eighteen years of wild youth
and I moved forward in search of life's truths.
Suddenly, I was twenty one
and there was nothing that could not be done;
reality set in round twenty five
and life seemed a struggle just to survive.
Thirty slipped and slid around the corner
my generation thought we were surely goners,
but life moved on quick and fast
and suddenly forty years had passed.
So much yet to come, things to do and places to see
when fifty years were lost upon the breeze
and awakened by the passing joy and tears
I looked back in time, some sixty years.
Retired now, social security retrieved
spent thru seventy, can you believe?
So much to do, the future still waits,
on the edge of tempting fate.
Eighty lies on the horizon
and I find I'm compromising
just a little more time
as life begins to unwind.
To the freaks and the goners
I say we raise a glass
To the lonelies and the loners
The weirdos and outcasts
To us freaks, the ones who still stand,
The ones who no matter what,
Never say "I can't"
To the ones who sit alone at lunch, the ones with no friends
The ones who never give up
Who know it's not the end
To the cast downs and broken hearted,
The beaten and the bruised
The ones who think they're ugly,
And will never know the truth
The ones witch aching chests
The ones who know it's okay to cry
The ones who stand alone
And believe all the lies
The cross on side the road
For Tj, Megan,Gabby, and Ian
They were only kids
Barely adults,
Driving home
And something terrible happened...
Everyone awoke
To this horrid accident,
A car in a bayou
With its goners,
Unable to escape
Slowly drowning...
No survivors.
I went walk by this cross
And a parked car faced it,
A man
Sits there,
Staring...
Tears slowly crawling down his face.
My heart broke
For his lost son,
Sitting there
Just staring at this cross.
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Cookies are Sweet
And so are You
But...
The Roses are parched
The Violets are Dead
The cookie jar's empty
And too much went unsaid
And...
The Roses never had a chance
The Violets won't rise
The Cookies were goners
And this is good-bye