Long Riverboat Poems

I.	  The Settlement

          Hickory bark bluffs
          at the blend of two 
    ...

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Lyle Cosgrove had worked the Silver Queen
for two years now, ever since he had left
family drama back in Ohio,
he had simply left his home and moved west.

He made a living as a gambler,
had spent months...

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I traveled almost everywhere, growing up. It took years. The landscapes, flora and fauna, the art, music, cuisines and curse words all seem to blend together in my mind.

Mount Fuji, the Rhine, the Himalayas, the...

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Harvey the Hippo

Harvey is a huge hippopotamus
Who bathes in a bay that is bottomless
HIs mouth is as large as a riverboat barge
And he weighs ten times more than a lot of us

Big Harvey isn’t nasty...

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He plied the Mississippi River on the paddle wheeler 'Dandy Dame'.
Gamblin' was his profession and three-card monte was his game.
He became very creative at palmin' that elusive ace of spades.
Such dexterity and sleight of hand...

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Powdered Sugar Daydreams 
 
Time becomes invisible, ceasing to matter
as this place in all its magic and wonder
blooms upon the gardens of our imagination,
playing like birds on a sky of opal blue, wandering streets of...

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...The two men confirmed Fred went for his gun,
and the captain just let the whole thing be,
Lyle got up and walked out to the deck,
in the fresh air he felt able to breath.

He paced up...

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Excitement filled the air as the calliope played
News spread the famed steamboat was near,
Its whimsical gingerbread trimmings displayed.

The whole town would rush to the esplanade
As the wildly anticipated boat pulled into pier,
Excitement filled the air...

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I sat in a flop house common room
Doing social research one Christmas Eve,
Galveston in '79, I do believe.
I was there in a room full of strangers.
Sammy Davis and Old Blue Eyes 
Sang on the TV...

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Mississippi Moments

History journeys along with its meandering flow as
a wide birth from bank to bank has eyes straining
trying to see across to the other side, far too wide.
Muddy rivulets stirred up by the river boats...

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porch light midnights
your voodoo kisses
drifting in the fog to
french quarter sidewalks
walking on the ghosts
of southern intimacy

antique balconies with
green wooden shutters
half shadows of you and i
sweet handmade pralines
floating on a cypress stump
walking on water for
a taste...

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Take me back to the River,
  To a riverboat ride at night,
Moonlight dancing on the water -
  Glistening diamonds in the light.

Take me back to the River,
  To the brilliant desert sky,
A...

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I was on the road to hell one day
and then Jesus stopped the bus
He told the devil "you can't have this soul
because she is one of us"
He then took me off that riverboat going to...

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