Long Lacquered Poems

Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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"Candy Girl" - 2



He had been watching her from the far end of the Ice Bar, where he was sitting propped up on an ice ledge which was cushioned in plush Reindeer hide and Yak...

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(alternately titled: idolizing childhood's end
today April 25th, 2021
generates elusive warm treasured memories).

Akin to significance my eldest sister
felt toward her “Willies” –
(totally tubular fuzzy bendable contrivances
analogous to an outsize pipe cleaner)
until she became a tweener
my Matty...

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Those rarer men I once fondly 
knew...                            ...

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Ten slices of pure marmalade plus two years of misted Karmapa bread equals? Oh do hurry up. The sum is easy. Oh ok then try another. Twelve custard tarts divided by an in between feathered...

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Anti Establishmentarian - hashtags himself as antithetical

The following poem crafted 
not quite thirty months ago,
when severe bad hair day
found yours truly self sequestered
toying with notion 
to coif, primp, and tease, his limp locks,
(whose hirsute trademark...

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rain hitting the asphalt, the cracking concrete, water weaving
its way down the overpass. Residents cover up with plastic,
a conflagration of yellow light on garbage bags
hitting tree tops, branches, leaves old and new. Boughs
sagging with the...

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I don’t know if there’s a God,
But I still prayed we’d not be seen,
That night we scaled your neighbour’s fence,
To steal their trampoline,

In the halflight the elastic,
Shone like a lacquered animal skin,
Stretched taut across the...

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Peter Pan? He is nothing but a tale drawn out,
a hero of half-truths, drowned in fairy dust,
the dullest side of a double-edged sword.
 
Before my time lost its salt, 
before the boards of this ship...

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There’s something ornately comforting, in a downpour of a day’s healthy rain
So replenishing, cleansing, as renewing, the ultimate giver to feed life’s grain

As standing undercover feeling the smaller flecks of the rain against your skin
With...

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Meeting a princess

It was, according to the old, the coldest winter
any could remember, the wise said it was because 
the war had disturbed the weather pattern
One day, it snowed, then it got mild, after that...

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a door stands in my way.
it is charmingly carved, vines curling
around the smooth lacquered edges.
still retaining the original hue of the wood
yet brighter now, gold shines from within
surrounded by the walls of the forest
hidden away...

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You found me nearly hollowed out.
A bag of bones upon the ground
My soul retreats into my pith
But not before you catch a glimpse
My soul hides within my core
For the light it had, it has no...

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The Dilettante Diaries: "The Bumble Bee Big Blue Sky Boston Two Step on Love Street"


She said, "Pffft Bumble Bees Rule, 
No Bees, no World
Shy Little Hearts 
Big power 
freedom wings
realised 
dreams into reality
unfurls
Who’s to write...

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I am watching 3 inches off of the floor,
The man outside waits at my door
I know the screams from within the box 
Howl and call upon your order upon the rocks
But I know you can...

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A famous alumnus is visiting the university. I got an invitation several days ago to a small, socially distanced, masked, focus group. It was to be early on a Saturday morning - so, why not?...

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Distressed by Rob Barratt

My furniture is all distressed
It's unusually unstable
The oak bookcase is quite depressed
As is the coffee table

The worktop has a thin veneer
It seethes beneath the surface
The taps know how low they can… sink
And...

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A heron watched me 
from painted rushes,
brush-stroked by a man 
who lived in a wagon
lacquered with stars 
and road-dust and wind,
who sometimes drank too much
and thundered.
They say he wandered for years,
trading canvases for bread, 
for...

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Standing silently in the doorway, a tough looking man 
With hands above his shoulders grasping the doorway jamb
His face dark and lined,, hands wrapped in a boxers stance

Sweated profusely ,  paused to let his...

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Defenders Endangered

Citizens unite spirits; choose the better part!
Life, God given, stolen by greed’s black-heart.  
Industry progressed far beyond the pushcart.
Thus, setting some selves apart as better…smart.

The endangered protecting the endangered –
Compassion fettered by solutions...

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Watch as the archer of sorrow steps slowly among the shadows of lost memories,
Clad in robes woven from the threads of promises forgotten on the shelves of time,
His quiver rattling with arrows soaked in the...

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Some days, I look within the book of myself onto the pages I have filled, and sigh. The folds of light and dark portray scenes, some simple, and others horrific. I sit still now. I...

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The quill this evening is not a mere instrument, but a primordial beast,
A lacquered leviathan with a tip sharp as obsidian fangs,
Its body coiled like an ouroboros, devouring its own ink in vengeance,
It struggles under...

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So this is my house still standing where others have fallen:
There is still the light of love inside the room, 
Peering through pinholes, our professor, for twenty- four
Years called it peace,love and unity, a philosophy...

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Life without her
would never be the same
She was the loudest, proudest
most endearingly brash
sugar-sweet and pickle-sour
five-foot-two, force to be reckoned with
that anyone in Yell county had ever met

I confess
I was somewhat obsessed
with Miss Mavis' hair as...

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