Nadine and
Dianne Dougherty's one
hundred and
eighty detained tonguing grey-
hounds were
heard to be denying any
dainty handouts or
unadorned rough hy-
dration treatments from the
eighty or so once weedy
youths who had dared to
face their dread by
grunting their
way clear through in-
dentured servitude to a
naughtier space for
authoring gutsy hind-
sight recollections of
satan's black sun san
francisco church in
all of its
morning glory seedliness.
If my heart is a secret garden
it’s weedy and overgrown,
the few flowers that try to bloom
are pitiful spots of color
trying to find the sun.
Flowers once were technicolor,
long ago when love was young,
and sang in joyful notes
as we journeyed forward
on a path we made our own.
You were fickle; I was true
and so the path we walked diverged,
still the secret garden in my heart
waits for you to come back in
and sow the seed again.
(a weedy problem)
They know, they just know where to grow, how to dupe you, and how to camouflage themselves among the perfectly respectable plants.
~ Dianne Benson
Sprouts without doubts
Pretending to know the abouts,
Ready to grow into louts
Of the most nefarious sort~
Useless as fuzz on the spouts,
Tedious noise-maker flouts,
Sending flowers into the pouts.
Adjectival expansion:
describing the resident
of the Executive Mansion:
I give you, the President …
mean, obscene,
rotten, misbegotten,
rough-hewn, jejune,
numb, dumb,
rude, lewd,
sadistic, hubristic,
orange-dyed, red-tied,
frightful, spiteful,
greedy, weedy,
grim, dim,
crabby, flabby,
freely-swearing, diaper-wearing,
furious, incurious,
sallow, shallow,
benighted, indicted,
painted, tainted,
addicted, convicted.
Forgotten Heroes
“Forgotten Heroes.” Repeated Master Satan.
Yes. Soldiers. Warriors. Hmm. Forgotten lives.
“Forgotten lives.” Yes, these men are deleted.
“Deleted.” Yes. Nobody remembers them. Hmm.
Why do you say this? Because I saw their graves.
“What did you see?” A weedy cemetery. It was sad.
I found a grave. He was twenty-one. In the year 1943.
Passed away. “Passed far.” He was a fighter pilot.
And I saw a little memorial plaque on his tomb.
“Text?” Rosie Mary. His mom. She lived more.
Died after his son's death. Forty years difference.
Poor Mary. I felt very sorry for them. Oh, souls!
This is a very shocking story. Yes. It is that.
There is a Lidl. Ten minutes walk. I bought flowers.
“To them.” Yes. Oh, sad lives. Sad. Says, my heart.
“Says my heart too.” Oh, Master, a cemetery is history.
I found another dramatic fate. Oh, God, where is love?
More deeply. Yes. "Please keep it in mind. Later write."
Hmm.
“Good night.”
The Author
A man was coming to stay with us at our little farm, years ago
ago, when someone who could read the papers was an intellectual
Or if not, a clever dick too smart for his own good.
The writer was supposed to work, too, to get a feel for farm life.
But he was weedy, didn’t want to help with mucking out in
the barn in the morning, and he had to go back to his typewriter.
Finally, his manuscript was done. He left a big eater; he was not missed.
Two years later, when the book came out, it had little to do with us
but how hard he had suffered pretending he was a child slave, and
much was written about this, but no one came to our farm asking us
about the man. Time has changed today; people would ask
questions and not take printed words for granted.
The ghost of the haunted lighthouse, standing lonely by the sea,
Emerges every morning ‘twixt the hours of one and three,
His vacant eyes forlornly search the ocean, still in vain,
Where the vessel lies forever and the sailors' bones remain.
Up and down the stairs he drifts, and thrice around the lamp,
An empty bottle at his hip, the air all cold and damp.
He moans and wails a ghosty chant, a song that isn’t known
By men of breath who come to see a man who can’t atone.
These stories are as old as hills, the haunted lighthouse ghosts,
When lonely keepers kept lamps lit on deadly rocky coasts,
With powers sublime, when tempests raged, these souls were tested then
And stormy seas and weedy pipes meant death to that ship’s men.
Low tide.
Scattered rocks wear
weedy jackets to shield
sea life from the drying air
and in the far distance,
clouds leak a fine mist of rain
as if to cool the heat
of a setting sun.
It is a joy to be here -
on this beach, at this moment
that has taken the universe
billions of years to unfold
by blowing up stars, recycling
the leftovers into the wonder
that is here and to take it in,
made me.
the toads do not dive
they plop into the scummy pond
pale green bellies floating beneath them
like airbags
they paddle and back-stroke
through the weedy water
as slow as inflatable boats
when i visit them
i turn into a kid
lobbing pebbles into the spawny drink
to watch them scatter
they remind me of fat men
hastily departing a swimming pool
it is a joke i prank them with
i keep doing this
until they turn to glare at me
heads half-submerged
eyes bulging with indignation
once it began to rain heavily
raindrops crashed into the pond
like exploding peanut shells
.
the toads commenced to croak in unison
the noise almost drowning-out
the sound of the pelting rain
no doubt they were bidding me
to go drown somewhere
Quite by chance
I saw a single, small, white wildflower
amid a crush of grass and weeds
along the roadside, its presence crowded out
by seed heads and space hungry leaves
of species honed for survival.
This wildflower occupied an area
no larger than my little finger
and even then was bumped and bullied
by weedy neighbors. It fed
on the leftover light filtered down
through the tall grass.
I would like to think that in this sometimes
bleak universe there is a caring
and benevolent force that tries to preserve
such fragile beauty from the rampant
excesses of survival and greed, nudges
the odds to favor such a humble flower,
nurtures its seed.
PSYCHEDELIC
There was a decade, it was the 60’s I’m sure
When everyday things were just a little bit off
As if there were rumblings in the earth’s core
And when scripted lines gave way to improv
There were plans afoot, some quite nefarious
A Hippy time, with weedy substances to share
And was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Minds set free and wearing flowers in the hair
Rainbow colours swirled to the sound of sitars
Free love, at least it may have been for some
And a coming of age of good electric guitars
Whilst others just sat crosslegged acting dumb
Psychedelia was a mind state and the fashion
Radical changes working through the system
And all things anti-establishment, the passion
Rules got lost and older people missed them
The time when all free expression took a lift
We may look back at it with little veneration
Not only tectonic plates that began to shift
We still hear echoes of that Beat generation
Bubbled
in a young man's breath,
I glided along the weedy
and rock strewn bottom
just out from shore,
a companion to fish
and crustacean, a finned,
neoprene clad denizen
of the deep.
The limit of my lungs made me
gorge on this underwater
world in the brief time
a held breath could last.
I packed so much
into mere minutes
to nourish a lifetime.
I always felt saddened
in having to surface
and leave such wonder
behind.
These days old lungs
barely hold a breath.
At night I now dive deep
into other places
where poetry is -
take in the mystery,
feel saddened
when I have to surface
and leave that world
of words behind.
Seldom does the morning wake me now
Too long has there been a dream of green
Foggy with the mist of the sea bay
Filled with those small white boats
slowly bobbing about here and there
Tethered to the waters and our desires
The sun through the glass panes comes
Amorphous as thoughts touching everywhere
Castings shadows defining the darkness
Spreading the light vigorously as a summer storm
Where just outside the bedroom window sill
Hangs an aging flower box peeling off its blue paint
It has no flowers or dirt, the bottom is long gone
A reminder to another time, another grace
A traveler from the past in torn britches
And broken straw hats popping their lids
You can watch the blue paint chips drop down
To a weedy grass like petals of forget me nots
Today was another day of green dreams.
Large boulders piled high
stretch out into the bay
and form a breakwater
that shields the beach
from high waves
and heavy swells rolling in
from southerly gales.
I have stood there
at the end when the sea
was hurling its rage
and all fury exploded
like bomb bursts of watery
shrapnel into the air.
I have seen such power
subside and tamed
to compliant licks
around the feet of rocks.
More than forty years ago
on a deep breath
I snorkeled down its ledges
into the rock strewn and weedy
world that lay at its base,
places where stingrays slept
and where fish glided
effortlessly along crevices
and over sponge
covered outcrops.
I cradled a fragile seahorse
in my trembling hands.
I no longer have
the confidence to rock hop
its length to the end
but stand where it butts
the land, commanding memory
to whip up a wind
and set wave upon wave
to awaken a soul
from its sleep
and make it feel
the sting of a southerly gale,
wet, cold and wonderful,
once again.
Holding onto a rail.
I lean over to see my reflection
mirrored in the water
and small fish swimming
in the camouflage of me.
I muse whether they are feeding
on my thoughts, nibbling
on the strands that loosely
float my day, making
their easy way towards
a dark clumped deep
in my shadow.
I can almost feel
their small fins brush the inside
of my skull, following
the course of a fear,
threading passage
through a weedy tangle
of doubt.
Then, swimming deeper,
their excitement seems
to grow in what they find,
feeding on something
that is hidden from me,
beyond the reflection
of my own mind.
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