Turn around and you’ll see 360 degrees.
Tipsy or dizzy, dazzled and unbalanced.
Jumping over the obvious, skipping.
It’s groovy how you can can,
over and over again, become one with
the shellac or polyvinyl.
Its circumference everlasts, but the spin
is slow or fast. Some ride high but scratch
and waste the singsong space, the sizzling
stellar and crucial becomes psychedelic.
Two feet planted on the recording, soaring.
Sore their plantar, blistered by the hiss.
Do resist the shake and shiver of insane.
Tears ruin the score…Noah’s symphony.
Categories:
shellac, metaphor,
Form: Free verse
There is an empty chair where you would sit
on the other side of my dining room table
with the worn finish after fifteen years of use
It was beautiful when I bought it
We would listen to old records I’ve collected
from flea markets and antique shops
the black shellac sort with only one song on each side
Al Bowlly crooning a tune about a ring around the moon
on my Victrola made in 1922
A century old and it still appears almost new
Things were built to last back then
unlike today, everything including people
tossed away into the bin after only a few months or years
After dinner we would drink bourbon and muse
about the meaning of life, if there is any, which I doubt
but maybe you might change my mind
how we came to be who and what we are, a nobody and a star
watching through the window snowflakes floating gracefully
to the ground like a shower of down feathers
finding refuge for a few welcome hours
from a world that loves you too much and me too little
Categories:
shellac, loneliness, love, muse, music,
Form: Free verse
Let me walk along the velvet beach,
collecting shells upon crushed stretch.
Sun rearing-up a nine year old — teach
her to be happy, care-free, an oceanic sketch.
Eyes wide open, examine the gifts of the sea.
Brunette hair cascading over the shoulders.
Her bare feet stride through shifting sands free.
The past warms me in this present colder.
With curiosity in seaswept zephyr-ease,
each open shell would land a nesting place.
Her caress of lovely fingerlings, bent knees,
behold a prize...the shellac of time and space.
Piece by piece, a plan from Auntie’s coving.
We’d dip into the shapes, shades, and whispering,
pleasure and pleasantries ensconced in loving
of the sea through the inner ear of offerings.
Tunnels of God—great in mercy and grace.
Small but cared for, this daughter and niece,
sister and friend — so much ancestry to trace
in each universe of person, place and the deceased.
5/17/2021
Categories:
shellac, childhood, family, memory, sea,
Form: Quatrain
I look at your face and it is all I can do
Not to keep you forever, as you chase away my blue
I have no idea who put this face on you in the store
But I am severely in love with you forevermore.
Poppy potato, you give me a reason to smile today.
Your joyful looks and flashing eyes have so much to say.
I am determined to shellac you and keep you forever my dear.
You have chased away the gloom. I’m so happy you’re near.
It was fate that I found you in that old blue potato bin.
You have become my favorite and most apt forever friend.
Others might slice you, dice you, and masticate your face.
Any kind of chopping or hurting would be such a disgrace.
Sure I love potato chips and potatoes baked as well as anyone.
But you are my bestie, my pleasure, my joy, my number one.
So unless I get desperate and you are the only potato around.
I will keep you pristine and pretty, exactly as found.
Categories:
shellac, 1st grade, 2nd grade,
Form: Rhyme
sitting on the steps
of the Winthrop Baptist Church
observing the trickle
of treasure seekers
poring over the detritus
of trinkets gadgets
broken tools
unfinished projects
games used toys
assembled into a motley melange
best discarded or given away
a boy appears
and sorts through a pile
of dusty 78 rpm records
excited about what mysteries
he might find in the worn grooves
of these scratched treasures
and antique sounds
of a former time
distant and remote
from his world
yet he claims these relics
as his own
and tells me he has
a machine on which
he can hear the sounds
cradled in his arms
takes the pile
of shellac memories
to his father
gets in the car
turns smiles and waves
as the past
goes down the road
into the future
Categories:
shellac, allegory,
Form: Free verse
Beautiful Fall day
early December
Temp in 50's
Sun shining bright
Pondering mysteries of life,
romantic relationships---
Daily excursions for salvation
relieve stress, temptations.
Questions in perpetuity
shellac existential driftings
wondering should you follow
your heart or head?
Tumultuous circumstances
elevate biorhythms to
stratospheric levels
as you mellow out
with revelations of Mind Essence
that transcend dreams
masquerading as realities
stumbling through time.
Categories:
shellac, emotions, introspection, life,
Form: Free verse
Now as i weave my poetry, he says to me
"You look good beautiful
From the tips of your fingers to the ends of your nails"
I smile back and continue to my second stanza
I'll give you my beauty for free, i think painfully
If you can erase all my hurt
All my brokeness
For beyond my shellac
There is a tarmac road full of potholes and cracks
And i wish you could see that
I wish you see me that way because am not fully put together
The foundation hides, that which i wish you could love
The eyeliner drives, that which is not there
Read my poems
Read me
Read my pain and then love me
Categories:
shellac, love, pain, words,
Form: Free verse
I was sitting on the beach enjoying the dawn
When along comes a crab with two fierce pincers drawn
When I shifted off slightly to give him some space
He sat down beside me with pincers retraced.
This fellow was not of the cute well known kind
But a creature evolution had let lag behind
His shell was a tangle of shiny shellac
A dashed wall arrangement of polka dot black
I wondered to myself would he think it *****
If I asked him the question what are you doing here
Since I was the human who traveled the land
And he just out walking on a dry piece of sand
So we sat there in silence each in his own space
Yet somehow connected in the rising sun’s grace
As he walked to the water with an eight clawed resolve
Was he thinking to himself would man ever evolve?
Retracing those steps made eons before
He paused where the waves became one with the shore
With a last look around taking time to regroup
He gracefully entered the primordial soup
Categories:
shellac, animal, beach, morning, nature,
Form: Couplet
Scene
from a
borderless willowed window
frame
one scarlet cigar of sparking neon
smoked on slaplit glass
perhaps
meantime
the cinderous binding frays but
that face carries cities continents constellations
slow shellac sounding significances wrinkling into ivory
leaves of remembrances read over
some text they shared
may be
vellum will fray but
no
not this way.
Categories:
shellac, love,
Form: Free verse
Sand in my eyes
with the grit and the dust
and the every reflection of infinite rust
Brown, gold and blue and that beautiful green
Crystalize eyes that have seen what they've seen
Oil the hinges in sockets and pine
Break me and make me
and know that you're mine
Transform your selfishness into divine
as you polish my every regret
Sleep me and weep me
and stop me in tracks
that I made last November
with you to distract
for we are the happenstance on the right track
and you bloom right in front of my eyes
Grit in disguise from mistakes once or twice
that got polished in oyster eyes
liquid shellac
Conquered devotion and we are intact
as we move on to far better days...
Categories:
shellac, forgiveness, love, me, me,
Form: Free verse
Yesterday, I walked the lane
Where once I lived
And found my cane
Not yet a cane
But only just a dogwood limb
Barked and petalled still
Lying in the lane
Within a boy's dream
And I thought back then
When fifteen years were all I had
To make my cane a Moses staff
To walk through all the world.
So, I sawed the broken branch
And deflowered those pink blooms
And skinned her naked
Bathing her in good shellac
But I didn't know then
She'd be my lover to be
Kept by the corner of my bed
She waits for me
To come home to her
For me to hold her
And caress her now yellowed curves
She wishes I would stay.
Categories:
shellac, allegory, caregiving, devotion, love,
Form: Narrative