Back then we could eat clouds -
we were that tall, even baggy Ben (who
was small for a lumpy kid),
could leap over a pub door
without leaving the floor.
Then behind our backs
a Lilliputian world crept up,
it was mouse-grey, and it nibbled ferociously.
I went to the South Coast to roustabout;
then the lot of them
chose to join the heavy brigade;
they got real jobs
not the casual hourly sideshow work
bohemians favored.
After spinning my head for a shilling I returned,
but by then the whole decade had dispersed
like moths in a rainstorm.
I renewed an acquaintance or two
with former females,
those who had been set aside
on shelves for later.
There was no longer any power in flowers
drum circles lost their nativist beat.
Of course we all sold out,
I was just a late bloomer.
Now in my mature and preserved fruitiness
I spurn the hallucinogenic
and am as pious as any defrocked magpie
that drips memories by moonlight,
grudgingly bemoaning the sag
of this slow jowly age.
Categories:
jowly, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Our life book is loaded up with lots of love.
A sentence here, a paragraph there; even a chapter pair;
Hearing wedding bells, sharing honeymoon embraces, alone times and skis;
Other romantic tales of ships with sails cruising exotic seas.
Children churning ice cream with us the old-fashioned way.
Grandchildren rushing to our knees; hugging us at the door.
The sadness of seeing the passing of warm parental love
And all the bittersweet memories that a lifetime may endure.
Our love will flow on through wrinkled skin and jowly chins.
Love is beyond feeling, it is a way of life.
1/15/2019
Categories:
jowly, family, joy, life, love,
Form: Free verse