Parting With Your Fantasies Is Such Bittersweet Sorrow

Where you are 
At any given 

Moment and where 
You think you are 

Going rests on 
The mistaken 

Assumption you have 
Always been here. 

Winter Of Our Discontent

Filthy room at the top, stinking 
Cot in the middle, debauched 
Incessantly by wine, women 
And bawdy songs in-between 

The purple tomes 
Fall in Flames and Depraved 
Come Spring, let him who remains 
Unremorseful all the way 

Down to the lower depths 
Be the first to violate 
The oh-so-sacrosanct 
Maculate hypocrisy within. 

Too, Too Rash Crash Diet

Oh, poor plump cat-mangled mouse spread- 
Eagled out in my orchard too, too dead— 

You fell hard for tart, fallen apples—better 
You’d gone with Mousse à la Pantry instead! 

Solemn Procession Approaching Uppermost Limits Of The Absurd

On corner 
Of cemetery 
Chapel, a lone 
Mourning dove 

Cooing on ash- 
Grey lantern 
Eyes coffin followed 
By black-clad widow 

And bereaved 
Ones passing below
On way to where 
Nothing follows. 

On The Death Of A Friend

i.m. George Tsiros, 1954-2017 


Blot it out of your mind, 
You cannot--it remains 

There, in that hollow left 
Of your brain--where 

That quivering candle was 
Snuffed out by a blast 

Of hard, hard rain. 

B/W Photo With Young Dummy In Shop Window, Raymond, Washington, 1972

You might not see him 
At first but he’s there 

Alright—on the left— 
Wearing a striped 
Long-sleeved shirt 
And dark pants, looking 
Smart as a tack as he gazes 
North onto a long gray 
Street stretching south 
Under an endless canopy 
Of low gray clouds— 

Three cars are parked 
With their noses pointing 
North, too—it looks 
Like it’s early spring, 
For the lone 
Leafless sapling 
On the sidewalk shows 
Signs of coming 
To life again. 


NB:photo courtesy of Tom Mattson, Administrator for FB page "You Know You Grew Up In Raymond When. . ." for which I thank him.

Physical

My eighty-year old 
Mother-in-law, now 

Well past recalling 
Anything that transpires 

Over a minute after 
It flashes before her, 

And so 

Thin and frail you can see her 
Bones pressing against 

Her flimsy night- 
Gown still remains 

Sharp enough to tell 
The young 

Doctor feeling her 
Body for any 

Tell-tale signs of 
Imminent danger 

To go to hell the moment 
He brushes what now passes 

As her breasts. 

Transient Harvest Moon

The sky was ever so moving last night— 
A surfeit of broken, moonlit pie crusts, 
So I thought to hesitate a while, take

My fill of it, or if not all, as much as 
I could, when I heard a voice I swear 
Coming from the dark side of the moon:

“Move on, you light-headed fool, 
Indulge as you will, what makes you 
Think you’ll ever get your fill?” 

Outside A Railroad Station Coffeehouse Where Trains No Longer Run

Early autumn late afternoon 
In a light northerly breeze 
Under the centenarian 
Plane trees, we pass 
The time sipping 
Coffee and keeping 
An eye out 
For the next crumpled, 
Crablike leaf to fall 
And scuttle past us when 
Just across the other 
Side of the rusted derelict 
Tracks, we catch sight of 
The black-garbed village priest 
Slowly making his way, pushing 
His paraplegic son along. 

Practicing What You Preach

Yes, indeedy— 
No particular place to go was his motto 

And he always doubled back 
To where he’d started 

Particularly 
To make doubly sure 

He knew precisely where 
He wanted to go. 

Curmudgeon's Epitaph

Never a slacker, his life was marked 
By a stoic refusal to follow any lackluster tack, 
And steer that lonely, steady course he did— 

Till he found himself a haven where
No groveling lackey missed his absence,
And nothing ever lacked.