Long Thirty something Poems

Turning the maxim familiarity breeds contempt on it's head...
not just in time for Valentine's Day
but the remaining days of our lives
as the world turns
on all our children
the young and restless
now grown to womanhood

After being married
for...

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Cri de coeur courtesy thirty something English earl cry baby

the Earl of Yarmouth (William Seymour)
a descendant of very late
(to the power of Google - ha) Jane Seymour,
Henry VIII's third wife
currently in a legal battle with...

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A Comrade like Ben

A statesman like Mandela diplomatically
suspended the necessary struggle of opposites,
gummed his fragmented land together with reconciliation….
exploiters to exploited , murderers to martyrs
imperialist to invisibled indigenes  
lives in Sandton and councils Bill...

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Ott's (lots) chrysanthemums in bloom

pitch perfect today
September 14th, 2022.

861 Gravel Pike, Schwenksville, 
Pennsylvania 19473
the ideal place
if/when ye dear reader 
experience maddening rage 
(against the machine) 
causing ordinarily calm demeanor 
to fuss and fume
perhaps as best...

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We sat at the only empty table. 
I'd never seen her before, 
that elegant, thirty-something lady, 
when I visited that shore. 

I was twenty-two years old, with big ideas, 
a little scruffy, a little thin....

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I had a cat that marked his territory right
into our TV – fried the whole thing
But I will not graffiti my alleyways with
crude phalli,
Spewing armchair warrior slogans across the concrete

My best friend growing up was...

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That answer to that is painfully simple: I’m a disabled, thirty-something individual with compromised mobility…and I’m a lazy S.O.B...

But, oh, how I fantasize! And loath am I to torture myself by looking at all the...

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It was two hours and forty-three minutes before midnight.* Normally, one second beyond midnight and a whole new day begin. Wherever it's midnight, most working people are in bed and asleep. But long before midnight...

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(a love poem for my son)

Dreams spill out of sleep
sift across the hardwood floor
covers the window 
in colors of May

slamming me back towards childhood
or perhaps just to the ashtray.
One forged with labor
in elementary school ceramics;

patient...

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This was released before many of you were alive.
It was picked as Best Picture of nineteen fifty-five.
The Best Actor Oscar was earned by one who would be
later known on television in "McHale's Navy".
Its title is...

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We are all so young,,, even the ‘old hands’
Imagining a time with no bull rope is hard to plan
 
It’s riding with a heart and unflagging spirit revealed
That’s a most fitting description of what’s usually...

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Five minutes ago,
she knew him as her beloved son
Now she had that scared look in her eye,
memories just vanished
without so much as a goodbye

From her point of view,
she was always stepping in and out of...

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We were off to book our holiday, already we’d had words,
‘Don’t think you’re spending all the week admiring dolly-birds!’

My fella laughed out loud and said ‘Just stop your flamin' hopping,
there’s absolutely no harm in a...

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Sweet, little blond thing,
just off the plain from Kentucky,
she’s a solid seven, no higher,
painful to listen to her
reciting lines out loud.
Wants to be an actress,
fresh-faced and eighteen,
just have to dangle bait,
a few bit parts on...

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Ten years ago today, four innocent people in a pharmacy were shot.
It took just thirty something minutes for the murderer to be caught.
The two employees survived but the pharmacist and his customer died.
The murderer is...

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          Thirty Something Alchemy

    Are some of us beyond those years?
    Days of having children, spouses,
    working, and lovers quarrels and tears.

    Nights of staying out till...

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At nineteen the tender sorrow of love’s 
Unrequited promise
Hurts like a scream in a dark vacant night

But what of the thirty something?  Is not the sound
Of the soulful whisper
Of love’s promise to twine two...

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Jack Daniels whiskey label
That has you out aged 
Stamped in the silver tombstone
Aboard your belt.

And the dust on your boots
Not yet time worn, or tattered with age
Almost as shiny as your youth
Behind those still driven...

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Domesticated thirty-something female
watches deep sea fishermen
battle with their demons.
Testosterone depleted husband
of ineligible age
watches lions mating
in the Serengeti,
orange fingers
stray to family sized
edibles.

Outside, little Billy is playing
with Tony, a bigger playmate.
They make up little games
even though they...

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THE ADDICT IN ME


A Blank wall
A blank mind
In the darkness of an alleyway.
Three people sit on fruit boxes.
A Girl, nineteen
A man , forty
And another man thirty something.
A large bottle of water and three glasses
The girl...

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We tipped the waitress too much,
both feeling inclined
to spend our saved-up good right then.
And as the woman at the door
said, "You make a really beautiful 
couple," I stepped out

into the uncertain evening: 
the seven-block voyage...

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Ive got 5 minutes,
12 seconds
And a only marlboro menthol
To make this decision,
This universal riddle
That plays like a broken fiddle
In the orchestra 
Of my nicotine soaked brain;
How do I fix my life?

Ive punched in,
Ive punched out,
Ive...

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What is it you need:
     A job?
     A loan?
     A doctor’s visit?
     An—ugh—insurance claim?

Here’s seventeen forms
And a roll of...

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there were twenty-one, no,
it was only eight, or nine, no,
it was nearer to thirty-something
that exploded to the headlines

they were all soldiers and contractors
no, they were government officials and police,
- no, maybe it was vendors and...

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I watched discretely as the thirty something
couple struggled through an obvious first date

His manners were impeccable and her
appreciation showed as little by little 
they warmed to each other

Encouraged by the progress he mentioned politics
"I think...

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