Voices drifting between the branches
Swept away by the evening chill
Hurried footsteps and loved ones pulled close
First light from fires kindled
Smoke slowly curling into the darkening sky
Loud clangs from vendors closing up shop
Exhaust from tailpipes fills the frigid air
Puff, puff, puff….
Greedily taking up space and creating a haze
Lights change but no one seems to notice or care
A lone vagabond sits slumped over between two pillars
Young lovers gleefully pass without a care in the world
Soothing sounds of a distant musician waft lazily through the scene
Reminiscent of Miles and “In a Silent Way”
Naked and bare without their summer attire
The trees begin to bow against the tight grip of winter’s onset
A lone store front sign dances and hums to its own electric muse
Sirens in the distance
A baby cries somewhere on the top floor and the world spins
All under the watchful eye of the neon moon
Categories:
tailpipes, imagery, metaphor,
Form: Free verse
My father’s timber array arrived on an
overloaded Diamond Reo flatbed.
It dumped oak scraps, leafless dead-woods,
inspiring last metamorphosis to
warming fires come winter’s weather.
Empty, truck leaves then heaves
into a scrubby alley
squeezing by barely.
With its narrow fit made
it disappearing through a backyard gate
into a cloud of its own making
belched from two shaking
upright tailpipes.
Bark cull, coppice slats, saw food pilled
to near roof high. This sawmill refuge awaits
stacking sequent, once cross-sawed
and set to a suitable size for stove fodder.
I am father's volunteer; I am the master stacker
of wand-wood. With my bow-saw in hand,
I look not on labor of hours nor days, but eternities.
In the eyes of evolution's lies I see ancient youths,
countless fellows of ten-years-old like me
and leap with them to the task of cave dwellers.
Categories:
tailpipes, life, work,
Form: Free verse
Worshippers of the shallow, whorish Hollywood stars
Imitators of the gangster rapper’s hateful raves
They drive small vibrating Japanese cars, with big tailpipes
Unconscious to reality, caught in the dropout’s trance
Fatherless children stumbling behind cell phoned welfare queens
Products of rainbow partying, painted teenage hookers
The indiscriminate lives of the mindless bobble head
In an endless ear phoned zombie nod, to the loser’s tune
Observe closely my fellow self centered Baby Boomers
Watch and you will learn my materialistic X-Gens
For these out of mind and sight products of pure decadence
Will one day hold the future in their pierced and tattooed hands
Categories:
tailpipes, life, social,
Form: Free verse